Warning: The following blog post will be in an angry tone. Remember, this has both the Rantdom and bad mood tags, so it’s going to be, well, angry. If you dislike complaining, close this tab now.
So I have a desktop computer which my parents got for the entire family in 2004. The desktop became slow in 2007ish thanks to plenty of computer games, but still functional. Last year, it became irritably slow(As in, 20ish minutes to open the Internet, 1 minute to respond to simple clicks), but I didn’t really use it that much. This year, it became worse. As in, “Mozilla Firefox is not responding, End Now” every hour or so. Again, I don’t really use it that much, and if it wasn’t the only computer that could access the printer, it’d be forgotten about.
My dad got this new desktop last year, and he only uses it for internet searching. He’s highly overprotective of it, and if something goes wrong on it, my brother and/or I will be the first blamed.
Last week, my dad asked me how the desktop was going. I told him “Slow, barely functional”. Guess how he responded? “If you’re going to always be online, you better know how to fix computers. I’m sick of you complaining about it if you can’t fix it.”
I guess this first sentence was true, but definitely not the second part. Usually, I open the computer an hour or so before I need to use it, and I do my other homework while I wait for it to load.
Tuesday, my dad invited my cousin over to fix the computer. And by fix, I mean install the meaningless crappy updates. Yesterday, I had to print something out, and guess what?
The computer’s lag didn’t improve. Every window still had the “End Now” messages, and to add insult to injury, now the printer didn’t even work. (My brother pretty much summed up everything about the printer’s problems here). When I told my dad about it, he just said “It’s your computer, you fix it”.
WARNING: ANGER PART OF POST WILL HAPPEN NOW.
REALLY? THAT’S your ADVICE?!? YOU WERE THE ONE WHO DECIDED TO UPDATE IT, YOU FIX IT.
Seriously, I had no problem waiting for it to load while doing other things.
And now I have to print something out. Lucky me.
And for the most part, we’ve tried uninstalling things that we don’t use, but the computer’s telling us that “It wasn’t installed properly. Reinstall it, then uninstall it.” But we’ve lost the computer game discs, so… yeah.
Yucky!
ReplyDeleteI will say that the Power Supply of a computer will start to run down every three to four years, and that range could change. If you put extra memory in it, another hard drive, an extra DVD Rom, anything extra can take off from the power supply's life.
I would recommend a couple of things. You may or may not have done these already, I'm just going to layout everything I can think of to help you.
1 - Uninstalling unneeded programs [Which you've done]
2 - Running Anti-virus, spyware and malware software. AVG is decent, and it's free. Adaware is another good program
3 - Unplug your computer completely, take the side latch off and clean it out. If you have smokers in the house, nicotine WILL cling and can actually clog up your fans and other things. If not, dust can do the same, but nicotine from the smoke will just speed up that process. Get yourself a can of air and go to town. Be careful around the motherboard. I DO use a q-tip [not always recommended, but I don't use it on the electronics themselves, I use it on the fans]
4 - I'm not sure about the life expectancy of motherboards, I've never really had a problem with them, but your motherboard COULD be going. A 2004 computer is of decent age, but still, that's 6 years.
5 - Make sure ALL your drivers, software and hardware alike are downloaded. This can be done in Device Manager.
All in all, a computer SHOULD run fine, even at your's age, as long as it's cleaned [I'd recommend once per month, twice a month if there are smokers], as long as it is updated, and as long as there are no viruses.
Also, as a last resort, if nothing is helping the situation, I would recommend backing up your files and doing a complete and total system recovery. This will reset the entire computer to factory settings, giving you pretty much a brand new computer. However, if it still runs slow after this, I would definitely say it's a hardware issue.
Ugh, original comment was too long. FRACK!
ReplyDeleteOkay, first thing I will recommend is your power supply. Power supplies in computers last on average from 3 to 4 years, and that simply depends on what you do with your computer.
In an old computer, I souped it up. I added a DVD Rom drive with Lightscribe, I had a nice graphics card, added more RAM, and eventually the power supply started to quit. The computer was running slower, and I had to get a USB mouse, because the mouse port [you know the little purple or green plug in] no longer was getting the power it needed to power the mouse.
Power Supplies aren't that expensive, and the kind and wattage you need solely depends on what you do with your computer. If you are into HARDCORE gaming, you'll need a higher wattage. It depends on your graphics card.
These days, with the new models of Nvidia and ATI, the wattage needs to be higher. Right now, my power supply is 400 watts, which barely covers the ATI Radeon card I just got, but because of money issues, we couldn't get a power supply.
I'm going to guess that if you haven't changed your power supply at all, that your wattage in that computer is sitting around 200 and 250. Your power supply completely powers everything hardware in your computer. So when you start adding new graphics cards, new RAM, new new new stuff, it's going to start taxing the power supply.
ReplyDeleteIf you play TS3 on that computer and have a powerful card on that computer, I highly suggest upgrading your power supply to about 400. I can't remember the price exactly, but a power supply of that wattage would be around 50-70 bucks I think, and six years is a LONG time to go on with the same power supply.
Other fixes I would recommend is making sure everything that you don't need is uninstalled [which you've said has been done], also, go into the options for your startup.
ReplyDeleteFor example, when you start up your computer and get to the desktop, various programs may start automatically, which can slow down your computer for a bit, depending on just how much you have. Most of these programs have the option to disable automatic start-up in their options, with others, you'll have to go to the options on your computer for. You don't need to have everything start up automatically for you, especially if you don't use it that often. However, don't disable start up for any system programs, like windows32 or anything. Stick with the programs you know. Disable the MSN messenger, or the limewire, etc. etc.
Oh crap, I see my first comment did go through although it told me it didn't? >.<
ReplyDeleteAnywho, sorry for the novels, but I'd say look into a power supply if you haven't upgraded yours at all. I would say that that's definitely the issue.
Thanks for the tips! And that's okay for the length, the more help, the better.
ReplyDeleteI don't play TS3 on that computer, so I'm not concerned about gaming that much for that computer.
And I've uninstalled the instant messengers and stuff, but I haven't cleaned the smokers or anything yet. I'll look into that tomorrow.
But thanks for the help. :)
No problem. I still would recommend looking into a new power supply, even if you don't use it for gaming, as the power supply will start to die over time and that could be the reasoning for it. It can be a bit confusing switching out a power supply, as all those cords on the inside? Those are the power supply cords. If you do get around to changing it, I would just unplug one cord from the old, plug it's counterpart from the new, and just do that one at a time, lol. That's how I did it.
ReplyDeleteOh, okay, thanks.
ReplyDeleteAnd my dad said he'd help us update it too, which is kind of good since he knows more about a computer's hardware than software.
And thanks for all this help!