I just replaced a broken Led screen on my son's hp laptop

[mr_lebowski]

14. I would be careful about re-installing Windows from a Microsoft-based copy of Windows 10 on a laptop

Last edited Sat May 18, 2019, 01:28 PM - Edit history (2)

It's fine to try a repair (that's different from re-installing) from generic Windows, but if that doesn't fix it, I would endeavor to see if you can get a W10 copy from Lenovo, preferably the one that came on the laptop. May be easily downloadable from their site.

Reason being lappies can sometimes use proprietary drivers for certain pieces of hardware (bluetooth or wireless network or camera or video or sound or pointer/mouse, etc) and running down the proper drivers after a generic windows 10 install might be a hassle. Or there may be installed software that you liked that won't be there anymore.

OR you luck out and 'stock' W10 supports everything in the lappie just fine.

Also note that if you reinstall windows, nearly all programs you've put onto the machine (if you DO install programs) will need re-installed.

Also note that in the windows reinstall options, there's a 'scorched earth' option, this means your drive gets reformatted and means the machine will get reset to absolute bone-stock Windows 10, and ANYTHING you did/saved/installed etc will be toast. Sometimes you HAVE to use this option to get running again ...

BUT, if there's stuff you really care about (pics or whatnot) you really don't wanna lose, you can usually pop the drive out of the laptop and plug it into a desktop and access it as just a 'disk drive', even though the windows install is 'broken', the files are still all there, and you can rescue files that way before scorching the earth. If you can replace a screen you can move a hard drive from one machine to another, it's pretty simple.

(EDIT: as another poster noted below, putting a bootable copy of Linux on a USB drive and booting from that is an even easier way to accomplish this! Only downside might be with capacity i.e. having enough hard-disk space available to move the files off the drive with the dead windows install ... having a nice portable USB drive with like 500GB space on it may be preferable to a 8GB USB stick, that kind of thing)

Another good idea if you ever Reinstall Windows (particularly a scorched earth/reformat-based reinstall) is to have a network cable handy (if your laptop has a wired network input jack) so you can wire up to the back of your home router. If you don't have a wired network input, download a copy of the wireless network adapter driver (the mfg of the laptop's site should have it avail for download, just look up your model, and 'downloads/drivers' section on their site) on another computer and put a copy on a USB stick. Do this AFTER you've created your Windows reinstall image on the USB stick or it'll get overwritten.

Reason being, you can end up with a wireless adapter that doesn't work on a fresh Windows install (NOT if you got the Windows copy from the Laptop maker, though ), and without the above two options, you can be dead in the water so to speak.