Need computer advice

[Maggot]

Ive got a 10 year or so old HP tower. For the last 6 months its been getting slower and slower, often will just lock up for mintes at a time. Ive cleared cookies and cache.


Doesnt seem to be the internet itself as my laptop woks ok, and from past experience it doesnt seem like a virus.

-Is it likely just full of information and slowly reaching its capacity?
-Just an old model that like its owner is wearing out?


Suggestions. They gotta be simple as Im not very sophisticated with computers.

 

[n2ishun]

OS ?
CPU ?
Memory ?
HDD or SSD ?
These things matter when asking this sorta question.

Suggestions. They gotta be very sophisticated suggestions as Im very simple

 

[FWoo45]

Stop clicking on "gay porn" links.

 

[DocRDS]

get a malware/antivirus software and run it.

Malwarebytes (Free) or similar. I'm probably a little out of date on best malware, but a brief google search should do.
Don't pay for anything and don't do Norton or McAfee. They are basically commericial virus.

 

[748rpilot]

WAG on a 10 yr old machine, with presumably a 10 yr old drive, is that said drive has bad sectors that it is trying to re-map. The cycle of trying to read a sector, getting an error, trying to re-map, can take quite a bit of time, resulting in the behavior you describe.

 

[JoshPutman]

Step one: Take the thing out in the driveway.

Step two: Go into the garage and get your sledge hammer.

Step three: Smash the fucking thing into as many small pieces as you can.

Step four: Sweep it all up and dump it into a trash bag and put it out for the garbage man to dispose of.

Step five: Go pour yourself a drink and bask in the glory of ridding yourself of such an annoyance, and the fact that you actually got some exercise while doing it.

 

[Hobo Hilton]

Don't expect a new HP to give you the service and life time your old computer gave you.
If you decide to replace that unit, buy a new one from a local supplier. I have had bad luck with buying on the internet, even from the manufacturer's website / store.
Honestly if you know someone who builds computers, try to deal with them. Those bundled computers have so much junk it is difficult to navigate.
Careful when you transfer photos and documents to a new one. "Somehow" that new one will store that stuff in "The Cloud". Having my info / photos in the Cloud does not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling.
JMHO

 

[Maggot]

Step one: Take the thing out in the driveway.

Step two: Go into the garage and get your sledge hammer.

Step three: Smash the fucking thing into as many small pieces as you can.

Step four: Sweep it all up and dump it into a trash bag and put it out for the garbage man to dispose of.

Step five: Go pour yourself a drink and bask in the glory of ridding yourself of such an annoyance, and the fact that you actually got some exercise while doing it.

I have a long a nd storied history of doing exactly that to things, especially computers, that dont do what they should. Its called "Teaching them a lesson they'll never forget.".

 

[W54/XM-388]

If it's 10 years old, best thing is to get a new SATA interface SSD, install Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition on it and enjoy using it for more years to come.
If you are stuck with Windows, then you need to get a new system at this point.

 

[308pirate]

Ive got a 10 year or so old HP tower. For the last 6 months its been getting slower and slower, often will just lock up for mintes at a time. Ive cleared cookies and cache.


Doesnt seem to be the internet itself as my laptop woks ok, and from past experience it doesnt seem like a virus.

-Is it likely just full of information and slowly reaching its capacity?
-Just an old model that like its owner is wearing out?


Suggestions. They gotta be simple as Im not very sophisticated with computers.

You need to back up/extract RIGHT NOW any files you would mind losing forever. Then get a new machine with a solid state hard drive.

 

[Zolar]

All computers have two memory sticks, one or both memory stick needs to be change, happened to me before.
it freezes for a few seconds and comes back normal.

 

[roostercogburn98]

Stop clicking on "gay porn" links.

He wouldn’t need a computer then

 

[FredHammer]

I took my laptop to a local repair place and they had my dinosaur cooking with gas!

