On Mon, 2021-02-08 at 22:59 +0000, Bernard McNeill wrote: > > But, as I think I mentioned earlier, I am very reluctant indeed to mess > around with Windows itself. > I have backed up the user data, but I am not at all sure how to > re-install Windows itself. If the machine failed I suspect I would take > it to a specialist with a copy of the user data.
I suggest at this point you should try out one of the debian "live" images. These can be copied to a USB stick (via win32diskimager or others) just like you copied the installer to USB. Then, you boot into the live image and it runs completely from the USB stick -- you have a mostly complete linux system you can experiment with, without permanently writing it onto any other disks, and without the live system needing to write to any other disks. I would suggest the current stable "gnome" live system, which is familiar to Windows users -- and I also suggest the so-called "non-free" version (which just means it includes various firmware files for wifi or fancy graphics adapters, etc.) Download here: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/images-including-firmware/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-10.8.0-amd64-gnome+nonfree.iso
