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Advice on buying a computer needed.



Garage_Doors

Originally the Swankers
Jun 28, 2008
11,789
Brighton
Its time for me to get a new desktop.
I have a laptop and tablet but need /want a desktop for mainly work purposes.
Word and excel and general internet browsing, no gaming.
The one i got now is getting slow, its Intel 2. 8 Ghz with 3gig ram.
Even with nothing open but a single browser tab it struggles to stream the game highlights from sky.
(Have a measures 50+ meg/sec speed) and recently had a few lock ups, freezes and eve the BS of death.
So time to get a new one.
In the old days of DX2-66 (Dos ! pre windows) etc i was well up with it all but sadly now i'm not.
So what spec am i looking for, for my needs? Tower only, no monitor.
Anyone on here in the game of selling puters who i can potentially take my purchase from?
 


Prince Monolulu

Everything in Moderation
Oct 2, 2013
10,201
The Race Hill
Gotta say with a good wash and brush up your current kit appears fine for your needs. Have you done all the basic admin 'MOT' tasks, can work wonders.
 


Husty

Mooderator
Oct 18, 2008
11,973
Get an 'SSD' or Solid State Harddrive - Means that it's held on fixed memory similar to a giant memory stick rather than on a rotating disk. Lightening fast and will make a huge difference to the general useability of your PC. Especially with desktop components you will find that everything on the market now is more than sufficient for general day-to-day and office use. If you want to future proof it a bit ie with the ability to smoothly stream ultra HD stuff from netflix and the like then get a cheap dedicated graphics card
 


StonehamPark

#Brighton-Nil
Oct 30, 2010
9,762
BC, Canada
Gotta say with a good wash and brush up your current kit appears fine for your needs. Have you done all the basic admin 'MOT' tasks, can work wonders.

I would agree with this.
Your specs are enough to cope with your stated requirements.

I'd recommend backing up all your vital docs onto a portable hard drive or usb, and factory reset your PC and install the CCleaner program to keep your PC up to speed.

You could always buy a couple of 2/4gb ram sticks which are easy enough to install, and don't cost too much.
Plus an SSD (fast Hard Drive) if you want to speed things up another notch.

Approx £40 for 8gb ram and another £50-£100 for a 500gb SSD.
 


Garage_Doors

Originally the Swankers
Jun 28, 2008
11,789
Brighton
Gotta say with a good wash and brush up your current kit appears fine for your needs. Have you done all the basic admin 'MOT' tasks, can work wonders.
I have done the defrag etc, is there more these days?

Get an 'SSD' or Solid State Harddrive - Means that it's held on fixed memory similar to a giant memory stick rather than on a rotating disk. Lightening fast and will make a huge difference to the general useability of your PC. Especially with desktop components you will find that everything on the market now is more than sufficient for general day-to-day and office use. If you want to future proof it a bit ie with the ability to smoothly stream ultra HD stuff from netflix and the like then get a cheap dedicated graphics card

TBH the SSD drive and better graphic card were on the list on "wants"

I would agree with this.
Your specs are enough to cope with your stated requirements.

I'd recommend backing up all your vital docs onto a portable hard drive or usb, and factory reset your PC and install the CCleaner program to keep your PC up to speed.

You could always buy a couple of 2/4gb ram sticks which are easy enough to install, and don't cost too much.
Plus an SSD (fast Hard Drive) if you want to speed things up another notch.

Approx £40 for 8gb ram and another £50-£100 for a 500gb SSD.

Ok may look in to that.
 




FatSuperman

Well-known member
Feb 25, 2016
2,829
Undoubtedly your PC should be able to cope, but it's going to be a bit of a hassle for you to get it sorted if you aren't already savvy. If you aren't up for that then it's probably easier to just grab one from PC World, or online. I'll put a few links up at various prices when I get home, if nobody else does so before. :)
 


Garage_Doors

Originally the Swankers
Jun 28, 2008
11,789
Brighton
Just to add to my computing woes, i have samsung S2 portable back up drive thats has gone wobbly, cant read even tried several puters wit hit and it emits a faint bleeping sound so pretty much US, can data be recovered from these?
 


Prince Monolulu

Everything in Moderation
Oct 2, 2013
10,201
The Race Hill
CCleaner is a must. Delete your unwanted progs. Clear your temp files (%temp%). Check your roaming files (%appdata%). Clean the lot, defrag using Defraggler then use a proper free online scanner (Eset or Trend).
Clean the Registry.