 

[Fx51LP308]

First, I'd try to add more RAM, if that is possible (i.e. you have the slots that will take modern RAM),. Applications are inherently bloated these days and will use much more RAM than you might have bought originally. That's one thing. Furthermore, as you run out of RAM you'll use more swap file space on your hard drive which will slow things way down. You might want to consider a new Motherboard that will accept more modern DIMM4 RAM sticks, etc. and just pump it full. The more RAM, the faster things will go. I have 16gig in my primary desktop (I used to have eight), and I even see going way over 8gig now with all the Youtube stuff). Also, what CPU chip do you have? If it's a corei3 or lower, you might also consider an upgrade to a corei7 (for which you'll most likely need a new Motherboard anyway). In that case, you're probably better off just getting a new tower.

A number of different things can cause it to slow down over time. But the biggest culprits IMHO are the larger "bloatier" software apps that strain the small primitive CPU and RAM... Hard drive resources. Microsoft knows how to sell you software that makes you buy more hardware... that makes you buy more software, etc. etc.

 

[Ronws]

A computer that old is suitable for a deer lease. Set it where you normally foul the barrel with a shot. Now, foul on the old computer.

 

[Fx51LP308]

One other thing. Make sure you're doing proper backups and especially "DeFraging" your hard drive A drive that has too many fragmented files can also slow things down. Defraging will re-write the files to new "contiguous" spaces on the drive so thay are altogether and there are no more frags.

 

[Alphatreedog]

Ive got a 10 year or so old HP tower. For the last 6 months its been getting slower and slower, often will just lock up for mintes at a time. Ive cleared cookies and cache.


Doesnt seem to be the internet itself as my laptop woks ok, and from past experience it doesnt seem like a virus.

-Is it likely just full of information and slowly reaching its capacity?
-Just an old model that like its owner is wearing out?


Suggestions. They gotta be simple as Im not very sophisticated with computers.

What kind of mints does it lock up for ? Andes or Peppermint Patties ?

 

[kenny1773]

If it is serously 10 years old and not an exaggeration, you need to replace it.

Backup anything on it you may want to keep
Black Friday deals are right around the corner

computers are a commodity
at the same price point in the retail market, they are all about the same
support from some companies is better than others (and I mean more than just calling them if something breaks)

Dell
HP
Lenovo

Pick your price point ($500 or $1000 or more)
get your street price now

Buy when it falls below the normal street price on a black friday or cyber monday deal

Web sites like this can help with the deal

TechBargains – Your Source For Online Coupons, Promo Codes & The Hottest Deals

At TechBargains, we save you time and money by bringing you the best deals, online coupons & promo codes available from your favorite brands.

www.techbargains.com

You can also scour ebay if you have the time, but be very careful what you buy. I have landed a couple of good deals on used equipment from people that literally had no idea what they were selling and sold it cheap.

 

[Makinchips208]

Orbital Computers is the place to buy a new computer. They build and ackchyually test them.
Killer warranty and customer support.
Spent 45 minutes on the phone helping me BEFORE I even ordered anything.

Home - Orbital Computers

Configure an ultra-reliable CAD/CAM/CAE Workstation - Engineered To Perfection

orbitalcomputers.com

 

[Zolar]

I took my laptop to a local repair place and they had my dinosaur cooking with gas!

it gets too hot ?

 

[BLEE]

As it's ten years old, it's probably a spindle drive. They work similar to a phonograph, as they have a platter and an mechanized arm with a head that reads data on the platter. The spindle and arm slow, with age and wear, causing reading and writing data to be delayed. As others have advised, backup all that is important to you, ASAP. My advice is to buy a replacement PC, as you'll eventually have power supply and motherboard issues, also. Also, Windows 7 end of life was a few years, ago and Windows 10 end of life is next year and I don't imagine your old PC will support Windows 11. I wish you were closer to NW Louisiana. I'd be glad to give you a hand. I've been in the IT field, professionally, for >20 years. I'm glad to help in any way I can, remotely.

 

[n2ishun]

As it's ten years old, it's probably a spindle drive. They work similar to a phonograph, as they have a platter and an mechanized arm with a head that reads data on the platter. The spindle and arm slow, with age and wear, causing reading and writing data to be delayed. As others have advised, backup all that is important to you, ASAP. My advice is to buy a replacement PC, as you'll eventually have power supply and motherboard issues, also. Also, Windows 7 end of life was a few years, ago and Windows 10 end of life is next year and I don't imagine your old PC will support Windows 11. I wish you were closer to NW Louisiana. I'd be glad to give you a hand. I've been in the IT field, professionally, for >20 years. I'm glad to help in any way I can, remotely.

