A Laptop Rescue
Oct 2, 2026
Exactly one month ago, one of my many nieces, Priscilla, sent me a picture of her laptop. It was stuck at the Lenovo boot screen with "Preparing Automatic Repair" at the bottom. It's a Lenovo IdeaPad, which is several years old.
She rarely uses it. When she does, she spends most of her time at the "Canva" website preparing presentations. She's in high school. She brought it to me, and I spent an entire day trying to get it working without changing the operating system.
I checked the manufacture and release dates using the model number, and it was well before Windows 11 came out, so it must have had Windows 10 on it. I never saw it booted up, so I'm making an educated guess. It has four gigabytes of memory and a 512 gigabyte hard disk drive.
I checked the UEFI data and it had secure boot turned on, but it didn't have a TPM chip. Windows 10 is no longer supported, and Windows 11 could not be installed on it. I gave the laptop back to her. Priscilla was busy with volleyball practice and tournaments last month, and she didn't need it yet.
Linux Mint Instead of Windows
I got the laptop back from Priscilla three days ago, telling her I would be installing Linux on it. She doesn't know anything about Linux, and she only needs Google Chrome as her web browser. I disabled secure boot and proceeded to install the Cinnamon edition of Linux Mint on it.
I had Linux Mint up and running in less than two hours, including the settings I needed to change and installing Google Chrome on it. I had increased the swap file to 10 gigabytes so the system won't freeze when she opens a few tabs.
Priscilla uses her phone for almost everything. When she uses the laptop, she only uses the web browser. I explained that it wouldn't be a good idea to use more than one application at a time, and she understands.
I expected the laptop to be slow, but it wasn't too bad considering the hardware. Priscilla told me it was a lot faster than Windows. I'm spoiled on my machines with more memory and solid-state drives. Her system runs so slow, I want to get out and push.
Image by Boby Pogy from Pixabay