I was helping a guy move out of a large group household a couple weeks ago, and while packing stuff, I noticed a kinda beatup laptop on a shelf by the door. I said, hey do you want this in a box or with you in the car, and he said no, it’s trash, it doesn’t work. He said some guy had left it there, who had said he found it in a dumpster. (The guy who was moving is very trustworthy and not at all squirrelly.)
When someone tells me a PC doesn’t work, I take it as a challenge, heh heh. So I took it home, and bought a charger on eBay. Just got the charger finally, but when I entered the BIOS, the fields for “asset tag,” and “ownership tag” are blank; there’s only the (Dell) service tag.
That makes me a little suspicious that it may have been stolen. It’s really heavily-used and worn-out looking, missing a couple of keys and stuff, but it’s an Inspiron 1520 with Windows 7, so I’m not sure what to think. I sure don’t want any problems from this – is there any way to tell if it’s been stolen, or simply discarded? The tags on the stickers on the bottom of the laptop have also been worn (or scraped) off. But maybe the owner removed their personal information on purpose when they threw it out. And the OS is badly bolluxed too.
Posting in the Dell forum has produced no answers all day. I got nothing.
Thanks for your advice.