Don said:
A friend has an ancient PC with 128 MB of RAM. He needs to upgrade, as this
amount of RAM is no longer enough to get Amazon.com pages to load. His
needs are low. But he wants to be able to buy DVDs from Amazon.
A Chinese neighbor of his was upgrading and gave him a laptop. The problem
is the neighbor and another friend have been unsuccessful in changing XP to
English. The laptop recipient has been able to figure out how to play DVDs,
but its region is set to Asia.
No discs came with the gift. Could the Windows be bootleg and not be
changeable to English? Or what other issues are there with changing? As for
the DVD region, he could install VLC to get around that.
Don.
www.donwiss.com (e-mail link at home page bottom).
So first, you're sure the original PC can't take more RAM ?
What is the make and model of the original PC ?
*******
Can the OS on the "ancient PC" be moved to the laptop ?
Maybe that's easier to do, than discover whether a MUI or language
pack would work on the laptop as is. I bet it will be tough
to find a web link, for a Chinese user, to add English to
the computer. And at least some of the info on the Microsoft
site, on options for WinXP, will have been removed.
*******
If it was my laptop, what I'd be doing right now, is checking
the partition structure, and seeing if there is a recovery partition
on the hard drive. If so, it's less likely to be a pirate version
of OS, as a laptop that comes from the factory with WinXP on it,
could also come with a recovery partition for it (for "level and
reload" situations).
A pre-built computer may have three partitions on C:. And the first
step, is checking to see if that pattern of partitions is there.
It may take some work, to discover what is stored on the recovery
partition. If the Chinese neighbor installed Windows themselves,
there might be one partition (everything on C
or two partitions
(OS partition plus data partition). In any case, nose around the
structure on the disk, and figure out what it used to be. if the
laptop hard drive died, and the user reinstalled Windows manually,
the copy of Windows could be valid, but the original factory
partition structure might be missing. There are many possibilities.
*******
Your friend could load a Ubuntu CD into the laptop CD drive,
boot from that, and have an instantly run-able copy of Firefox
web browser. So for a "single function" computer, there is an
easy answer. Not a good answer, but an easy one. Installing
that software on the computer, without messing up the hard
drive, is another matter. You don't want to zap the hard drive,
until everything of value has been saved.
Some versions of Linux can be installed on a USB flash drive,
and if the flash drive is large enough, even support a persistent
store. That would allow bookmarks saved in a session, to be used
the next time. Otherwise, if you boot a Linux CD and web browse,
all your state information is lost at shutdown (bookmarks and all).
Paul