Have you turned it off and back on again?
 




StonehamPark

#Brighton-Nil
Oct 30, 2010
9,762
BC, Canada
I have done the defrag etc, is there more these days?

Restore PC to Factory Settings (this is different to a defrag).
This will wipe everything and restore your computer to it's original state, 'as new'.
- Obviously, it should go without saying that you must save all of your important files to a USB or Portable Hard Drive beforehand.

This will sort your PC out, 100%.

First thing once you've restored it, download CCleaner, and run that once per week to keep your PC clean and running smooth.

4/8GB ram will speed everything up massively.

SSD will help a bit too, but not vital.
 


Garage_Doors

Originally the Swankers
Jun 28, 2008
11,789
Brighton
Restore PC to Factory Settings (this is different to a defrag).
This will wipe everything and restore your computer to it's original state, 'as new'.
- Obviously, it should go without saying that you must save all of your important files to a USB or Portable Hard Drive beforehand.

This will sort your PC out, 100%.

First thing once you've restored it, download CCleaner, and run that once per week to keep your PC clean and running smooth.

4/8GB ram will speed everything up massively.

SSD will help a bit too, but not vital.

Appreciate the info :thumbsup:
 


Garage_Doors

Originally the Swankers
Jun 28, 2008
11,789
Brighton
Restore PC to Factory Settings (this is different to a defrag).
This will wipe everything and restore your computer to it's original state, 'as new'.
- Obviously, it should go without saying that you must save all of your important files to a USB or Portable Hard Drive beforehand.

This will sort your PC out, 100%.

First thing once you've restored it, download CCleaner, and run that once per week to keep your PC clean and running smooth.

4/8GB ram will speed everything up massively.

SSD will help a bit too, but not vital.

In the old days when I did this, I would have to format/ partition the hard drive, re install operating system then re install all the relevant sound/ graphics /mouse /network drivers ect
and invariably find you were missing a few. I no longer have the Disc for the operating system (windows 7)
Is my understanding that restoring it to factory setting is a basic install of the OS?
 




StonehamPark

#Brighton-Nil
Oct 30, 2010
9,762
BC, Canada
In the old days when I did this, I would have to format/ partition the hard drive, re install operating system then re install all the relevant sound/ graphics /mouse /network drivers ect
and invariably find you were missing a few. I no longer have the Disc for the operating system (windows 7)
Is my understanding that restoring it to factory setting is a basic install of the OS?

Yep, Factory Restore will perform a clean install of the OS and wipe HDD.

If you definitely need the disc, you can buy it on eBay (eBay link) for under £2.00

Follow video instructions below - if you need them.

 
Last edited:




perseus

Broad Blue & White stripe
Jul 5, 2003
23,454
Sūþseaxna
Get an 'SSD' or Solid State Harddrive - Means that it's held on fixed memory similar to a giant memory stick rather than on a rotating disk. Lightening fast and will make a huge difference to the general useability of your PC. Especially with desktop components you will find that everything on the market now is more than sufficient for general day-to-day and office use. If you want to future proof it a bit ie with the ability to smoothly stream ultra HD stuff from netflix and the like then get a cheap dedicated graphics card

SSD hard drive. 110 GB is not big enough. My current problem.

I do not know of a current dealer I would recommend and I will need a new desktop computer soon.

Last one was made up by a local shop but the manager has now changed.
 




FatSuperman

Well-known member
Feb 25, 2016
2,829
[MENTION=12090]Garage_Doors[/MENTION]

Depending on how well the guys that build your machine did their job, you might have a recovery partition on your machine - meaning you don't need a disc. Can you please go to your disk management console in windows and see if you have a partition called 'Recovery Partition' or similar (or take a pic and upload it so we can see).

Instructions:
https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=1284#win

Also, if you can tell us a bit more about your processor, we can advise which SSD you can get. It's not just as straightforward as buying a drive and sticking it in. You need to have AHCI support on your SATA controller for this to make sense and to not run into problems (TRIM support is needed, if anyone knows what I'm talking about).

Instructions:
Please press the windows key and the letter 'R' at the same time
In the Run prompt that pops up, type msinfo32 and press enter
In the system summary that pops up, look for the processor entry "Intel Core... @2.80 Ghz..."
Write it down in a reply to this thread :)
 


Garage_Doors

Originally the Swankers
Jun 28, 2008
11,789
Brighton
[MENTION=12090]Garage_Doors[/MENTION]
@FatSuperman

Depending on how well the guys that build your machine did their job, you might have a recovery partition on your machine - meaning you don't need a disc. Can you please go to your disk management console in windows and see if you have a partition called 'Recovery Partition' or similar (or take a pic and upload it so we can see).

