Is the hard drive to be in know working condition? To test I would boot the computer with a bootable distro that has the badblocks program installed (systemrescuecd has this). Hopefully there is nothing wrong with the disk.
The noisy fan may be the source of your troubles. If the laptop cannot keep itself cool you may be unable to get it to perform in a stable fashion. Is the fan running at high speed or does it sound like a failing fan? Either is bad. IIRC the Windows sticker is underneath the battery, which is where the key should be. Mine came with Windows 8 and the key is somehow embedded in the UEFI/BIOS. As long as you are installing the exact same version that shipped with the laptop you should not need to input the key. I am not sure if this is the case with Windows 7 so you may want to check with Lenovo. I kept a disk image from when I bought the laptop in case I ever sell or give it away. I used to have a technet account, though I still have an MSDN one from work, so I am never going to use the version of Windows that it shipped with (assuming that I would ever willingly let Windows touch the hardware directly). For Office you will have to find the sticker that was on the box that you bought. If you bought it online, it should be connected to your microsoft email address (typically a hotmail or outlook.com address, though you could have used any email address) that you used to register Office. As long as you still have access to the email account you should be able to re-download the installer. I am not a fan of dual booting. While things have certainly gotten a lot better over the past 15 years, I have experienced too many headaches related to dual booting to be able to recommend this solution without knowing more. Instead I tend to do all of my Windows work inside of a VM or remotely (or in my case, both), which may or may not be an option for you. Another alternative is to put an mSATA SSD into the laptop, and install Linux there while keeping Windows by itself on the current disk. This way there is less of a chance of the two OSs stomping on each other. These Lenovo's are pretty awesome, I have a T430 myself, and I have a 3rd block device in a bay that replaces the optical drive. 3 block devices in a 14" laptop is not too shabby. On Sat, May 24, 2014 at 9:37 AM, Noah Tellin <thevillageg...@gmail.com>wrote: > As of late last night, the Windows 7 installation (64-bit) on my > Lenovo ThinkPad T420i will not start. While I know that this has an > upside, I was planning to do some Windows-based training with a > development environment to play with. I also have a legit MS Office > installed there, with the receipt somewhere. I run Linux Mint 14 on a > second partition. There seems to be a noisy fan problem as well, but > that's not my immediate concern. > > I've restarted and restarted, tried safe mode and all that. At most I > get the 'recovery' options, or Windows loading in safe mode to the > point where there is a disembodied mouse pointer but nothing else. > When I closed the laptop in order to move it with everything else, it > was either at the Windows login screen, in the process of loading > Windows, or already stuck. > > My thoughts are to do a mass backup of everything I want on the two > main partitions (I have an external drive), do the full laptop reset > from the third 'recovery' partition, if possible, then do a fresh > installation of an updated Mint or something else in a new dual boot > setup. > > I prefer not to have to purchase MS Office again, nor to buy another > copy of Windows, for many obvious reasons. I do have another version > of Windows 7 on an older, somewhat problematic HP notebook. > > Thoughts and suggestions? > > _______________________________________________ > clug-talk mailing list > clug-talk@clug.ca > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) > **Please remove these lines when replying >
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