HP ProBook 650 G1/i7 w/Docking Station. perfection in obsolescence . . . but Win11 Pro ~8-P

Trash80toG4

Active Tinkerer
Apr 1, 2022
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Bermuda Triangle, NC USA
Cannot catch a break with this one, then two and now today three machines. Win11 borks the third display over DVI on the dock.

From the beginning:

ProBook #1 - got the i5/16BB version and was happy enough with it. Display is 1080p as expected, was willing to spend $200 on Amazon
______________ $35 Docking Station with higher capacity brick is fabulous!

ProBook #2 - pulled trigger on another in i7/16GB listed as working fine, no HDD, nocaddy, no OS, again 1080p!
______________ arrived with back left corner a bit bashed in and RJ-45 inoperable,
______________ got a good portion of the money back from eBay seller, so it's an i7 upgrade for about what the CPU alone costs on eBay

Should have left off there, but it was working nicely enough and so fast by comparison that I bought a second dock for bedroom 4K YouBoobTube experience played with it for a while and entirely lost patience with the i5. Kept crashing now and then so I've gone back to the i5.

S-L-O-O-O-W-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!

So ProBook #3 from eBay arrived this afternoon: i7 16GB and 1080p, it's beautiful and I finally wound up with that missing HDD Caddy! 😁

. . . but Win11 Pro.

When docked, started up and I went to set up the screens, my DVI connected 1200x1920 third display had disappeared. Moved Win10 drive from ProBook #1 (much preferred for older 17 machine I'd think?) over and apparently it's not a valid installation for this Win11 defiled ProBook?

The thing shipped with Win9 originally! Tried setting BIOS back to factory default with no joy.

I see a lot of these machines available listed on the cheap as "BIOS Locked" on eBay. Am I locked into 11? REALLY don't wanna go there. :oops:

Suggestions?
 
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