Some Computer Advice Needed....

[plain jayne]

I literally could not find where to put there, so if I am in the wrong place - please move my post.

Quick question. I have an HP pavillion soon to be 10 years old. It has run so SLOW for about 3 - 4 years.

I keep defraging it, cleaning out unnecessary files, and everything the internet tells me to do.

How long should a desktop computer last? The internet has such conflicting information.

 

[paul1149]

There's a tech forum here somewhere, but anyway...

Depends on the unit. I'm on a Vista-era Dell tower, circa 2007, and on Linux it runs beautifully, except that it's not really powerful enough to do much video editing. But Linux runs better than Windows, certainly than Vista, so there's that.

If you haven't done so, a Factory Reset of the operating system is probably what you should do. The OS will accumulate extra programs and problems after a while, and they all bog it down. Back up your user data to an external drive before doing anything.

Actually a fresh install is better than a factor reset because it's cleaner, but you probably will have to go fishing for drivers afterward to get it working correctly.

Make sure your antivirus is light weight. I've used Panda Free and found it good.

Your machine probably came with Win7, which means there's an upgrade path to Win10 if you wish to. And since Win7 isn't supported, it's highly advisable. Linux, IMO, is best of all, but there is a small learning curve when transitioning.

You also could upgrade the hardware, with an SSD instead of the hard drive, and increased RAM. For not much money, the machine could be twice as fast for many tasks.

 

[Dansiph]

I literally could not find where to put there, so if I am in the wrong place - please move my post.

Quick question. I have an HP pavillion soon to be 10 years old. It has run so SLOW for about 3 - 4 years.

I keep defraging it, cleaning out unnecessary files, and everything the internet tells me to do.

How long should a desktop computer last? The internet has such conflicting information.

If possible I'd say get a new one. I'm no expert but in my experiences some computers and especially laptops just turn slow one day. I've never been able to get one back to normal.

My current pc is five years old and is just as quick as when I got it. Me and a friend built it for gaming.

 

[HARK!]

I still have some IBM XTs that run fine. They're like 40 years old now. I'm good with hardware; software, not so much. Without actually looking at it for myself; I couldn't tell you the problem; but If it was mine; and I had tried all of the basic remedies; here is what I would do next:

I would look at the manufacture of the hard drive. I would go to their site; and download the software to erase the drive and write all zeros to the drive, including the registry. This restores the disk to factory settings. There is now nothing on the drive; so there is no place for a bug to hide.

I would then reformat the drive; and reinstall the OS.

However, if the Hard drive is packed with valuable files; I would go buy another drive of greater capacity. I would then clone the old drive to the new drive; so that I would have a second copy. This gives you a backup copy. I would use that drive as my main drive because you can clone a smaller drive to a larger drive, but not vice versa. You can get a used drive on the cheap. Make sure you wipe it clean using factory software before you clone to it. BTW, the factory software, is always a free download in my experience.

Wipe the small drive, reformat, load the OS, get it all set up the way you want it. After you do that, wipe the new drive. Clone the old drive to the new drive. Now take the old drive out of your computer. This is now your master backup drive. If you ever have problems with your new drive; simply wipe it, and clone to it from your master backup; and your drive will be back to a fresh install of all of your programs and files.

Even with virus protection my computers were getting corrupted. I dropped virus protection and surfed the web for about 15 years, with no protection, using this technique. If I had an issue; it would be resolved in about 10 minutes, no trying to figure out what the problem was. However, that was for 10-20 gigabyte drives. Bigger drives take longer.

 

[dqhall]

I literally could not find where to put there, so if I am in the wrong place - please move my post.

Quick question. I have an HP pavillion soon to be 10 years old. It has run so SLOW for about 3 - 4 years.

I keep defraging it, cleaning out unnecessary files, and everything the internet tells me to do.

How long should a desktop computer last? The internet has such conflicting information.

I had to log into a Virtual Private Network to get my Microsoft Windows laptop going fast. I also tried to delete unnecessary programs at start up. There are YouTube video instructions about this if you know the search words to find one. My iPad is faster than my Windows 10 laptop, except tapping out text takes longer. I use my iPad for the Internet as it is very fast.

 

[nonaeroterraqueous]

I literally could not find where to put there, so if I am in the wrong place - please move my post.

Quick question. I have an HP pavillion soon to be 10 years old. It has run so SLOW for about 3 - 4 years.

I keep defraging it, cleaning out unnecessary files, and everything the internet tells me to do.

How long should a desktop computer last? The internet has such conflicting information.

I'm no I.T. guy, but I have dealt with similar problems and lived to tell about it. My two computers are eight and nine years old, and they're still going strong. If yours is slower than it used to be, then there's a problem of some sort. I can only tell you what I would do, and what I have done that worked in the past.

1. Software cleanup:

1. First step would be to use the system resource monitor to find out which programs are hogging the most resources. The biggest hogs, from my experience, tend to be antivirus, Windows Update, and certain browsers. Years ago, I found that Norton was the single biggest cause of problems for me, and removing it was the best thing I could do. A long time after that, when they would have had plenty of time to clean up their act, I found that Norton was still causing problems for my parents' computer. Windows 7 auto-updater started causing massive slowing on mine and other people's laptops, and minimal-resource computers about three or four years ago. By switching to manual updates, only, I greatly improved performance (If, by chance, you're still on Win 7, you could probably stand to deactivate updates, because it's at end of life).
2. Uninstall bloatware. Many programs run in the background for no good reason, and people tend to have a lot of garbage programs that they don't need. Minimalist installs run faster, which is one thing I really like about Linux Mint.
3. Look for conflicts. This one's not so easy to do. I found, once, that Apple iTunes was freezing my parents' computer, not so much because it was a bad program, but because it and another program both wanted exclusive control over the same drive at the same time. Well, okay, I guess if a program tries to autoplay without regard to some other program doing the same thing, then it's probably not a good program.

2. Malware: If the problem can't be found with the innocent programs, then my next step is to assume malicious programming.

1. I make a fresh copy of all of my personal data to an external drive, different from any drive I have used for backups.
2. Reformat the hard drive and reinstall the operating system.
3. Carefully remove all of the bloatware that comes with the operating system, to make the system as clean as possible.
4. Install an antivirus different than what I was using, before, and have it scan my computer, then scan the external drive where I put my personal data, to avoid putting a virus back onto my computer.
5. Copy my personal data back onto my computer. By now, if it had been malware, then chances are good that the problem is fixed. Had it been a rootkit, then the problem may persist, but the risk, for me, would be pretty minimal for that.

3. Hardware: Contrary to popular thought, computers do make a lot of mistakes (it's not just us, humans), but they're good at quickly correcting (and hiding) them. Errors can cause the computer to hang, and failing hardware can cause errors. I, therefore, check components in the following order:

1. The hard drive appears to be the single weakest component in the device. With the advent of solid state drives this may be different (all of my failed drives have, thus far, been the spinning disks). I would start by scanning the drives, preferably with S.M.A.R.T. checks, to determine error rate and the over-all health of the drive.
2. If not the hard drive, then memory runs a distant second for causing problems. My next step would be to run a memory check.
3. The next most likely culprit, from my experience, is the internet modem/router, but this usually affects primarily internet-based operations. That makes it easy to narrow down...maybe.
4. If all else fails, I get a new computer.

By the way, if you have Windows 7 or later, then you don't need to defrag at all. It already schedules that routinely, and your drive probably doesn't need any extra defragging.

 

[pgp_protector]

As stated.
1) Linux, but your needs may varry.
2) New Hard Drive, SSD if possable
3) Clean install of your OS.

and FYI tech forums --> Technology