Instructions:
https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=1284#win

Also, if you can tell us a bit more about your processor, we can advise which SSD you can get. It's not just as straightforward as buying a drive and sticking it in. You need to have AHCI support on your SATA controller for this to make sense and to not run into problems (TRIM support is needed, if anyone knows what I'm talking about).

Instructions:
Please press the windows key and the letter 'R' at the same time
In the Run prompt that pops up, type msinfo32 and press enter
In the system summary that pops up, look for the processor entry "Intel Core... @2.80 Ghz..."
Write it down in a reply to this thread :)

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Professional
Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name FRED-PC
System Manufacturer Acer
System Model Aspire T671
System Type X86-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 2.80GHz, 2800 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Phoenix Technologies, LTD R01-A3, 30/01/2007
SMBIOS Version 2.4
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United Kingdom
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.17514"
User Name Fred-PC\Fred
Time Zone GMT Standard Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) Not Available
Total Physical Memory 2.75 GB
Available Physical Memory 945 MB
Total Virtual Memory 5.50 GB
Available Virtual Memory 2.40 GB
Page File Space 2.75 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
 


Swillis

Banned
Dec 10, 2015
1,568
Its time for me to get a new desktop.
I have a laptop and tablet but need /want a desktop for mainly work purposes.
Word and excel and general internet browsing, no gaming.
The one i got now is getting slow, its Intel 2. 8 Ghz with 3gig ram.
Even with nothing open but a single browser tab it struggles to stream the game highlights from sky.
(Have a measures 50+ meg/sec speed) and recently had a few lock ups, freezes and eve the BS of death.
So time to get a new one.
In the old days of DX2-66 (Dos ! pre windows) etc i was well up with it all but sadly now i'm not.
So what spec am i looking for, for my needs? Tower only, no monitor.
Anyone on here in the game of selling puters who i can potentially take my purchase from?

Have you got any malware on your machine, this can cause it to run slow? Download and run a full scan with this

https://www.malwarebytes.com/mwb-download/

Also worth doing a virus scan, I use avira but there are others.

https://www.avira.com/en/download/product/avira-free-antivirus

You never know but this may pick up some problems with your desktop.
 


Shropshire Seagull

Well-known member
Nov 5, 2004
8,477
Telford
Okay, so your current windows version is 32bit [X86] so ignore the suggestions of any RAM above 4Gb as a 32 bit O/S can only use a max of 4Gb.
The idea of a SSD is sound - with a tower case you'll very likely have room to add a SSD and keep your existing drive.

Here's what I'd do.
Buy an SSD drive 120GB or smaller and reinstalled your O/S onto this - SSD runs much faster than spinning drives - you'll be impressed with boot-up speed.
If you know how [its not that difficult] create a partition on the SSD for your data - 50Gb for the O/S partition is ample.
Copy over from your old disk to the new SSD Data partition all your data files - docs / excel / pics etc. - or an external device as a back-up
Then reformat your old drive [how big is it?] and use that as a second data drive or an active disk backup [all depends how much data you have]
Reinstall your apps on to your new SSD
Upgrade to 4Gb RAM

Will be good enough for a few years yet.
 




grawhite

Well-known member
Jul 6, 2011
1,432
Brighton
Okay, so your current windows version is 32bit [X86] so ignore the suggestions of any RAM above 4Gb as a 32 bit O/S can only use a max of 4Gb.
The idea of a SSD is sound - with a tower case you'll very likely have room to add a SSD and keep your existing drive.

Here's what I'd do.
Buy an SSD drive 120GB or smaller and reinstalled your O/S onto this - SSD runs much faster than spinning drives - you'll be impressed with boot-up speed.
If you know how [its not that difficult] create a partition on the SSD for your data - 50Gb for the O/S partition is ample.
Copy over from your old disk to the new SSD Data partition all your data files - docs / excel / pics etc. - or an external device as a back-up
Then reformat your old drive [how big is it?] and use that as a second data drive or an active disk backup [all depends how much data you have]
Reinstall your apps on to your new SSD
Upgrade to 4Gb RAM

Will be good enough for a few years yet.

Great advice, but I would say SSD needs to be a minimum of 120GB. This then gives ample space for updates or even an OS upgrade.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro
 





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