so ... i accidentally deleted my hard drives ...

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Cleaning up my desk, I found my old Toshiba Satellite laptop. Haven't used it in years. I used to use it to make music with LMMS, just a part-time hobby thing. I believe it ran Windows 8 or 8.1 when I last used it. Plugged it in and pushed the power button, and got the wonderful blue screen. Wouldn't let me repair, refresh, or reset, I kept getting error messages. Something somewhere was corrupted, and I don't have a boot disk. Only option I was able to find that actually worked was deleting the hard drives. It's nothing but a paper weight at this point, so what could go wrong?

Needless to say ... it's still a paperweight. I'll be the first to say I'm not the most technologically inclined individual, but I feel that I can hold my own to a point. I'd love to get this thing working, but I'm not sure where to start. Probably with a bootable USB. Something to at least get this thing off the ground and maybe run some diagnostics. Any suggestions? Again, this is a free thing that I found, and would love to keep it as close to free as possible lol
 


Probably with a bootable USB.

Yup. That's the way to go.

Using your other computer, download a distro's .iso file - the one that you want to use - and then use Balena Etcher to write that .iso to USB. You don't just copy/paste the .iso, you write it as an image. Etcher does that for you.

When you next boot the laptop, you can use the one-time boot selection menu to pick your USB drive. That should start Linux in the live mode (depending on the distro you chose - and I'd suggest one that does so).

From there, you play around with it and see if your hardware works properly. (If it doesn't, we can usually help you get it sorted.) If you like it, you click the button that is labeled 'install to disk' or similar. You then follow the instructions, picking defaults most of the time, and wait patiently. It's much faster than installing Windows.

When prompted, remove the USB and reboot. You should boot to a login screen (unless you opt to log in automatically). Do so.

Now use Linux. Things are where you'd logically expect them to be, generally speaking. You'll find a web browser in the menu under 'Internet'. You'll find office tools in 'Office' and maybe even a starter game or two in 'Games'.

When you're stuck or want to do something, use a search engine. There are tens of thousands of pages out there to get you sorted.
 
Cleaning up my desk, I found my old Toshiba Satellite laptop. Haven't used it in years. I used to use it to make music with LMMS, just a part-time hobby thing. I believe it ran Windows 8 or 8.1 when I last used it. Plugged it in and pushed the power button, and got the wonderful blue screen. Wouldn't let me repair, refresh, or reset, I kept getting error messages. Something somewhere was corrupted, and I don't have a boot disk. Only option I was able to find that actually worked was deleting the hard drives. It's nothing but a paper weight at this point, so what could go wrong?

Needless to say ... it's still a paperweight. I'll be the first to say I'm not the most technologically inclined individual, but I feel that I can hold my own to a point. I'd love to get this thing working, but I'm not sure where to start. Probably with a bootable USB. Something to at least get this thing off the ground and maybe run some diagnostics. Any suggestions? Again, this is a free thing that I found, and would love to keep it as close to free as possible lol
When you write "Probably with a bootable USB", you may have solved your problem.
@KGIII just beat me to the post.

So, in addition to post #2, it may be worth entering the BIOS or BIOS/UEFI and checking all the variables: e.g. does the BIOS still see the hard drive and the other peripherals? Is there a setting there which enables loading "other" or "legacy" operating systems, which usually means, "other than Windows"? If there is, select it.

It's possible to check for BIOS updates at the manufacturer's website. If installation of linux works, then there may not be any need to update the BIOS. If nothing else works though, it may be worth considering.
 
Fantastic. Thanks guys, y'all are quick. Currently using my work computer, so as soon as I get access to my munchkin's laptop or chromebook where I can actually download Balena Etcher I'll play some more.

Thanks!
 
Just a thought, as you should be aware it is difficult to delete files and folders from a hard drive, so if you boot Linux from a pen-drive ,you may be able to mount the hard-drive , find the important stuff and save it to a second usb drive
 
NOTE: I don't know of a way to do this on ChromeOS. I do not believe Etcher is available for those using Chromebooks. There may be other tools but I am not a ChromeOS user.

Their laptop, on the other hand, will likely work.

Is there a setting there which enables loading "other" or "legacy" operating systems, which usually means, "other than Windows"? If there is, select it.

Linux happily supports Secure Boot (frequently) and UEFI (most often).

I considered suggesting that they at least look in the BIOS to see what's going on but I figured I'd wait to see if things went wrong first. After all, changing the boot order might make it a step easier for them. Still, I didn't want to give them any steps that they can probably avoid.

I did have one computer that required mucking about in the settings to tell it to boot to a new EFI entry. So, that's also a possible reason to check the settings - but that may come later. I never had to do it a second time 'cause I never needed to do a new install before moving on to a new device.
 

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