Reversing Win X

[W3WN]

Well, this is going to be interesting...

My friend Bill W3WH is laid up at home with a busted ankle. Since he wasn't doing anything else at the time, end of last week, he decided to process the Windows 10 upgrade on his Windows 8 HP laptop.

Turns out the video driver isn't compatible. But, since this is within the first 30 days, he can reverse it... right?

Well, that's a problem. You see, about a year or so ago, this laptop got dropped during a security screening (not by him). The machine itself is fine, but the screen... is shot. The left 60% or so of the screen is totally unreadable.

Since this happened, he's been running the machine in his shack with an external monitor. And that's the problem... Win X is not recognizing the monitor on the external video part.

So how the f&*#(@*^!+k do I undo Win X when I can't see what the hell I'm doing? Any suggestions welcome.

Now the good news... Bill has another machine running now. I fixed up a Dell OptiPlex 760 for him, ironically running Win X, so he's back up and running. But outside of taking the laptop apart, removing the hard drive, and putting into a USB hard drive cradle which I'll have to buy... I have to figure out some way of getting the machine's external video back, at least long enough to get the data off of it.

(And yes, he does have a backup via Carbonite. For most of his stuff, but he's not sure that his N3MJP logs are backed up through that. Something that we will address in the future... for right now, I have to presume that he has nothing backed up and proceed from that premise)

[W3WN]

Well, some very good news tonight...

No, I don't have any changes on the laptop. But W3WH called to tell me that Carbonite has come through for him, the backup is (slowly) restoring all of his data files. Including his N3FJP logs. ( *whew* )

We'll have some software to install on the new machine, and a few things to configure, but so long as the data is there, everything else can be managed.

I still want to get Win X off this busted laptop... it can still be used in Bill's shack for a few things... but now I don't have to worry about taking it apart to get to the hard drive. THAT is a relief!

[W3WN]

...and I got Win X off the damn laptop.

Took it into work (with permission, and my boss was very amused to see how badly damaged the screen was... it was a 'but for the grace of God' moment... ), hooked up an external monitor (via the HDMI port and a direct HDMI to DVI cable, not the HDMI to VGA adapter that was previously in use). Nothing. Ran it through some diagnostics, put it on the public WiFi, and just for the heck of it, ran updates. Machine suddenly beeps, and the external monitor came alive!

But it didn't recognize the monitor when on the HDMI to VGA adapter (the Dell test monitor has VGA & DVI inputs), and since that's what has to work for Bill... took about 45 minutes to undo Win X.

:clap:

So now he can use this busted laptop as a dedicated Digital station, and keep his 'new' Dell 760 for office, logging, and misc. other tasks.