Pc reclamation - the time has come

Windows 10 20H2

In these days of growing concerns about e-waste the upgrading and reclamation of older PCs ought to be taken seriously. Most PCs today can be upgraded to Windows 10. Because of TPM requirements many PCs cannot be adequately upgraded to Win 11. That said, I'm posting this thread to encourage others to share their upgrades and rescue missions of older PCs that might have been otherwise discarded, tossed in dumpsters, recycling bins etc. consequently resulting in additional years of practical use and sparing the environment of needless waste.

I would encourage others to post pictures of PCs that they have managed to rescue from the morbid fate of ending up in a dumpster, or land fill. Please share and tell what you did to upgrade the PC and make it usable again in this wonderful world of Windows 10.

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Found in a recycling bin. Dell Studio XPS 9100. Upgraded to Windows 10 20H2.

When I plugged it in the battery alarm sounded immediately and it would not post. I replaced the CMOS battery I received a different alarm so I pulled the GFX card and replaced it with a simpler graphics card. The alarm stopped beeping and it posted with an error message that Windows was attempting a repair. The repair failed but in the meantime I put the graphics card in a different PC and learned that it needed a firmware update. I gave it the update, removed the graphics card, and installed it back in the original PC. Once again it attempted a repair and the Windows 10 operating system required a repair. This time I opted to reset the operating system, which was just as well as I had no interest in the user information anyway. The reset was successful.

This unit came with a blue ray drive, an additional CD/DVD ROM drive, 24 GB of Samsung RAM, a graphics card that would have been considered high end in 2010, a quad core i7 960 CPU, and two 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT hard drives. Back in the day a unit like this would have been worth close to $3000 CA. I'm now running a 22H2 version of Windows 10 on a Crucial 500 GB SSD with this unit and because I happened to have the original DELL XPS 9000 series Windows 7 Pro DVD, it is also running the original OS via dual boot. The thing runs fast, stable and smooth. My 12 year old daughter tested it with a bunch of games including mine craft and couldn't believe that someone actually tossed this machine. She shook her head and said, "Dad, people are so wasteful". I couldn't agree more.

Most people do not have the skill set to understand how to fix this computer.
Most people look at a computer that is not working that is a few years old and weigh how much it would cost for a computer technician to fix it against what a new or refurbished computer would cost them and they decide, that it is not cost effective.

I was buying non working laptops and desktops that were in this condition, fixing them up and donating it to a person that could not afford to buy a computer, old used, or otherwise.

Agreed. I think what you were doing is commendable and I do much the same. To be fair, one need not be a technician to upgrade an old PC however. There are many people, enthusiasts and hobbyists that can do this sort of thing and I would encourage anyone who visits this forum to adopt this persuasion that just because a PC ten or so years old and has issues does not mean it's ready to be tossed. In fact, even if one is not inclined to make the repairs themselves they can always give it to someone willing to learn how, or someone who does this on a regular basis.

I'm hoping to see pictures of PCs that have been rescued on this thread. Apart from this being a proactive measure it's good for boosting morale and it can be very encouraging.

imtigger2 said:

Nice find!! Those XPS 9100 computers rock, and are very expensive new.

Thanks. I don't think you can get them 'new' anymore. They're around 14 years old now. I know that's hard to believe but time flies.

What I do know is that those old i7 Bloomfield CPUs are as tough as nails. They were the flagship CPUs of Intel's Quad core hyper-threading promotions that led to ye olde Sandy and Ivy Bridge chips. My 16 year old is using an even older model, the DELL XPS 9000/435T, which for all intents and purposes looks identical She's also using the 960 chip but she's not letting go of it. She loves her PC and uses it a lot for gaming, media editing, school work, and coding. Many times I've tried to convince her to switch to a newer build but ever since I gave her a new graphics card and upgraded her RAM she doesn't want to make the switch. I know these old units inside and out and she has my old PC from back in 2009.

I'm really hoping others will post pictures here of PCs that they have managed to rescue from being discarded.

I'm reading this on a Dell XPS 8300 bought new in 2011. I have upgraded the disk to a solid state drive and the wireless card.
Also running the latest version of Win 10, started on Win 7. Sill runs fine. My laptop is newer, a Dell XPS 15 bought new in 2017.
BTW I'm 82.

Br0die said:

I'm reading this on a Dell XPS 8300 bought new in 2011. I have upgraded the disk to a solid state drive and the wireless card.
Also running the latest version of Win 10, started on Win 7. Sill runs fine. My laptop is newer, a Dell XPS 15 bought new in 2017.
BTW I'm 82.

Wow. I have a Dell Inspiron that is still working fine although it's only a 32 bit system. I managed to get a Windows 10 version for it and it also has the original Dell Win 7 upgrade. You make me feel like a young buck all over again, Br0die. I'm only in my mid 60's. Feel free to post a snap shot of your XPS 8300. I love looking at pictures of "vintage" PCs still running. Thanks for the input!

There are ways to bypass the Windows 11 TPM requirement so many older PCs can be updated

Br0die said:

BTW I'm 82.

Ya got a few years on me.

I'm still full of piss and vinegar. That's my "fuel" so I do all my projects, including building new desktops every few years.,

Steve C said:

There are ways to bypass the Windows 11 TPM requirement so many older PCs can be updated

Yes, that's true. Of course, Microsoft does provide a caveat addressing this procedure and some of the features may not work properly. For example, TurboBoost Maximum Technology will not work on my X99 platform that I'm typing on right now even though I managed to install Windows 11 on it. I'm not overly concerned about this anymore as the 6900K CPU I'm using is OC'd to 4.1GHz and remains running at this speed. Fast enough for an old timer like myself.

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Speaking of clock speeds and resurrecting old platforms, some time ago a gentleman donated a system board with an old Sandy Bridge i5 CPU to me instead of tossing it on the trash heap. It now serves as a gaming rig for my daughters when they have LAN parties and their friends can't provide a PC. (I have three daughters at home, all of them into gaming.) I thought this old chip clocked rather nicely on a GIGABYTE Z68X system board.