Misbehaving PC

[gordont8]

I know this sort of complaint arises on an all too regular basis but I hope you won't yawn as I raise it again to see if there are any new solutions.

My wife has a custom built PC which runs on Windows 10. The PC is about 3 years old and is used for sending and receiving numerous emails, browsing the web, on line banking, watching iPlayer and that's about all. The HD has plenty of free space and though I cannot remember the amount of memory I am sure it is more than adequate.

The problem is my wife constantly complains about how slow it now runs, that it sometimes freezes and even worse it all too frequently flags up a message that it cannot connect to the server. This necessitates her having to switch off and back on again. My wife gets so exasperated she threatens to dump the computer and buy a new one. My thoughts are that if she did that, before too long she would find herself back where she started.

I would like to be able to give her some helpful advice but I have insufficient knowledge to do that. My own laptop, an HP Compaq Presario, is about 5 years old but generally runs OK though it does not get the amount of usage my wife's PC gets. She has run CCleaner and Malware bytes without improving things.

Should I be suggesting to her that before she spends money on a new PC she should take it to a PC maintenance/repair person? My only thoughts about doing this are that I know of one or two people who have done this but have found any improvement is soon lost.

Any advice please?

 

[beers]

Define 'slow'. What exactly is she doing that is slow? Loading applications? Browsing to websites?

I'd probably start off with a Memtest86+, if you see any memory errors those are likely the freezing culprit.

Do any other computers on your network lose connectivity, do you have a spare NIC to test with in that PC? Onboard/integrated ones generally have a high fail rate.

 

[_Pete_]

The other thing that can happen is on older machines, and yes a 3 year old machine is old technologically speaking, especially if it is a well used machine is that the hard drive can slow down There are various reasons for this. One reason is that when you delete stuff all that is deleted is the indentifying header of that file. the rest of the file stays on your hard drive until that part of the hard drive is over written with something else. Computers at their base level (or any level really) are pretty stupid and even though those files have been deleted the computer still has to check the 1s and 0s to establish that they are defunct. Over a period of time those 1s and 0s can build up and this will slow the speed that your computer can access the relevant information. The other reason that hard drives can slow down, and in view of the other symptoms that you listed, is because the hard drive is starting break down. The hard disk drive is a mechanical device. the disk bearings can become worn and this can slow the access speed of hard drive. it can also render programs inaccessable, such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Edge etc and cause them to crash or freeze. I used to work in the IT section of a school and we changed out our computers every 2 years. Even with these reasonably young machines a lot of my work entailed replacing hard drives mainly because of the hammering that the kids gave them. My advice initially is to ensure that you have all your personal files backed up. You should be doing that anyway as a matter of course but if you ahven't been doing that DO IT NOW. If your hard drive does pack up you will not get them back with a huge amount of expense. I know this sounds alarmist but it isn't. There are other reasons your hard drive could be slowing down but it doesn't hurt to be prepared. I reinstall my three computers from scratch every six months to get rid of the clag. I'm not suggesting you should do that but it is the way I do it. The other thing that can slow computers down is the program writers write programs to take advantage of new innovations and faster speeds that present day computers can achieve. if you run thos programs on an older, therefore slower, machine this can have a detrimental effect on computer speeds. Perhaps your wife is right, Time for a new computer. and all the hassle that involves in getting stuff transferred.

 

[gordont8]

Thanks beers and Pete. No, my laptop does not lose connectivity. The other day the PC disconnected itself from the Internet and my wife tried the usual switching off and back on a few times without success. I tried updating the Wireless Network Adapter (Atheros 50007UG) driver but this was up to date. I eventually restored the network connection by doing a system rollback to two days prior to this incident. Why this worked I have no idea. My wife does regular backups. If deleted stuff stays on the PC until over written is there no way of getting it off the Hard Drive without reinstalilng from scratch? Presumably not. Perhaps Solid State hard drives are the way to go though whether it would be worthwhile replacing the hard drive with a solid state drive on the existing PC I do not know.

 

[_Pete_]

You can try CCleaner, there are others but CCleaner is the one I use. You can set that to clean "unsed space." be very careful when using it though because it can wipe your hard drive completely if you set the wrong parameters. Funnilly enough I have bene looking at solid state drives myself at the moment but I do not think that they are financially viable at the moment. The small drives are not too bad cost wiswe but I would want a terrabyte or two for my computer and at the moment they cost more than I paid for my computer and my computer is only a few months old. I really wouldn't consider an SSD for a 3 year old computer. Much better to buy a new computer.