my father bought an old Acer laptop, need help clearing the laptop

[TorchManiac]

two week ago, my father bought this old acer laptop from someone who needed money. I just found out that the PC perfomer installed inside says it has 118 errors and its the at the ''Mauvais'' stage in french. Yes my laptop is in french.

The laptop is an Acer laptop who has these stickers on it saying "Intel Atom Inside" "Designated for Microsoft Windows XP" "energy star". On two of the corners of the laptop is imprinted Aspire one.

What Im looking for is for the laptop to be just as if I just bought it from the store, erasing most of the stuff without actually deleting some of the important stuff (like Google Chrome, Microsoft Word, Paint and similar programs).

I don't own any usb drives (except a really small one that is about two gigs) or any disc drive thing.


I dont have much experience in computers nor can have contact with a tech savvy at the moment so please explain to me deeply what to do.

Also, I did not browse the site. So I do not know if a topic like this was already made. Or if this is a the right place but yea.

help anyone?

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

The older Aspire Ones are unlikely to have drivers to let them run on Win 7 and XP's end of life is 04/08/2014. I had two Acer Aspire Ones and both were garbage (as were the Acer desktop, keyboard and mouse I had). Personally, I don't feel it's worth messing with. Hopefully, your father can get his money back.

 

[TorchManiac]

it still gives us a whole year of laptop though.

And the guy that went just entered my fathers store, asked to sell the laptop for money to buy his girlfriend a wedding ring. (since my father is a jeweller)

Since my father is retarded and is sometimes the angriest in the world, sometimes the nicest person in the world. He accepted to buy it. You wouldn't believe how much XXX material was in history.

In any case that person who came is long gone. I doubt he will come back to the store.

Even if it is garbage, It's still pretty neat to get a laptop (My first one actually)

but if you mean it really sucks. I should still probably clear away all the data before handing it over to the store right?

Thanks btw

 

[pscowboy]

Is there a license product key on the bottom of the laptop? (Five groups of 5 characters each.)

Does it boot to a desktop okay?

Assuming it's the XP operating system on there, what edition is it? It'll show while it's loading. Home or Professional.

Ask around among all your friends to see if someone has that XP installation disc. The XP license key on that pc is good for it's life.

Do you need it to be in French? Is English okay?

If you see a product key, we can direct you on how to wipe the hard drive and reinstall a fresh XP. You can run it past April of 2014. You just won't get security updates or patches anymore.

Answer the above questions before we can help you.

 

[TVeblen]

I agree with pscowboy. A clean install of XP will do wonders for the machine and you will get good use of it.

All the free programs like Chrome can be downloaded and installed afterward. The only program you mention that is not free is Microsoft Word. If you clean install this will be gone and you will either have to install a copy you own, or find a suitable free replacement.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Only problem with the clean install of XP will be the fact you can't get any updates needed to install any type of Antivirus so it's kind of a viscous circle and unless W7 can install then you're left with a XP install and a machine I wouldn't surf the web or heavy email with or if you do then always have an image of the first clean install handy so when not if the computer gets a virus or trojan you can just wipe and re-image the hard drive and start over.

 

[AC]

I'd recommend locating the Product Key, wiping the hard drive, and doing a complete clean install of Windows XP. If you don't own MS Word, you can use OpenOffice or LibreOffice, both free.

 

[TVeblen]

you can't get any updates needed to install any type of Antivirus

Sorry man. You can run Avast or AVG just fine without updating Windows. I've got an old machine running XP here on Avast and it'd doing just fine.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

We'll you can't load Trend Micro or Norton. It appears it could be trial and error, so loading free versions and seeing what takes is the watch word of the day.

 

[Mark Phelps]

...What Im looking for is for the laptop to be just as if I just bought it from the store,

The only real way to restore it to its original state would be using Acer recovery media -- which comes only from Acer. If you want to go this route, you would need to contact Acer ... but be prepared to PAY for the recovery media is that is likely to be a set of CDs and they're probably not going to give them to you for free.

... erasing most of the stuff without actually deleting some of the important stuff (like Google Chrome, Microsoft Word, Paint and similar programs).

Sorry, no real way to do that. The apps are tightly integrated into the filesystem with components spread all over the place. There is no way to clean out system stuff and leave apps intact, just as there is no way to back off just the apps so you can restore them.

...so please explain to me deeply what to do.

If you really want the original state back, then see if you can get the restore media from Acer. That is likely to be a set of CDs, with printed directions, and you could then use them to restore the PC.

 

[pscowboy]

As long as the XP is SP3, he can install MSE which does a good job with a small footprint.
SP3 will come along with the automatic updates.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

What are the chances an old lappy purchased second hand even came with the OEM disks? and if they can or did get them again likely SP1 at best. This is what I ran into as my 2.5" drive crashed and when reloading XP I was told that MS was no longer supporting updates as it was just days I learned past their cut off! I called and said what gives and they just said o'well ! I've since loaded W7 32 on this machine and with it's blazing Pentium and a whopping 1gb of DDR 333 I was amazed that it loaded but have been pleased overall. That's just my situation, good luck with yours.