I pulled my old HP laptop computer out of storage today. It hasn’t been booted up for about 3 or 4 years now. I think I bought it back around 2010. It’s an HP-Compaq nc8430. Specs here:
It was a fairly high end unit at the time, but of course that was 10 years ago. By today’s standards, it’s not great, but it’s not awful either. Biggest problem at the moment is that it’s running WinXP, and I don’t know how to upgrade.
FYI, I’m a Mac person. The only reason why I have this laptop, is because I needed to run some work related Windows-only software at the time. I have virtually no understanding of how Windows is supposed to work. All I know is that when it blows up, you call the guy in the IT department, and he eventually gets it fixed for you. However, I no longer have an IT department available.
Just now, I’ve been trying to connect it to the Internet, with the hopes of upgrading some existing apps. I couldn’t get it to work with a wireless connection. So I used a hardwired Ethernet connection to my router, and managed to connect to the Internet. I was able to load a non-secure website in Firefox. But, it won’t connect to any secure sites, probably because the software is too old to know what a security certificate is. No luck with Internet Explorer either. Since the Mozilla-Firefox site requires a secure connection, it’s a catch-22. There’s no way to download a newer version of Firefox without having a secure connection, but I need the newer version of Firefox, in order to get the secure connection.
I have no idea where to go from here.
BTW, the reason why I’m trying to do this is that my Mac has to go into the shop for a few days, and I won’t have any computer to use unless I get the old laptop working.