Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[DF_Silvestre]

So, here's the thing. I downloaded a pirated version of Windows and made it bootable from a USB. When everything was gone (drivers, program files, etc) I realized I borked and downloaded 86x Windows 7 Ultimate. I forgot that that was just a 32 bit Windows with a confusing number in the name.
End result, my Dell N4110 laptop is borked. Can't connect to wifi to download drivers. Can't tell what drivers I need. Can't even run DF with graphic sets bc my graphics card driver is also borked. The clean install wiped my C drive and left me with all the games and no way to run them.
I basically got a divorce with an ex who had the better lawyer.

I've no idea if there's a forum rule that forbids posting for tech help, but I'm posting anyway. Delete if you want. I just need tech help from folks I somewhat know.

Is there any way to fix my PC? Any way to get 64 bit so I have something to show for this whole ordeal. How do I find out what drivers I need?

[ChairmanPoo]

try installing linux? Or else when you acquire a windows copy try to get one that doesn't break your system down.


... honestly, I'm not an anti-piracy zealot, but you have to bear in mind the risks when you download programs from dubious sources.

[Reelya]

BTW, probably best to move this thread into the Life Advice section, which is the board for getting people to help with any type of personal thing. (move thread is bottom left, make sure to untick the "leave a copy" option, because phantom threads are annoying).
 
There's also a mega-thread in there for tech help next time, which can be more handy since a number of veteran PC techies keep an eye on that thread.

[DF_Silvestre]

Much faster replies than were expected. Thanks! I'll move now.

[Reelya]

Cool, also Life Advice is a slower board, so your topic will stay on the front page much longer. General Discussion is full of very active ongoing mega-threads so you would have been on page 2+ within a day.

We can't really support or advocate pirated copies, forum policies are against that. Although I will say a 64 bit machine should be able to run 32 bit OS. Your main choices are get some sort of fresh Win 7 install, or some Linux distro is the third choice, but that might suck to get your games running.

Your machine should run Win 10 pretty well as well, and there are still ways to get legit win10 for free. What I can say is that if you can run Windows 10 then it's definitely better than 8/8.1, and can you can make it even more streamlined and minimal than Win 7 with a little tweaking. Some people report hardware issues, but I have two machines running it with no issues at all.
http://www.howtogeek.com/272201/all-the-ways-you-can-still-get-windows-10-for-free/

I can't vouch for this site, it's third party, but says it has recovery CDs for the model you have:
https://restore.solutions/en/dellinspiron14rn4110/
The trick is to get some Win 7/8/8.1 installed then do the upgrade to get a legit win10 license for the life of the device. I found going from win 8.1 => win 10 was much more streamlined, because Win 8.1 already had many of the needed updates that were required to jump to Win 10 pre-installed, whereas one of my Win 7 boxes kept crashing on some needed updates.

But it can be better to try and source the recovery media through Dell. Dell checks the serial number of the device so that it restores the device with a legitimate windows key that shipped with the device
http://www.dell.com/support/home/au/en/audhs1/Drivers/OSISO
Also keep an eye on the support page for the model you have, could be useful
http://www.dell.com/support/home/au/en/audhs1/product-support/product/inspiron-14r-n4110/drivers

[DF_Silvestre]

Very detailed response. I'll check out the sites when I get to work on Tuesday. But my goal is to install windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit on my laptop. Which is currently running 32 bit.
Also, it's a bitch to find out what drivers I need using one of those apps that scan your machine for needed drivers online because the driver required to detect/connect to my wifi was removed.

Also, Luddite that I am, I don't want windows 10 on my pc. I just don't see how all those flashy UI additions will help my PC speed. Win7 at least feels and looks a lot simpler.

[Reelya]

What "flashy" UI"? Windows 10 is far more minimal than 7, actually. This is what my desktop looks like (with the start menu open), after a couple minutes of tweaking from a "vanilla" windows 10 install. You just can't get Windows 7 down to anything like this:



As for performance, Windows 7 is a little faster at some things, but Windows 10 beats 7 at other things, such as many games and video encoding.
http://www.techspot.com/review/1042-windows-10-vs-windows-8-vs-windows-7/

you'll notice if you go through to the video encoding and game frame rate stuff, Windows 10 is actually faster than Windows 7 for many games.

