New Comp

Picked up a free laptop this weekend. It cost me bout $125.
Yeah, i know. Sounds like a contradiction, right? But when something is "free", there's always a catch. The laptop itself was crap. And I don't say that lightly. The guy who sold it to me told me it was crap.
So, the rundown... Lappy's an Acer TravelMate 2420, with an Intel Celeron D 1.5GHz, 512 MB RAM, 20 GB Hard Drive, 14.1" screen, DVD-ROM/CD-RW, WiFi, Bluetooth, USBx3, Modem, LAN, PCCard (Type II), VGA out.
Anyway, this thing has never been a "top-of-the-line", and frankly, never will be. That Celeron is just powerful enough to run XP (what it originally came with); 7 isn't in the realm of possibility.
If it was, I wouldn't have gotten it so cheap. Of course, I wouldn't have gotten it so cheap if it weren't DOA anyway.
I can already here you asking, "Wait, if you knew that the laptop wouldn't work, why in the world would you spend money on it?" And I would reply, I never said the laptop wouldn't work, it didn't work. And while I wouldn't go so far as to compare myself to mechanic rebuilding an engine, the basic idea is the same. I take the shell of a computer, salvage what I can, replace what I can't, and wind up with something I can use, give away, or sell. Usually the first.
Before that mechanic begins his rebuild, he figures out the problems, decides if it would be worth the work, then makes a plan, including contingencies in case something new crops up. And like our imaginary mechanic, I did the same thing.
What Was Wrong
The damn thing wouldn't start.
I've ran into the same trouble with my car enough times, I think I'm drawn to things that don't want to get going in the mornings (something, something, wife, something... love you, honey). Of course, just like a car, there are dozens of reasons why a computer won't start. The diagnostic screen wasn't much help at first: some esoteric (read: I didn't recognize them at first) error codes and the dreaded "Operating System Not Found" message. That isn't good. It's the equivalent of getting into the car, putting your key in the switch and the car looking back at you and saying "Where's my power train? I can't find my power train!"
Yeah, that's not a Good Thing™.
So, first things first; I googled the error codes, and found out they were network boot errors. "Network boot" is way of starting the computer where the operating system is hosted on the network instead of on the computer itself. So, into the BIOS we go.
This is where I found part of the problem. The BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) was able to notice the hard drive, but wasn't able to identify it. Modern BIOSes are able to read the serial number from drives, and they display it. In a desktop computer, this can be a useful tool when you have multiple hard drives. This laptop was able to grab the basic manufacturer information from the drive, but not the serial number. Just to be on the safe side, I double-checked the boot order: Optical drive, Hard Drive, Network, Floppy. Pretty standard; and pretty much what I expected -- the previous owner was your typical computer user: he isn't one to poke and prod too much; and I knew the other guy he took it to would more than likely return things to base if he couldn't find the cause.
That concerned me a bit... since we were polling the Hard Drive before searching for a Network, the fact that we got the network connection errors were a problem, but not totally unexpected: the previous owner had reported having some corruption issues. I popped open the case, made sure that the memory and hard drive were properly seated -- always a concern when looking at a laptop. I reseated both, and no change. Again, it wasn't a surprise; but double- and triple-checking the simple stuff can save time, money, hassle, and face-palming on a job.
Since I knew the hard drive wasn't accessible at the moment, I went to the next option:
booting from CD.
Luckily, quite a few Linux Distributions have what's called a "Live-CD". Live-CDs are complete operating systems contained on a CD (or in some cases, a DVD). A Live-CD is used to demonstrate the OS or just test hardware for compatibility before actually installing. Booting a live environment is also useful for providing a way to get into an otherwise unaccessible computer (assuming there's no encryption).
Because LiveCDs run completely in RAM, I went ahead and grabbed a memory upgrade; luckily, previous owner had already bought an upgrade. I bought the two 1GB sticks off of him, along with a soft-side carrying case for $50. Sans laptop, he wasn't going to need it, but I gave him fair market for the upgrade anyway.
I fire up a CD called MacPuppy Opera. This particular distro is a variant of Puppy Linux; and one of the major selling points of Puppy is that it has a complete graphic environment, loads completely into RAM, and has the underlying tools to work with a broken computer.
So, I fire up gparted (GNOME Partition Editor) and ask it about the hard drive. It does find it, but like the BIOS, it couldn't actually access it. Seems it needs a disklabel. Unfortunately, I can't seem to create one. Block 0 is unwritable. Crap.
I went ahead and picked up a new hard drive (newegg.com, since nobody seems to have a spare 2.5" ATA HDD lying around.
When it comes in (probably Monday after Christmas), I'll update again.