End of the road for the Laptop?
Discussion
I had an old work laptop knocking about, company went into administration and everyone got dumped mostly without pay. They never asked for the laptop back.
It's been in my loft for a while but recently I've been using it to control DMX lights for my band. All good, stripped any junk off it and just had a few lighting and music related programs. I had admin access.
Tonight while working on a show it started dropping me back to lock screen like I'd left it idle. In an attempt to resolve the problem I rebooted and now can't get back in. The sticking point seems to be the Macafee endpoint security (safeboot 5.2.11) I have the right password but it's telling me unknown user name.
It's stuffed isn't it?
I'm thinking even if I could usb boot it any useful files will be encrypted and useless.
It has a weird Dell BIOS with no options for recovering the windows key otherwise I'd just format and rebuild what I need and be annoyed I hadn't saved my files off-line.
It's been in my loft for a while but recently I've been using it to control DMX lights for my band. All good, stripped any junk off it and just had a few lighting and music related programs. I had admin access.
Tonight while working on a show it started dropping me back to lock screen like I'd left it idle. In an attempt to resolve the problem I rebooted and now can't get back in. The sticking point seems to be the Macafee endpoint security (safeboot 5.2.11) I have the right password but it's telling me unknown user name.
It's stuffed isn't it?
I'm thinking even if I could usb boot it any useful files will be encrypted and useless.
It has a weird Dell BIOS with no options for recovering the windows key otherwise I'd just format and rebuild what I need and be annoyed I hadn't saved my files off-line.
I would have expected any expiry to have a more obvious error message but I know what computers are like so won't discount it. The company folded 4+ years ago so I would have expected it to kick in earlier if that was the case.
MS not letting me d/l an image - see your supplier, Dell telling me support expired so do one.
MS not letting me d/l an image - see your supplier, Dell telling me support expired so do one.
Unfortunately not, I probably won't have net access when it's in use and the programs I want to use are quite specialised, one in particular that I've spent ages learning (as it works with my interface) is Windows only. Others run on Linux but I'd have to start from scratch on the program.
Maccas - Thanks, that downloads an exe which is no good as it won't boot. Might try it on another laptop though.
LordGrover - Cheers, it's Win7 I assume it's 64bit.
alfaben - Thanks, pretty much the conclusion I'd come to. I might try a boot from usb and see if anything is readable but it's not a major loss if it isn't just a pita.
LordGrover - Cheers, it's Win7 I assume it's 64bit.
alfaben - Thanks, pretty much the conclusion I'd come to. I might try a boot from usb and see if anything is readable but it's not a major loss if it isn't just a pita.
That was my thought as well, I seemed to remember that w8/10 was less resource hungry.
It's main use is running something called Freestyler, it's a DMX lighting control software. http://freestylerdmx.be/ couldn't find any official min specs but people seem to be running in on anything down to a 600mhz single core.
It's main use is running something called Freestyler, it's a DMX lighting control software. http://freestylerdmx.be/ couldn't find any official min specs but people seem to be running in on anything down to a 600mhz single core.
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