Fresh Win7 Install and Browser Won't Open Web Pages

[Asparagus]

Hi all,

I have an older Acer laptop that was running Win7. I decided to reinstall the OS as a refresh and relegate the machine to light use for kids' homework. I have the install CDs with a valid product key, etc. Install went fine, installed all the drivers and such. But it's behaving strangely - namely it won't let me activate the OS, and IE8 will do a web search and display results but won't let me actually open any web pages. It's got a wired internet connection that's working fine (verified wifi is working as well), so it's not a connectivity issue. I tried manually installing Edge, and it won't even allow me to do that. There's got to be something I'm missing. I know Win7 isn't supported anymore, but that can't mean that I've got to brick the computer when I've got a perfectly legal copy of Windows. Tried installing Win10 instead, but the computer is too outdated to handle it, so no dice there. Any suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[mindless1]

What exactly do you mean by "it won't let me activate the OS"? Whatever it is doing, you should be able to find a solution with a web search, or might try this site:

Windows Updates & Activation - Windows 7 Forums

Window 7 Updates, Service Pack and Activation Discussion.

www.sevenforums.com

Forget about IE8, so outdated and insecure, but what does it mean when you wrote "I tried manually installing Edge, and it won't even allow me to do that.". Do you mean that you tried to install the newest version of Edge and it just isn't Win7 compatible?

If so then how about a little older version of Chrome or Firefox, like Firefox 115 ESR, even the portable version. 115 ESR is still receiving updates.

Mozilla Firefox ESR, Portable Edition (customizable web browser) | PortableApps.com

Mozilla Firefox® ESR, Portable Edition is the Extended Support Release of the popular Mozilla Firefox web browser bundled with a PortableApps.com launcher as a portable app, so you can take your browser, bookmarks and passwords with you. It is always a different version than Stable according to...

portableapps.com

Seems like I might have also installed Brave browser on some Win7 box earlier this year. This version 109.1.47.186 is the last supported, AFAIK:

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/download/v1.47.186/BraveBrowserStandaloneSetup.exe

If you're weary of direct downloads like the above, it came from this page:

Release Release v1.47.186 (Chromium 109.0.5414.119) · brave/brave-browser

Release v1.47.186 (Chromium 109.0.5414.119) Android Pick the APK suitable for your device's architecture. iOS brave-core-ios.tgz contains Brave core frameworks for iOS. Linux DEB and RPM packages a...

github.com

 

[Asparagus]

What exactly do you mean by "it won't let me activate the OS"?

Windows Activation says a problem occurred. Error 0x80072F8F.

Forget about IE8, so outdated and insecure, but what does it mean when you wrote "I tried manually installing Edge, and it won't even allow me to do that.". Do you mean that you tried to install the newest version of Edge and it just isn't Win7 compatible?

I downloaded the Edge installer on a different computer, put it on a thumb drive, and tried installing it on the Acer from the thumb drive. I'm not sure why it bombed out...just said it couldn't install. I'll look into your suggested older browser options. Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[crashtech]

I'd be leaning towards a Linux distro like Mint Xfce.
It's easy to install, easy on resources, and will make the laptop into a kind of Chromebook but better, perhaps, depending on the laptop specs.

 

[tcsenter]

What is the model or product #? Did it ship with W7 (has a sticker for Windows7 and product key on it somewhere)? If so, the install CDs are not the original as those would pre-activate offline without connect to the internet. We can find if you have the digital certificate in the system BIOS that permits offline OEM activation for W7.

Download this utility, transfer it to the Acer and run (with administrator rights) the .exe file after unzipping:

SLICToolkit v3.2 (link sent to you PM)

Some antivirus products will give a false positive on this, but it is safe. These false positive detections are based on 'heuristic' analysis. i.e. educated guessing. No security analyst or company has demonstrated it contains actual malicious code or does anything on its own, makes changes to your PC, registry, etc.. MS Security Defender does not detect it as a risk (I just checked it on latest definitions after accessing it on an external drive).

The 'advanced' tab of the utility should look something like this:




Near the bottom, you have tabs for Basic, Advanced, SLP1.0, ACPI, Memory Access. Click on Advanced and post a screen grab/shot of it.

 

[tcsenter]

Also you can download and install almost all post-SP1 updates after a clean/fresh W7 installation using the Simplex Update Pack 7 R2. Only requisite is SP1 for W7 already applied/installed. File is about 830MB:

Download Simplix UpdatePack 7 - MajorGeeks

Simplix UpdatePack enables you to update your live Windows 7 system as well as integrate hotfixes into a Windows 7 distribution. This update pack allows you to update Windows 7 SP1 (x86 x64) and Server 2008 R2 SP1 live operating systems, as well as to integrate the updates in the distribution...

www.majorgeeks.com

 

[VirtualLarry]

Sounds like your root certs are expired.