That's the problem, he never let us know what OS he's using....could even be XP for all we know.

A simple opening of task manager would probably show the *main* power sucking issue.....but a 10 year old machine, unless you're a home builder type is very long on the tooth and needing replacement.

 

[Nik H]

10 years is an eternity in terms of computational, graphics, and storage performance.

You need to step into the modern age for the simple fact that many forget. The operating system's capabilities have also evolved, requiring more sophisticated or modern hardware. It goes hand in hand.

If you're trying to run the latest version of Windows on a 10-year-old set of hardware, you're kind of fucked.

Apple diverges from Microsoft's path and will not let you upgrade your OS past a certain point for good reason.

 

[Franko]

I suspect that your machine has so much dust in it that it is overheating. Open it up and clean all the dust out of your fans and filters. Be very careful if you use canned air to clean the dust out because if you tilt the can and hit the parts with the liquid from the can you can thermally shock it hard enough to kill it. You might also want to check the heatsinks/fans on the system to make sure they are still fully attached and spinning.

 

[chevy_man]

First, I'd try to add more RAM, if that is possible (i.e. you have the slots that will take modern RAM),. Applications are inherently bloated these days and will use much more RAM than you might have bought originally. That's one thing. Furthermore, as you run out of RAM you'll use more swap file space on your hard drive which will slow things way down. You might want to consider a new Motherboard that will accept more modern DIMM4 RAM sticks, etc. and just pump it full. The more RAM, the faster things will go. I have 16gig in my primary desktop (I used to have eight), and I even see going way over 8gig now with all the Youtube stuff). Also, what CPU chip do you have? If it's a corei3 or lower, you might also consider an upgrade to a corei7 (for which you'll most likely need a new Motherboard anyway). In that case, you're probably better off just getting a new tower.

A number of different things can cause it to slow down over time. But the biggest culprits IMHO are the larger "bloatier" software apps that strain the small primitive CPU and RAM... Hard drive resources. Microsoft knows how to sell you software that makes you buy more hardware... that makes you buy more software, etc. etc.

Useless. It's 10 years old. He's either getting used unknown condition parts off eBay or scrapping the whole thing.

We're on DDR5 now, and a brand new core i3 will stomp all over a 5 year old core i7, much less 10 years old and used i7.

Clock speeds haven't changed much. However, the instructions per clock and core counts have changed a ton. Along with adding efficiency cores to the main cores to run less intense tasks with much lower thermal output, and improve multitasking by assigning cores by load.



I run a ryzen 5700G in the desktop with 32g DDR4, two 1tb WD Black nvme Gen 4 SSD drives and a 4tb HDD for backup.
Ryzen 7 in the laptop with 32gb DDR4, 1 nvme 1tb SSD and 1 SATA 1tb SSD for backup.

If I'm editing a video, I can use 30gb of RAM. Normally I use about 4-5gb running Firefox, Windows uses about 2gb. 8gb is enough, 16 is plenty until workload demands more.


If the use case doesn't include heavy workloads, any generic $5-600 computer will last you another 10 years. This isn't a buy once cry once. It's outdated when the new stuff drops next spring, by next fall it's a dinosaur, and so on.

 

[chevy_man]

I suspect that your machine has so much dust in it that it is overheating. Open it up and clean all the dust out of your fans and filters. Be very careful if you use canned air to clean the dust out because if you tilt the can and hit the parts with the liquid from the can you can thermally shock it hard enough to kill it. You might also want to check the heatsinks/fans on the system to make sure they are still fully attached and spinning.

10 years? The thermal compound is probably cooked.

I have an old core duo that I let my kids play with Linux on. It wouldn't boot one day and was hot to the touch. Pulled it apart and pulled the heatsink and it was just powder. Some new kryonaut (because it was what I had on hand) and it's running again and not cooking.

