bikeman25 Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 Hi There Mom's Old Pc, is acting up, IE cannot display pages, Chrome worked, but Mom doesn't like that as states can't zoom in on pages to login to bill paying sites. Anyways is there anything I can do to speed it up? newer hard drive? Clean install? Dust clean out is done monthly on that older PC, Should I reinstall Vista 32bit Home premium? Processor is AMD Athlon 64 3500+, (single core) 4gbs of ram, DDR2, GT430 Nvidia video card, Hard drives--Seagate 320gb bought 2008 (formerly from Seagate External drive enclosure) and Second drive is Maxtor 160gb Serial ata drive (bought in 2006) . Her original PC power supply died, HP 23323W, HP Slimine Line Athlon 64 x2 based system, 1gb of ram, 500gb hard drive, Vista 32bit (might get the sliminess power supply replaced soon if I can afford it) Then junk the First PC I guess possibly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Warwagon MVC Posted May 20, 2015 MVC Share Posted May 20, 2015 Sometimes if you reset IE back to the default settings that will fix, IE not able to load certain pages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
f0rk_b0mb Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 If you are going to clean install, don't waste your time with Vista. Just throw Windows 7, 8, or 10 x64 on there for her. If you really want to give Ma a boost into a future get her a cheap SSD. A 120gb can be had these days for less than a hundred bucks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T3X4S Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 Hi There Mom's Old Pc, is acting up, IE cannot display pages, Chrome worked, but Mom doesn't like that as states can't zoom in on pages to login to bill paying sites. Anyways is there anything I can do to speed it up? newer hard drive? Clean install? Dust clean out is done monthly on that older PC, Should I reinstall Vista 32bit Home premium? Processor is AMD Athlon 64 3500+, (single core) 4gbs of ram, DDR2, GT430 Nvidia video card, Hard drives--Seagate 320gb bought 2008 (formerly from Seagate External drive enclosure) and Second drive is Maxtor 160gb Serial ata drive (bought in 2006) . Her original PC power supply died, HP 23323W, HP Slimine Line Athlon 64 x2 based system, 1gb of ram, 500gb hard drive, Vista 32bit (might get the sliminess power supply replaced soon if I can afford it) Then junk the First PC I guess possibly holy hell I seriously hope whatever she does is either not important, web-based or backed up Because you have been on borrowed time for 5 years ! If you love your mother - you will stop abusing her like this. 32-bit Vista on a 10 year old AMD ? Yikes ! Dont waste another second on troubleshooting - because it will just be something else later, then another thing, then another You are delaying the inevitable. For hardly any money you can get her something 100x better/faster/more reliable. It was Mother's Day - make it a late present Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
f0rk_b0mb Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 holy hell I seriously hope whatever she does is either not important, web-based or backed up Because you have been on borrowed time for 5 years ! If you love your mother - you will stop abusing her like this. 32-bit Vista on a 10 year old AMD ? Yikes ! Dont waste another second on troubleshooting - because it will just be something else later, then another thing, then another You are delaying the inevitable. For hardly any money you can get her something 100x better/faster/more reliable. It was Mother's Day - make it a late present I agree. We have a few 3500+ boxes at work running Windows 7 Enterprise, they are a bit slow, but for what we do on them they are fine. This is why I recommended an OS swap to 7 and SSD. If she does just internet she will be fine. T3X4S and Liana 2 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bikeman25 Posted May 20, 2015 Author Share Posted May 20, 2015 yeah looking into getting Mom a newer Windows 7 based system if can afford it, option B is cleaning that old system temporarily up. Have been backing up her files weekly, email for her is web based, Does just internet and webmail, and music listening. Yes I do know on borrowed time, old spare parts from my previous build isn't gonna last forever at all Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liana Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 Honestly a Windows tablet may not be a bad way to go. You can get a used Surface Pro for a decent price. Otherwise I agree with putting Windows 7 on the machine and upgrading to an SSD. Make sure there is a decent antivirus installed and running, one that is light on resources. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bikeman25 Posted May 20, 2015 Author Share Posted May 20, 2015 Yeah uses Avast Antivirus currently, Free Edition, Will attempt to get her Windows 7, and SSD based drive, Currently she has a Android Tablet, with Avast Mobile Security Installed on it. Might see if a local shop will take trade ins for old hardware, and then use the cash for Windows 7, and SSD drive, and memory upgrade if can afford for my system as well Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sc302 Veteran Posted May 20, 2015 Veteran Share Posted May 20, 2015 look at your services, see if there are any 3rd party services that can be disabled that you don't use. look in msconfig and see if there is anything there that you can disable/remove look at your processes and memory in task man to see if there is anything that is taking up more than it should. check remaining disk % (you want more than 10% free) and check fragmentation state. you may be able to gain some speed by a defrag if the system is not doing it automatically. as far as IE goes, resetting it using the built in reset tool will usually bring that back to normal. Remove any toolbars. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/923737 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bikeman25 Posted May 20, 2015 Author Share Posted May 20, 2015 Will look at that shortly here, preparing to dust clean that PC prior to reloading it back up, and then doing the software maintnenace on it, and hopefully works better after that, but shall see Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forumhound Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 Don't listen to these people that say you need to get a new computer. That's just foolish. Is your Mom a gamer? Does she do extensive photoshop? No? Then why does she need a new computer? Uninstall Internet Explorer and reinstall it ( there are programs that will do this you just have to look for them) Use a different browser and tell her to get used to it. Ifg not chrome then choose any of the other gazzilion browsers out there. Do your windows updates. Do some routine cleanup. Check for virus etc... delete unused stuff etc... New computer....sigh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iogbrideau Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 Yep Upgrading to Win 7 and on a cheap SSD is a good way to go. I did this to my parents on their 10 year old AMD based PC and they are happy with that, the computer runs well. What forumhound said is good as solutions, excep for IE where you can reset it in the advanced tab of the internet options. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sinetheo Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 Yep Upgrading to Win 7 and on a cheap SSD is a good way to go. I did this to my parents on their 10 year old AMD based PC and they are happy with that, the computer runs well. What forumhound said is good as solutions, excep for IE where you can reset it in the advanced tab of the internet options. I wouldn't bother. The caps on the PSU already died and how long will they last on the motherboard? Now you need to repurchase a $120 Win 7 license on a computer worth less than $60 does not make economic sense. Buy her a new one with a SSD for like $700. It will last for several years unless it too has bad caps on the psu or motherboard. Get a business model which can go up to $900 but will last for a good 5 years minimum. Browsing the web is painful on even a dual core system from that time frame in 2015 as websites have +20 add network apps PER TAB! 10 tabs open on a single core would have +200 flash and javascript freaking executables. Even on my ATOM surface which is a quad core I have to put adblock on to make it usable after 4 or 5 tabs as a result. Ditch it in the trash Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T3X4S Posted May 21, 2015 Share Posted May 21, 2015 Good to see the OP picked the worst answer as the best answer I am beginning to see a pattern of bad decisions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iogbrideau Posted May 21, 2015 Share Posted May 21, 2015 I wouldn't bother. The caps on the PSU already died and how long will they last on the motherboard? Now you need to repurchase a $120 Win 7 license on a computer worth less than $60 does not make economic sense. Buy her a new one with a SSD for like $700. It will last for several years unless it too has bad caps on the psu or motherboard. Get a business model which can go up to $900 but will last for a good 5 years minimum. Browsing the web is painful on even a dual core system from that time frame in 2015 as websites have +20 add network apps PER TAB! 10 tabs open on a single core would have +200 flash and javascript freaking executables. Even on my ATOM surface which is a quad core I have to put adblock on to make it usable after 4 or 5 tabs as a result. Ditch it in the trash I cloned the hdd to the ssd for my parents, anyway the hdd was on its way out from the errors they were getting. I did not need to re-activate Windows. They have a cheap 128GB Sandisk SSD which cost ~$60. Even if Sata2 bottlenecks the ssd they have no more errors and their computer runs fast, for an old Athlonx2 4600+ with 4GB RAM it's good enough for them, I'd just need to replace the graphics card for something very cheap as AMD legacy drivers for graphics cards ****. They don't have any issues with their computer so I wouldn't be able to convince them to change, don't change what's not broken is their way of thinking and that ssd probably gave them another 5 years on that computer. Also, there's a problem if your processor can't handle web browsing. I'd check for other stuff as web surfing doesn't take this much power. OP could do as I did with either a SSD or a higher performance HDD. Even a clean install of Vista (even if it doesn't use the full 4GB of RAM they have) would probably work better than nothing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bikeman25 Posted May 21, 2015 Author Share Posted May 21, 2015 Yeah well picked what I thought was best decision at the time, money is severely tight these days, her older system power supply died, I had that system she uses now just setting since I got my the newer AMD Apu based system in June 2012, so gave her that one, maybe eventually I can afford to get the HP machines power supply replaced, Think the AMD Athlon 64 3500 shes using now is not even dual core, but Single Core as far as I remember about it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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