Late(ish) Model Lenovo Thinkpad won't update 10 to 1803 or 1809

[Porthos]

That's the nice part about 10's semi-annual upgrade march... twice a year every machine gets a new OS. It really does help keep this sort of crap at bay.

As long as the OS does not get Efffed up by the users activities along the way. The biggest culprits are 3rd party AV programs and optimizer/registery programs and failing disks.

 

[HCHTech]

He's got Office 2007 on there, which won't activate on new installs any longer, so i really want to clone the drive rather than forcing him to buy a new copy of Office as well.

After a few problems like this in the early days of WIndows 10, I stopped having any sympathy for someone who already got 12 YEARS of use out of an Office program. I would absolutely force them to buy a new copy of office. Or install one of the open source solutions. I'm not sure I learned the lesson well enough, though, I just spent hours today struggling with getting old OneNote data to work in the 2019 version.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@Porthos, yes, but those are separate issues. The huge upgrade just provides a crucible upon which the user has to get them addressed. If the unit was going to fault because of one of those problems, it was likely to fault on the next reboot or two anyway. And if the AV can't keep up, well that's another sign it shouldn't be used too.

@HCHTech, agreed another thing in this case to keep in mind LibreOffice has all of the capabilities of Office 2007. So there literally is no reason to ever install a version of Office older than 2010, and 2010 is getting very long in the tooth too. So these days if people lose their licenses or whatever, I just LibreOffice them, or aim them at the Home O365 subscription.

 

[carmen617]

After a few problems like this in the early days of WIndows 10, I stopped having any sympathy for someone who already got 12 YEARS of use out of an Office program. I would absolutely force them to buy a new copy of office. Or install one of the open source solutions. I'm not sure I learned the lesson well enough, though, I just spent hours today struggling with getting old OneNote data to work in the 2019 version.

I'm with you on that one, and will switch people to LibreOffice without a second thought, except when they are using Outlook to get their mail, which is what this guy is doing. In that case he needs either an O365 sub, or Office Home and Business, and he just wasn't ready to buy it. He will, when he replaces the system. I suppose I could switch him to Thunderbird, but again, who wants to go through all of that if you don't have to?

 

[Porthos]

I suppose I could switch him to Thunderbird

I am "sold" on eMclient.

eM Client is able to set up everything automatically for most of the services. It also efficiently imports your data from all major email clients. This includes Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Thunderbird and more.

On top of that, Fabs will back it up as well. I went ahead and signed up as a reseller for it for those clients that have more than 2 address to do.

 

[fincoder]

I haven't had any issues re-activating Office 2007, or is this a new problem? The last one I did was a couple of weeks ago: extracted product key using Produkey/Fabs, installed with my saved ISO, activated automatically over the net.

 

[carmen617]

I haven't had any issues re-activating Office 2007, or is this a new problem? The last one I did was a couple of weeks ago: extracted product key using Produkey/Fabs, installed with my saved ISO, activated automatically over the net.

It might be a matter of location. In the US, I haven't been able to reactivate Office 2007 for maybe a year, and Office 2010 requires a phone activation - won't work over the internet.

 

[fincoder]

It might be a matter of location

Or which installer you're using?

I use the 32-bit installer downloaded in January 2018 from the official Microsoft site:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/software-download/office

I haven't had any issues with 2007/2010 Home & Student edition in recent times, both activating automatically over the net.

 

[carmen617]

Or which installer you're using?

I use the 32-bit installer downloaded in January 2018 from the official Microsoft site:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/software-download/office

I haven't had any issues with 2007/2010 Home & Student edition in recent times, both activating automatically over the net.

Note that that is an Australian specific link. But even so, when I go there this is the text on the page:

"This page will allow you to download and reinstall Office for the following products:

• Office 2010
• Office for Mac 2011

Note that support for Office 2007 has ended.
Please refer to the following link for available upgrade options: Office 2007 EOL

To download and install Office 2013 for a single PC, Office 2016 for a single PC and Office 2016 for a single Mac go to MyAccount."

 

[sapphirescales]

It might be a matter of location. In the US, I haven't been able to reactivate Office 2007 for maybe a year, and Office 2010 requires a phone activation - won't work over the internet.

I haven't had that problem. Hell, Windows XP still activates. In fact, I've noticed that Microsoft just automatically activates XP whether you re-use the same key over and over or not. They don't give a damn anymore. So long as you have a legit key, it activates. I haven't tested this with Office 2007 but I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same way. I mean, we're talking about 18 year old and 12 year old software here.

 

[carmen617]

I haven't had that problem. Hell, Windows XP still activates. In fact, I've noticed that Microsoft just automatically activates XP whether you re-use the same key over and over or not. They don't give a damn anymore. So long as you have a legit key, it activates. I haven't tested this with Office 2007 but I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same way. I mean, we're talking about 18 year old and 12 year old software here.

I haven't had any problems with OS installs either. But I'd love to have you give Office 2007 a try and let me know what happens.

 

[Sky-Knight]

I haven't tried to activate XP in an age, but I have had occasion to activate server 2003 after it was transferred to a VM for archival access. I've never had an issue, never had an issue activating Office 2010 in recent months either. I still have a few seats kicking around.

 

[fincoder]

when I go there this is the text on the page

As I said, I use an installer downloaded from that page last year. I believe it's identical to the US page.

The discussion was about activation of Office 2007 which has worked every time for me, maybe due to a slightly newer installer than you're using. Assuming it's no longer possible to download the installer (I haven't tried entering a 2007 product key on that site recently) that doesn't mean activation isn't possible.

 

[Larry Sabo]

I haven't had any problems with OS installs either. But I'd love to have you give Office 2007 a try and let me know what happens.

I just did that yesterday. It took booting into Safe mode with networking in order to activate. In Normal mode, I kept getting that message that "A communication error has occurred. Your request cannot be processed at this time. Please try again in a few minutes." This web page had some suggestions which may work for you.

 

[Markverhyden]

It's been some time but I remember having to activate Office 2007 if the drive was imaged to a new drive, even the same size. Even in the Apple ecosystem. Appears that M$ creates a hash at registration for the existing platform, including the HD. Changing HD's changes the hash.

 

[brandonkick]

I can't see spending good money on pushing an older system along for another year or two. For as many hours as you have in this, the customer is either paying half or more the cost of what a new machine would have been OR you took a bath on fighting this thing to get it to work.

I agree that it's not black and white. I don't nuke and pave every last thing that comes my way... but I wouldn't have been interested in fighting this thing knowing he intends to replace it in less than 24 months. Running legacy versions of office and quickbooks just doesn't seem to make sense. He seems to be more of a "one man band" setup... so he (or she) is into it for the cost of one license for each. It's not like a corporation making this choice, needing hundreds and hundreds of licenses. I can see debating over that. This guy can go to O365 for a few bucks a month and spend the few hundred on quickbooks and be done with it.

Look at it this way as well, if they buy a newer machine most of them come with an SSD. You can subtract the cost of an SSD off of the price of the laptop as you don't need to supply one. The new machine also has some kind of warranty. Probably more memory. Newer tech like maybe upgrades to usb 3 / 3.1


I just tell most people who bring me stuff that's really old that it will be expensive to fix right out of the gate. If they want to spend the extra money and my "tax" for taking on a headache job... fine, I can always use the extra spending money. I'd rather they just buy a new machine, I end up making less money, and we both end up happier in the end.