Rebuilding my 10 year old HP laptop
One of my colleagues always quotes Hillary Clinton: never waste a good crisis. And my laptop rebuild started with a small crisis, because my Mac is not longer a viable option to citrix into my work environment (long story)
The path less travelled
Below is what I had to do over the last two days to upgrade the laptop.
- physically re-install original harddisk which contained Windows 8. I was hoping it would already have version 10 or at least 8.1, but alas that wasn’t the case
- allow automatic updates (literally took all of 25th)
- try to install Windows 10 using update center (failed because device unsupported)
- sign up for Windows Insider program, and download both Windows 10 and 11 ISO images
- attempt to install Windows 11 Insider directly (fail because of missing TPM and processor too slow)
- attempt to install Windows 10 Insider (failed half way because safe boot mode was not enabled - enable in BIOS afterwards)
- Install Windows 10 Insider, and immediately try Citrix
List of installed applications
At first I wanted to keep the install very minimal, but I quickly got carried away, when I realized that the performance is actually half decent.
| software | version | comment |
|---|---|---|
| Brave | BraveBrowserSetup-BRV011.exe | a “secure” browser |
| Citrix | CitrixWorkspaceApp.exe | needed for work |
| DiskInternals Linux Reader | Linux_Reader 4.22.5 | access old linux SSDs |
| FTP client | FileZilla_3.68.1_win64_sponsored2-setup.exe | manage bochenek domain |
| Firefox | Firefox Installer.exe | a “secure” browser |
| git | Git-2.47.1-64-bit.exe | coding |
| golang | go1.23.4.windows-amd64 | coding |
| citrix add-on | HDX_RealTime_Media_Engine_2.9.600_for_Windows.msi | needed for work |
| java | jdk-21_windows-x64_bin.exe | coding |
| KeePass | KeePass-2.57.1-Setup.exe | password management |
| LibreOffice | LibreOffice_24.8.4_Win_x86-64.msi | edit books read etc. |
| python | Miniconda3-latest-Windows-x86_64.exe | coding |
| notepad++ | npp.8.7.5.Installer.x64.exe | because it’s fast |
| ownCloud | ownCloud-5.3.1.14018.x64.msi | sync files |
| ruby | rubyinstaller-devkit-3.3.6-2-x64.exe | blog authoring |
| mail client | Thunderbird Setup 128.5.2esr.exe | download bochenek emails |
| visual code studio | VSCodeUserSetup-x64-1.96.2.exe | coding |
Along the way discovered new features such as FTP+Thunderbird minimize to tray (and also Thunderbird chat integration with matrix + IRC)
Conclusion
It almost felt like a mini Christmas present for myself, because it somehow worked, and brought me joy :-)
I think a small part why I felt happy is because it’s good for the environment, and also because re-installing the workspace from scratch allows me to keep an minimal workspace (just how I want it)
Maybe next I can try to re-purpose my old iPad? despite being 13-14 years old, I was able to browse the internet this month, so maybe no change really required.