A secondhand laptop is a good substitute even if the battery is dead although if the battery has some life in it, it will not shut down with a minor power glitch. Just do a factory reset to get a clean install or better still replace the harddrive with an SSD. SSD's are getting really cheap now especially the something around 100GB that would be plenty big enough for this purpose. Apparently Microsoft is still allowing free upgrades to windows 10 so if you download windows 10 and install the same version (ie home with home) just leaving the product code blank it will authenticate with no problem.danjuma » Tue May 19, 2020 6:56 pm wrote:c1borg, many thanks for this info. Nice one!
Unfortunately, looks like not a lot about for less than £80 + delivery on ebay or amazon
If you have windows pro you can use Remote Desktop to connect to it, this is not available with windows home but you can use the software mentioned above if that is the case.
Many times laptops that have failed it is due to bad ram connections, if you have a laptop lying around that won't boot or crashes a lot try taking the ram sticks out and refitting them.
I guess you just need to be patient. If you get the Windows 8.1 version you can probably get it cheaper and upgrade to Pro for free. I like it because its small and silent a laptop wouldn't be an option for me, but if it works for you go for it 
