Hi everyone,
I am an exchange student currently in Sweden. I have been living in a student housing for the past 4 months. In our shared corridor, in the common area there was a laptop in a cupboard. It stood there for 2 months without anyone touching it so I decided to ask the seniors of our corridor. They said:
‘’All the stuff in the cupboard has been here longer than us, so feel free to take whatever. We tried turning on the laptop last year. It turns on but it says weird things’’
So I decided to give it a chance and took it. It is a Lenovo Y50-70. I think it’s around 8-9 years old.
Apparently ‘’weird things’’ is Ubuntu. I know nothing about non-Windows OS so I installed Windows on it and it turned on without any problems. But it had other problems…
Firstly there was a weird ‘’brrt, brrt’’ sound coming from inside. It sounded like the HDD’s disk was being scratched, the PC was also very slow so I thought HDD would become a problem. I took the backplate off and turned it on to confirm the sound was coming from the HDD but turns out it was coming from one of the fans inside. The fan wasn’t spinning and it would start and stop spinning constantly which caused the sound. I unplugged that fan ,since it wasn't working properly anyway.
Second problem was the speaker. It sounded really bad, not like it wasn’t good, it was broken. I don’t know how to describe the problem in English but it sounded like someone dropped a glass of water on the speaker and kept using it like that. I was sad about this since I don't know how to fix speakers, but decided to further test it. I turned on Crab Rave and suddenly it started to sound like there weren't any problems. Then the bass drop happened… Well thanks to Crab Rave I learned that the bass was the broken part. I installed Equalizer APO and turned the bass sliders down. It doesn’t have bass anymore but sound is no longer unbearable.
Next was the performance so I installed a few games. The first game was League and it worked without any problems. Almost no FPS stutters at high settings so it was time to go harder on it. I installed more and more demanding games and I got all the way to Sekiro.
Graphics were set to the lowest possible but the game was playable. I even finished the game on it.
Final problem came after using it for about two weeks. Games I was playing on it started to stutter like crazy. Games would freeze for half a second every 15~ seconds. I restarted the computer aaaand it didn't start again. It got stuck on the ‘’Lenovo’’ screen and didn't go further than that. I googled and tried fixes but none worked. Reinstalling Windows on it fixed the problem but I lost all the installed stuff on it. There were some games and almost no data so I didn’t think much about this problem after.
I didn’t post this here before because I had no intention of keeping it. I am returning back home in one month and I have a high-end desktop back home so I was going to leave it back in the cupboard for the next person to find it. But then a friend of mine told me that he will buy a laptop for his schoolwork. He is a student and doesn’t have much income so I decided to fix the laptop properly and gift it to him.
This is the part where I need help from you guys. Fixes I made are mostly work-arounds and aren’t permanent. Performance is no big deal for school work but laptop turning off and not turning on again without losing data is unacceptable.
Should I buy an SSD and replace the HDD inside? Is the laptop even SSD compatible since it’s a bit old? What are your thoughts on my ‘’fixes’’ and what else can I do about it?
I would really appreciate the help and recommendations. Thank you.
So I wrote this but didn’t want to post it while I was out. When I returned and turned the laptop on, I saw that it’s acting up again. Right now Windows is’t working properly on it. Windows taskbar is’t working. I click on Start and search bar but nothing happens. I tried restarting the Windows Explorer through the task manager ,and restarting the PC. Neither of them worked and I think I may need to reinstall Windows yet again… But I’ll wait until hearing from you guys. Thank you.
I am an exchange student currently in Sweden. I have been living in a student housing for the past 4 months. In our shared corridor, in the common area there was a laptop in a cupboard. It stood there for 2 months without anyone touching it so I decided to ask the seniors of our corridor. They said:
‘’All the stuff in the cupboard has been here longer than us, so feel free to take whatever. We tried turning on the laptop last year. It turns on but it says weird things’’
So I decided to give it a chance and took it. It is a Lenovo Y50-70. I think it’s around 8-9 years old.
Apparently ‘’weird things’’ is Ubuntu. I know nothing about non-Windows OS so I installed Windows on it and it turned on without any problems. But it had other problems…
Firstly there was a weird ‘’brrt, brrt’’ sound coming from inside. It sounded like the HDD’s disk was being scratched, the PC was also very slow so I thought HDD would become a problem. I took the backplate off and turned it on to confirm the sound was coming from the HDD but turns out it was coming from one of the fans inside. The fan wasn’t spinning and it would start and stop spinning constantly which caused the sound. I unplugged that fan ,since it wasn't working properly anyway.
Second problem was the speaker. It sounded really bad, not like it wasn’t good, it was broken. I don’t know how to describe the problem in English but it sounded like someone dropped a glass of water on the speaker and kept using it like that. I was sad about this since I don't know how to fix speakers, but decided to further test it. I turned on Crab Rave and suddenly it started to sound like there weren't any problems. Then the bass drop happened… Well thanks to Crab Rave I learned that the bass was the broken part. I installed Equalizer APO and turned the bass sliders down. It doesn’t have bass anymore but sound is no longer unbearable.
Next was the performance so I installed a few games. The first game was League and it worked without any problems. Almost no FPS stutters at high settings so it was time to go harder on it. I installed more and more demanding games and I got all the way to Sekiro.
Graphics were set to the lowest possible but the game was playable. I even finished the game on it.
Final problem came after using it for about two weeks. Games I was playing on it started to stutter like crazy. Games would freeze for half a second every 15~ seconds. I restarted the computer aaaand it didn't start again. It got stuck on the ‘’Lenovo’’ screen and didn't go further than that. I googled and tried fixes but none worked. Reinstalling Windows on it fixed the problem but I lost all the installed stuff on it. There were some games and almost no data so I didn’t think much about this problem after.
I didn’t post this here before because I had no intention of keeping it. I am returning back home in one month and I have a high-end desktop back home so I was going to leave it back in the cupboard for the next person to find it. But then a friend of mine told me that he will buy a laptop for his schoolwork. He is a student and doesn’t have much income so I decided to fix the laptop properly and gift it to him.
This is the part where I need help from you guys. Fixes I made are mostly work-arounds and aren’t permanent. Performance is no big deal for school work but laptop turning off and not turning on again without losing data is unacceptable.
Should I buy an SSD and replace the HDD inside? Is the laptop even SSD compatible since it’s a bit old? What are your thoughts on my ‘’fixes’’ and what else can I do about it?
I would really appreciate the help and recommendations. Thank you.
So I wrote this but didn’t want to post it while I was out. When I returned and turned the laptop on, I saw that it’s acting up again. Right now Windows is’t working properly on it. Windows taskbar is’t working. I click on Start and search bar but nothing happens. I tried restarting the Windows Explorer through the task manager ,and restarting the PC. Neither of them worked and I think I may need to reinstall Windows yet again… But I’ll wait until hearing from you guys. Thank you.