 

[Fx51LP308]

Useless. It's 10 years old. He's either getting used unknown condition parts off eBay or scrapping the whole thing.

Which is why I mentioned that he's probably better off getting a whole new tower.

 

[Pritch]

yank the hard drive put it in an external drive case

hook that up to laptop

save whatever u want then use old hard drive for target practice

if u must have a tower find someone that can build them

 

[Fx51LP308]

yank the hard drive put it in an external drive case

hook that up to laptop

save whatever u want then use old hard drive for target practice

if u must have a tower find someone that can build them

I actually build them for myself. The problem with that (building vs buying) is that you'll end up paying more for a tower I build for you than if you bought one at Costco or Walmart. That's because I have to buy all the parts/components piecemeal at "retail." I can't buy them "in bulk" and get those deep wholesale discounts. I mean, you'll get a very nice custom built tower with the specific parts you want, but you'll pay more than if you bought a generic tower at Costco or Walmart.

 

[Pritch]

Scorptec
Toms hardware
Pc case gear
Have a look around its alot cheaper than walking into a store
And u decide how much u want to spend

Its all dependent on what the pc is for

If its for gaming get a really nice videocard and processor

If its just for cruising around the internet and sending emails cheap out on stuff

The one thing that is very important never cheap out on a power supply and make sure its got more than enough watts and is from a reputable company do not get a generic one

Get a texas instruments one

 

[OldSalty2]

If its freezing for minutes at a time but not crashing/rebooting then its probably a software issue and not a hardware issue. Hardware issues typically will crash, reboot or lock up the system and require a power cycle.

-10yr old computer is perfectly fine if you use it mainly for email and just internet shit.

-Unplug it, open the case and blow out the dust. Can vac it out too, just make sure to ground yourself to the case before putting your hands inside on the components.

-Make sure all the cards and memory DIMMS are seated properly. You can remove them, blow out dust from connectors, etc.

-Backup your stuff and reinstall the OS from the recovery dvd's / cd's.

Imo, its not really worth upgrading the hardware, put that money aside towards a new system.

 

[fpgt72]

He wouldn’t need an Apple then

Fixed it for ya

 

[fpgt72]

You know how they say 1 year is like 7 for dogs, well in computer land 1 year is like 10.

I am going to assume PC and windows 10.

First off get everything you value off the machine, pictures, taxes......porn?

If you still have the original "recovery" discs after you get your stuff off of it re load it. That will make it "as it came out of the box" Chances are that will take care of it.

The person that pointed out the inside is likely very dirty has a great point. That dust is like insulation it will hold in the heat. Get yourself a can of air (they even have it at walmart) after you turn it upside down and shoot it at your wifes butt, turn it right side up and blow all the dust out of the computer, don't forget the power supply as well.

If the thing was still more or less doing what you want I have a feeling you will be just fine after a reload. Something inside could have gone bad, most likely the spinning disc, or hard disc.

No doubt a new one will be "nicer" and faster, but if you don't "need" it why spend the money, what I am suggesting will take an afternoon and roughly $10 all in including gas to your Walmart to buy the air. If you use "shop air" make sure you dial down the pressure and it is good and dry, if you have an oiler in your shop that is a deal killer in my book.

It does not sound like you need much, If you want new you should be able to get there in the $500 range easy.

My two bits that is not worth two quarters.

 

[Charmingmander]

Give me your budget OP and I'll spin you up a part's list and how to put it together.

 

[anon]

I spent some time a few weeks ago on a cousins old HP laptop.

She had a bunch of stuff accumulated from many years of use, all running in the background. Task Manager is your friend. It ran a bit better after uninstalling all of that accumulated stuff that hadn't been used in years. It has a spinning drive too, so boot and accessing the drive was slow.

But the problem that caused me to look at it was that the speakers had quit a while back after a Windows update. HP didn't have any updated soundcard drivers that worked, apparently that is a thing for them, from what I saw on the web. An $8 bluetooth speaker and she was good to go, with far better sound than before. It would be beneficial to also look at Device Manager to see if all of the hardware is still recognized and has working drivers.

