Help with Compaq Desktop PC

[coastrider]

First off I will say that this is our fly fishing forum PC and being a not for profit, we are trying to fix this issue ourself. So this problem is becoming worse by the day and now she takes 15 minutes to boot up. A bit of info first? Compaq Desktop PC running Windows 10, slows sometimes to the point that the wired mouse indicator won't even move around or just sits with the loading symbol. I have worked on desktops before and know enough to get myself in trouble but hoping for a relatively simple fix here. I work on circuitry at work involving soldering circuit boards and such so this cant be much worse im guessing. Back to the info, now this thing has booted up. Maybe screenshots are better. Hopefully we don't have to raise funds for a new PC. Cheers, Ed

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

unfortunately that PC is just too old. Not enough memory, slow hard drive, old CPU. it's not going to handle windows 10 well at all. you could buy an SSD if youre willing to throw money at it.

 

There seems to be waaaaay too many programs running. i would start by uninstalling all unnecessary software.

[coastrider]

unfortunately that PC is just too old. Not enough memory, slow hard drive, old CPU. it's not going to handle windows 10 well at all. you could buy an SSD if youre willing to throw money at it.
 
There seems to be waaaaay too many programs running. i would start by uninstalling all unnecessary software.

Thanks for the honesty. Suggestions on specs if I were to buy a new PC?

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

Just now, coastrider said:

2 minutes ago, Jason S. said:

unfortunately that PC is just too old. Not enough memory, slow hard drive, old CPU. it's not going to handle windows 10 well at all. you could buy an SSD if youre willing to throw money at it.
 
There seems to be waaaaay too many programs running. i would start by uninstalling all unnecessary software.

Thanks for the honesty. Suggestions on specs if I were to buy a new PC?

Anything would be better.

[The Evil Overlord]

How old is it?

When did you first notice the slow bootup?

For disclosure, I hate almost everything made by hp, (burned everytime I've bought something from them)

BUT apart from what I'm guessing could be potentially dying hardware, I am wondering if it is working on windows updates, and may fix itself once they're all installed....

 

I partially disagree with Jason, as I have an old dual core Athlon that is still running, there's life on that old girl yet.

2 minutes ago, coastrider said:

4 minutes ago, Jason S. said:

unfortunately that PC is just too old. Not enough memory, slow hard drive, old CPU. it's not going to handle windows 10 well at all. you could buy an SSD if youre willing to throw money at it.
 
There seems to be waaaaay too many programs running. i would start by uninstalling all unnecessary software.

Thanks for the honesty. Suggestions on specs if I were to buy a new PC?

Buy or build? (Build can sometimes be cheaper, also depends on who will be using it, and what is expected from it, games etc...)

[Circaflex]

Are you dead set on running Windows 10? 7 might run a tad better on it, I probably have an extra license laying around as well. I would download this tool, drive fitness test https://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/downloads/dft32_v416_b00.iso, burn that to a CD. Boot from the CD and test your drive, at one point it will ask you ata or scsi and select ata and run the test. If the drive isnt failing, the long bootup has me believing you might have a drive failure, and you are tech savvy enough to backup your data and try windows 7 I am sure I can help.

[The Evil Overlord]

3 minutes ago, Circaflex said:

Are you dead set on running Windows 10? 7 might run a tad better on it, I probably have an extra license laying around as well. I would download this tool, drive fitness test https://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/downloads/dft32_v416_b00.iso, burn that to a CD. Boot from the CD and test your drive, at one point it will ask you ata or scsi and select ata and run the test. If the drive isnt failing, the long bootup has me believing you might have a drive failure, and you are tech savvy enough to backup your data and try windows 7 I am sure I can help.

Wouldn't 10 be lighter on resources than 7 for a rig that old?

[satukoro]

22 minutes ago, coastrider said:

23 minutes ago, Jason S. said:

unfortunately that PC is just too old. Not enough memory, slow hard drive, old CPU. it's not going to handle windows 10 well at all. you could buy an SSD if youre willing to throw money at it.
 
There seems to be waaaaay too many programs running. i would start by uninstalling all unnecessary software.

Thanks for the honesty. Suggestions on specs if I were to buy a new PC?

If you're dead set on buying a new computer and using it as a server, I'd recommend at least an i5 or Ryzen 5/7, 8GB RAM, a SSD for boot/os, and two 500-1000GB drives in Raid0 for data integrity, but that might be a smidge overkill for a single website.

 

Also, if you're looking for something that will run a little more steadily on your current computer at no cost to you, I would put Debian (or your choice of distro) and LAMP on it based on the specs.

Oh, and for the sake of performance get rid of everything Norton, Windows Defender in W10 is an apt security app.

[coastrider]

It is not a server, running thru Proboards but I use it to access all our info and backup. Things I cannot easily do thru my SG7. Thanks for all the help guys and girls, I'm still working on the hard drive test. You say to ditch Norton? What should one use for internet security?