Also, with windows 8-10 you get the ability to pause file transfers, and it puts all active transfers into a single window. The interface for that is much better for when you're sorting out lots of files on USB drives, it renders trying to do that on Windows 7 virtually unbearable in comparison.

[DF_Silvestre]

I've seen the start menu, and it seems more complicated than I'd like. Taking up the whole screen with boxes I'd never click. I could be wrong, there may be ways to change the UI.

Whether I get windows 10 or 7 is a question for later, when I actually find put how to create a bootable drive to run 64 bit setup.exe from a 32 bit pc.

[Reelya]

There's no boxes, look at my screenshot which I added. It takes less than a minute to get rid of the boxes, and you can resize the menu horizontally (which you can't in Windows 7).

If you don't want the boxes that are there and you think it takes up too much space, right click them, get rid of them and replace them with a single thin column of icons for your favorite programs.

[DF_Silvestre]

Right. I'm on two bars 3G right now, so pics don't load.
Can you get rid of bloatware? Like the xbox app?

[Reelya]

You can click "all apps" in the start menu and the panel switches to show a scrolling list of all installed apps, and you can actually uninstall things right from the list itself.

But it's arguable about whether the existence of an "xBox app" represents "bloatware". Because being an "app" it's by definition a standalone component that can be removed. Microsoft is moving towards more of a component-based system. In the old way of doing things they would more like have had "built-in xBox support" which would have been integrated into the OS itself as a "service" therefore not easily removed by the user. "xBox app" is actually moving service-related things into user-land where you're now aware of them and can add or remove them as you wish.

But in terms of bloat related to xBox, the software for streaming media to an xBox on Win 7 was "Windows Media Center" which was a default installed windows feature. Since it's in "windows features" and can be turned on and off with a tick box, that's basically proof that it's literally impossible to remove this from Windows 7 entirely. Not being able to remove something is the definition of bloat. At least the xBox app is a thing shown in your start menu that you can right click then click "uninstall" and it's completely gone.

[TheBiggerFish]

Well then.

[Reelya]

The footprint for my entire C drive with Windows 10 is 15 GB. Install size with Windows 7 was easily far bigger than this. Sure, if you're comparing to Linux talk about Windows 10 being bloated. But that makes no sense compared to the far more chunky Windows 7.

Yeah I know people have some other issues with Windows 10, but hard-drive footprint is quite a bit smaller (I used to aggressively tweak Windows 7 down to try and get it smaller: I haven't even touched Windows 10). And the UI is definitely more minimal.

[☼Another☼]

Windows 10 also has something that has become essential to my computer usage. Really easy to create virtual windows. Just click the [[]] next to the start menu, and you can easily create virtual windows that can be flicked through with windows key+arrow keys.

[Reelya]

Just as a counterpoint to Reelya's Windows 10 advocacy, I can say that based on my experience, I wouldn't recommend it at all. If you're happy with 7, stick with 7. It's a fine OS.

Yeah, I was really just counterpointing myself to the general negativity, some of it is valid, other stuff is just based on knee-jerk bashing of whatever the latest version of Windows is. I'm running Windows 10 and have never had any problems on either machine it's running on, both are cheap as shit PCs, not bleeding edge gear. One is a PC I built in 2012 from bargain shop parts, the other is a $300 retail laptop that's 2 years old. Both run Win 10 perfectly.

So I'd say as a rule if you have at least a low-end PC made some time in the current decade you're unlikely to have much problem, the grey area is trying to shoe-horn windows 10 onto older devices. But it's still pretty fun to try and get it to run on old gear. So far the oldest thing I have that could run Windows 10 is a PC with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+, 2 GB of RAM. That processor shipped in 2006, which was even before Windows 7 existed, yet Windows 10 will run on it. It's pretty much unprecedented that Microsoft's latest OS will even install on a 10 year old system. That would be equivalent to running Windows 7 on a PC from the Windows 98 era.