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I found an HP Envy 17 in the trash behind a store. It looks like they pulled the ram, HD, and battery out of the poor thing before they trashed it. I'm going to see if I can find a power cord for it first, and see if I can just get it to power on. I saw a universal laptop power adapter at walmart the other week, that had a variable transformer with a switch you could select different voltages, and maybe 10 different ends you could use depending on what you were trying to power. I'll probably buy that regardless, because it would just be nice to have. I really enjoy budget computing and turning old machines other people thought were trash into something useful. It looks to be an ~okay~ laptop, I don't know anything about it yet. It has a fingerprint sensor to make interfacing with the botnet extra convenient, and has "beats by dre" icons all over it.. It has a Windows 8 sticker on the bottom of it. What should I do with it, and can anyone see anything missing from it I didn't notice?

It's hard to tell from the picture, but it looks like the cables that go to the hard drives are missing as well. You may want to check where they'd plug into the motherboard, the connectors could very well be proprietary. Also, if I were you, I'd check to see what processor that laptop has to see if it's even worth the trouble.

>>3814 They plug into those two little boxes under the cmos battery on the lower right hand side. They're labeled HDD1 and HDD2. I found this page selling the cable, for 30 dollars: https://www.amazon.com/Cable-HP-Envy-17-17t/dp/B00GIGJYBG It looks compatible, the model is a 17-j013cl. I would really hate for my find to go to waste.. Thanks for your response.

it might not even boot dude

Always have a spare 'universal ac laptop charger' and you'd be firing that up in no time if it still lights up when on charge. Most issue start appearing once it's 3 or 4 yrs and that is when the rtc battery is planned to expired so it cannot count soykaf let alone boot up. Also if it still refuses to boot, the most common issue is a sticky keyboard key that presses on itself which is fixed by cleaning the paper-thin flex pins or just removing/replacing the keyboard completely.

Free wifi card there ;D

>>4857 But it also might boot. What's the harm in trying?

As the others have said you're gonna need the cables for the hard drive (and a caddy if you're not going ssd and you don't want to ghetto rig a shim) here's the hp part surfer website, the official way to find part numbers for hp laptops https://partsurfer.hp.com/Search.aspx it's fantastically useful. In addition you're also gonna need to add some ram for it to boot at all. and the white cable on the wifi card looks like might be loose. As for a use for it just think of it in the same vein as a rasberry pi. It'd probably make a good HTPC just run an HDMI to your TV and control it with a wireless mini keyboard like this https://www.amazon.com/diduknoyoucanwriteanythinghere/dp/B01CE70TZC Also also, you might want to check the screen for cracks. Take it into a dark room and put a flashlight directly on the screen. Sometimes cracks can be a bitch to spot without turning it on and you might not want to waste any money on it since screens are usually expensive.

>>4943 Screens can be very affordable. Low end screen might cost $40- $60 on ebay

>>4951 true, but adding that to the $30-40 to get the adapter and memory just to see if it works and this found laptop starts getting expensive before we even add a battery and hard drive.

op, if you get it powering on and it didn't post- try disconnecting the - keyboard - mouse/ mouse buttons

>>3813 I had one of those a while ago. Gave it to my sister who broke it after just a few months. I recently tried doing some repairs on it but, like an idiot, I forgot to unplug the power while connecting the screen cable and fried the motherboard. I salvaged all the parts and either sold them or used them to upgrade my other machines (BIOS chip is now in my X200 with coreboot installed). I still have the power brick for it. Good luck with your quest, OP. I hope you get it to boot.

>>3813 >no charge probably broken or broken charge led >no screen but charging good sign probably needs rtc battery replacement, new ram and cleaning of ram slot, hold power button 3min without ac/battery trick, >>4961 disconnect those >screen works / bios splash now you have something of value get a lvds universal driver board and use it as a monitor, recase, get a display cable and make it a home theater pc search the price of the same keyboard online and sell the one you have and wait patiently individual parts profit higher than selling a whole laptop don't worry, it's not a loss, you can still keep it until you're as knowledgeable as >>5011 lainon to salvage most parts out of it. >no hdd and proprietary hdd adaptor you can get a slim sata to 2.5" hdd caddy if it has a odd/cd drive.