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

2 minutes ago, coastrider said:

It is not a server, running thru Proboards but I use it to access all our info and backup. Things I cannot easily do thru my SG7. Thanks for all the help guys and girls, I'm still working on the hard drive test. You say to ditch Norton? What should one use for internet security?

You should run a NAS, if you are using it for backup...

[coastrider]

NAS? Acronyms are not helping my situation[emoji6]

It would also be nice to process my gopro videos, something this thing will not do

[Circaflex]

4 minutes ago, Mindovermaster said:

You should run a NAS, if you are using it for backup...

Why? A backup is a backup no matter what device you store it on and it sounds like this computer is already acting as a Network-Attached Storage device. Unless you mean dedicating this device to ONLY storing data and running a dedicated NAS-type OS, still doesn't really solve the OP's original issue and I am not sure it is needed or how they would benefit from it... No need to over-complicate anything.

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

5 minutes ago, Circaflex said:

Why? A backup is a backup no matter what device you store it on and it sounds like this computer is already acting as a Network-Attached Storage device. Unless you mean dedicating this device to ONLY storing data and running a dedicated NAS-type OS, still doesn't really solve the OP's original issue and I am not sure it is needed or how they would benefit from it... No need to over-complicate anything.

Will be more cost-effective, tbh...

[Southern Patriot]

1 hour ago, Jason S. said:

unfortunately that PC is just too old. Not enough memory, slow hard drive, old CPU. it's not going to handle windows 10 well at all. you could buy an SSD if youre willing to throw money at it.

 

That's utter nonsense. I just sold a computer virtually identical to that one that ran Windows 10 Pro perfectly well. I only sold it because I didn't need it anymore. There's no reason that it should be taking 15 minutes to boot, or any of the other symptoms he was describing. I will agree that it seems to have a lot of unnecessary stuff running, Norton in particular, but the idea that it it won't run Windows 10 just fine is ridiculous. Oh and to those saying that Windows 7 would be better on it, I also beg to differ on that. Windows 10 always seemed to run better on the computer I had than Windows 7 (which is what it originally came with).

 

As for the problems, I could only guess that it either needs a clean install of Windows and NECESSARY apps, or it could be that the hard drive is going out, but that would probably be showing other issues as well (complete system freezes or program crashes).

Edited December 28, 2017 by Southern Patriot

[coastrider]

Results of scan

[+Warwagon MVC]

The CPU usage and the Ram look good on that computer, so it doesn't look like the cpu or ram are being taxed that badly. could be a hard drive bottleneck or the hard drive could be developing some bad sectors.

 

Try checking the hard drives smart data with crystaldisk

 

https://osdn.net/frs/redir.php?m=gigenet&f=crystaldiskinfo%2F68590%2FCrystalDiskInfo7_5_0.zip

 

The CPU mark on that Athlon CPU is around 1578 so not the greatest, so I would think it would take a while starting up, but not 15 mins.

[Circaflex]

DFT analyzes smart data as well, no need for crystal. I noticed in your OS screen shots OP, disk usage is extremely high, something seems to be dragging it all down. You can try rebooting into a "clean boot," https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows, and see if it operates as normal. If it does, some application is dragging everything down and we can go from there.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

does the motherboard have SATA ports? if so, you could buy an SSD and immediately get better performance by eliminating that ancient IDE hard drive.

[coastrider]

Appears to be a no

[coastrider]

Ok, i am ready to axe a few programs and see what happens. When you say to ditch Norton and Defender, what is to be used for internet safety?

[The Evil Overlord]

Windows defender on win10 is better than nothing, so you are sort of protected. if I had more time, I'd post the threads we have regarding the free and paid software available

 

If you're worried, then simply disconnect the rig from your internet while trying out your options

[DevTech]

2 hours ago, The Evil Overlord said:

Wouldn't 10 be lighter on resources than 7 for a rig that old?

Windows 10 is lighter on resources than any Windows O/S later than XP

 

The negative side is simply CPU restrictions and various device support issues. If you don't have that, then it runs well. Use 32 bit Win 10 on 4 gigs or less if config is weak.

[DevTech]

22 minutes ago, coastrider said:

Ok, i am ready to axe a few programs and see what happens. When you say to ditch Norton and Defender, what is to be used for internet safety?

You are clogged with crap.

 

You can run PC Decrapifier of Bulk Crap remover etc programs.

 

Then use PatchMyPC to keep essential programs up-to-date.

 

You can use PatchMyPC to install all the essential software you will need including security software. Just check what you need. Don't install anything you don't need.

 

For your requirements, AVAST or Avira will do the job and are both semi-light on resource usage, even slightly better than the built-in Windows 10 Defender.

 

Then install Unchecky which prevents "human error" when installing "free" software. 

 

But for sure Norton is NOT helping your situation.

[coastrider]

Looking clean after removing norton

[DevTech]

I can't be certain, but I don't think they keep that app up to date like they used to. So you need to manually review the list under the "Questionable" and "everything Else" TABS to see what ales you can dump. A lot of Compaq software will be quite useless for example.