Hey, I'm a librarian/tech guru at a public school. The teacher next to me had a Dell desktop that won't power on. The power light has a solid amber color, which apparently suggests either a power supply or a motherboard failure (blinking amber is definitely motherboard, but the light isn't blinking). I've assured the teacher that there is a decent chance the data on the hard drive is safe.
Since the desktop is a Windows 7 device, it's unlikely the school system itself will do any tech support on it. However, I have the same model desktop collecting dust in my library after the hard drive crashed last year. So wondering. Would I be able to take the hard drive out of his desktop and put it in mine? I've never done this before, and don't know if the new CPU would accept the hard drive without a reformat. Or should I try swapping out the power supply and see if that does the trick?
1) First, I'd determine if your old PC is toast. Swap out power supplies, and see if that does the trick. If not, it's likely the old PC is toast (bad motherboard).
2) You'd want to get a new HD for your "new" PC (you REALLY don't want to use an old HD that crashed). You can get a cheap 250 gig SSD for around $35 on Amazon. Use the Windows 7 product key to download and setup a Windows 10 install flash with these instructions.
3) Once you've installed W10 and it's working on your working desktop, you can slave the old drive (instructions). If that does not work, you can get a cheap conversion kit that turns your old hard drive into a USB hard drive ([url=https://www.amazon.com/hard-drive-usb-adapter/s?k=hard+drive+to+usb+adapter]Amazon[/url]).
4) If you can't get into the old hard drive, you can try booting up with a Linux Rescue disk (I like using Linux Lite), and then copying data from the old hard drive to another. You won't be able to copy the programs themselves.
5) You really don't want to keep running Windows 7, it's end of life, and is vunerable to viruses, malware, ransomware, key loggers, etc.
6) In a Library situation (where normally people are just surfing on the web), Linux is a much better option. Easier to maintain, and if the hardware goes, you can just pull the hard drive out and place it in another PC...normally, it just re-installs the hardware drivers, unlike windows.
And yes, this is a PIA, and tough on boomers (I did this kind of thing for years at work). You may want to get some help from your local Wiz kids on this, since a lot of them are the new equivalent of car jockeys, only today they go under the PC hood instead of car hoods. Good luck!
See below for the Amazon link that didn't show up
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This works wonderfully for me and easy to do. copy over what you need all the time and then treat it as an archive.
It goes without saying that after you recover from this crisis you should update to a newer computer with Windows 10. Or MacOS, Or Linux
Came here today suggest this.
So easy
A few years later, I got a warning on my work laptop that the hard drive was entering HD failure. I got a new HD, cloned the new HD with the old HD's data, and installed the new system. There was a little I had to do to get the HD talking properly to the computer, but most of it was automated by the cloning software.
but you may have to relicense your software like windows and office.