I bought a desktop in 1993, built all of the rest since then. Except a 2011 iMac, it runs Debian very well since Apple's planned obsolescence date. Old stuff is just begging to be running a Linux distribution of some sort, support for 32 bit systems is on its way out in many distributions though. My 2005 Sony tube HD TV runs on a 2.something kernel with busybox ffs.

My 2008 macbook runs just fine on a current Linux install, 64 bit, 2 cores. Most of the web runs it hard though, but it still outperforms any chrome book I've ever played with.

Another problem with old hardware is that modern browsers use so much memory. If Maggot's system is paging ...

 

[Maggot]

Thank y'all, sounds like time for a change.

 

[Charmingmander]

I spent some time a few weeks ago on a cousins old HP laptop.

She had a bunch of stuff accumulated from many years of use, all running in the background. Task Manager is your friend. It ran a bit better after uninstalling all of that accumulated stuff that hadn't been used in years. It has a spinning drive too, so boot and accessing the drive was slow.

But the problem that caused me to look at it was that the speakers had quit a while back after a Windows update. HP didn't have any updated soundcard drivers that worked, apparently that is a thing for them, from what I saw on the web. An $8 bluetooth speaker and she was good to go, with far better sound than before. It would be beneficial to also look at Device Manager to see if all of the hardware is still recognized and has working drivers.

I bought a desktop in 1993, built all of the rest since then. Except a 2011 iMac, it runs Debian very well since Apple's planned obsolescence date. Old stuff is just begging to be running a Linux distribution of some sort, support for 32 bit systems is on its way out in many distributions though. My 2005 Sony tube HD TV runs on a 2.something kernel with busybox ffs.

My 2008 macbook runs just fine on a current Linux install, 64 bit, 2 cores. Most of the web runs it hard though, but it still outperforms any chrome book I've ever played with.

Another problem with old hardware is that modern browsers use so much memory. If Maggot's system is paging ...

Aye. A good SSD and de-bloat works amazing for even older PCs. Mac's especially.

I'm looking at switching to linux full time myself soon. Just have a few more long gaming sessions in me for Windows. Then I'll be making the permanent switch.

 

[W54/XM-388]

You would be amazed at how nice and fast and snappy "old" computers feel when you put a decent SSD in them and load Linux.

 

[anon]

I put an SSD in the 2008 macbook a while back but have been contemplating putting the old spinning drive back in and using Alpine. An Alpine hard drive install with browser and little else takes less than 2GB. I may try Alpine booted to ram from a usb with no hard drive installed, if I can find the time.

I want to repurpose the SSD to a different computer that still has spinning rust for the system drive.

I'm also interested to see how the new Bookworm Version of Rapsberry Pi OS does on a Pi 4, been using Debian 12 on desktops but with Gnome, not the Wayland only setup Raspberry Pi has moved to.

 

[W54/XM-388]

I put an SSD in the 2008 macbook a while back but have been contemplating putting the old spinning drive back in and using Alpine. An Alpine hard drive install with browser and little else takes less than 2GB. I may try Alpine booted to ram from a usb with no hard drive installed, if I can find the time.

I want to repurpose the SSD to a different computer that still has spinning rust for the system drive.

Decent used SSDs are so cheap now that it wouldn't seem to be worth all that swapping around, just go grab another SSD and call it a day.

 

[Charmingmander]

I put an SSD in the 2008 macbook a while back but have been contemplating putting the old spinning drive back in and using Alpine. An Alpine hard drive install with browser and little else takes less than 2GB. I may try Alpine booted to ram from a usb with no hard drive installed, if I can find the time.

I want to repurpose the SSD to a different computer that still has spinning rust for the system drive.

I'm also interested to see how the new Bookworm Version of Rapsberry Pi OS does on a Pi 4, been using Debian 12 on desktops but with Gnome, not the Wayland only setup Raspberry Pi has moved to.

I have a Pi 2 kicking around that I keep meaning to turn into a PiHole for my modem.

The Pi 4 can sortof be used as a PC but it isn't very powerful and I recall reading that it will struggle to run multiple tabs on a browser.

 

[Average Shot]

run linux