Really Slow old PC. (Full Version)

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Nicole -> Really Slow old PC. (7/8/2008 5:45:46)

My main computer's hard drive crashed yesterday. I'd been away since July 1st and thankfully had just backed everything up that day. So I won't lose anything except some money, but I'm using my second string computer in the interim and it's very slow.

It's a Dell Dimension 4600, it's 5 years old and has the following specs:

Intel Pentium 4 Processor 2.26GHz
256mb Memory 333MHz DDR SDRAM . . .

This morning it took over 10 minutes to start up so I spent the morning cleaning it up and now it starts up in just over 6 minutes lol!

This computer has very little on it, just the very basics of Office, and basically all my spyware / virus stuff and a connection to the net, but I'd like to know what is slowing it down that much?

This morning I deleted as much unwanted stuff off it, bought "Driver Detective" to help search for and download updated drivers, ran JV Power tools and CCleaner over it several times and did all the usual spyware / virus scane thoroughly (Spybot Search & Destroy, Spyware Blaster, Spyware Guard, Ad-Aware, A-Squared, Zone Alarm, Eset NOD32, JV Power Tools and CCleaner, Defrag) and it's still really, really slow.



d a v e -> RE: Really Slow old PC. (7/8/2008 6:10:51)

option 1)
will the old computer's HD fit in the newer pc? if so you could take the newer drive out and replace it with the old one.

option2)
256mb of ram is barely enough to run the OS, if even that ;) you could install linux on it but it's probably slow even with that ;)



Nicole -> RE: Really Slow old PC. (7/9/2008 3:43:51)

Thanks Dave,

I have spoken to the computer store guy who told me that 256mb is barely enough these days to even run an anti-virus program. He said that you now need at least 512mb to run things. He also told me that it doesn't cost that much to upgrade.

By the way, it wasn't my hard drive that crashed, just a cord, $22.50!



bobburk -> RE: Really Slow old PC. (7/9/2008 6:36:55)


RAM is really cheap these days. I just bought 2 gig for my HP laptop at Best Buy and it was only $56.



womble -> RE: Really Slow old PC. (7/9/2008 15:26:30)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Nicole

I have spoken to the computer store guy who told me that 256mb is barely enough these days to even run an anti-virus program. He said that you now need at least 512mb to run things. He also told me that it doesn't cost that much to upgrade.


As BobbyD I think it was used to say on a regular basis, get as much RAM as you can afford and your machine will take.

I'm laptop shopping this week, and I'm looking to get 2gig - it's not recommended to go any higher than 2gig on XP as apparently a 32 bit OS won't address more than 2 gig properly, so I've been told - but at the moment I've got 700-ish MB on my Dell and it's now damned slow! It had 512MB when I first got it and that used to struggle with more than a couple of apps open. It seemed much better when I got the extra RAM, but it's over three years old now and really struggling.



BobbyDouglas -> RE: Really Slow old PC. (7/9/2008 23:12:04)

Reformat the old hard drive, put more ram in, and you should have at least a solid year left on it.

512mb won't do anything for you. 2GB is the minimum I would run these days, even with a P4 @ 2.2ghz. 1GB will get you by, but if you do more than just basic web browsing, you will want more.

That P4 you have is nothing compared to what's available these days, however, it has plenty of juice to handle daily tasks.

XP easily supports more than 2GB ram. I personally run 4GB on my instance of XP. I found that 2GB just wasn't enough with all of the programs I have running 24/7.

In the next couple years, I wouldn't be surprised if 4GB is the new recommended minimum. Programs are also starting to be written for multi-core CPUs (not just quad or dual) too.



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