seem to be having lots of issues lately.
freeze ups, various programs not responding, taking ages to start up.
various issues with all broswers (mentioned in previous threads)
my system is over 5 years old now so should i look at an upgrade?
here's the original specs
Intel Pentium 4-3.0GHz 800FSB Socket 478 CPU
Shuttle Socket 478 SB61G2 Spacewalker Mini-PC
512MB Geil DDR PC3200 RAM
512MB Geil DDR PC3200 RAM (now have 2GB RAM)
200GB Western Digital 7200rpm 8M Cache HDD
GeXCube 256M Radeon 9800 R360 Video Card (now have Nvidia Gforce 6600)
Pioneer DVR-108 16xDVD DL Burner OEM BIEGE

i have all the periphs i need so would just need the box.
also is there any sort of tests i could run to see where the problem is?
oh yeah i have formatted about 3 months ago but she seems to be slipping away again rather quickly...
cheers

my system is over 5 years old now so should i look at an upgrade?

Yes. End of thread.

computers are all s*** man, I have this amazing new hardware at work and I still sit around waiting for vista, firefox, and eclipse to do stuff.

i'd try an o/s re-install first unless you want to play some modern games or something that would require more power.

i have all the periphs i need so would just need the box

as long as they are compatable with modern hardware ;)

Some newer motherboards (most? all?) don't have a parallel port so what kind of connection does your printer use?

oh yeah i have formatted about 3 months ago but she seems to be slipping away again rather quickly...

The last time that happened to me my hard drive was about to die and windows was having trouble reading the data. When I formatted it'd be all speedy because it just wrote the data but as time went by it wasn't holding the data so it'd have to go back & try to re-read bits.

200Gb WD drive eh, same size as my WD that just happens to have developed bad sectors so I'd be looking at it (It's dated: 24 March 2004 so it's about the same age as yours too). Run WD's diag software on it.


I've just discovered the awesomeness of RAID on my media PC. I had 2 spare 250gig drives, slow as s*** on their own but I set them up in a stripey RAID and now it hoots along, loads stuff way faster than my main PC. It's not fault tolerant but it doesn't need to be, all my s***'s stored elsewhere but load times for windows & applications is nice & speedy now.


last edited by whoop at 18:12:57 14/Sep/09

thx whoop
is that just a generic diagnostic from there website?

Definately Upgrage time, it wouldnt cost much to have something 10x better than what you have. Ram/Hdd are so cheap these days.

Yeah thats a good point whoop, my PC at work is a Xeon workstation (lols) and i found it rather rapid in all aspects, except disk performance. It came with 2x250gb NCQ SATAII drives just dying to be raid0'd. (or should i say aid0, there's no redundancy in raid0). Man did it make a difference. I never store anything on my PC worth keeping anyway, and im glad i did it. Hoots along alright hey.

I'd do what the others are saying; format your harddrive and reinstall windows. As long as the components on the motherboard are working it could be fine. My PC on the other hand is about 3.5 years old now and one of the sata ports has stopped working and the onboard ethernet card has stopped also. Apart from that it's chugging along alright, *touchwood*.

If you're gonna upgrade, don't forget a good ssd boot drive.

go get a new pc for like 900, 10x better and be done with it

He said he's just formatted it and it's slowly slipping again. Sounds like either he's filling up the drive with crap & not maintaining it or maybe the drive is on its way out.

Definately Upgrage time, it wouldnt cost much to have something 10x better than what you have. Ram/Hdd are so cheap these days.

No point getting something 10x better if a $100 hard drive will fix his problem and all he does with it is email & internet. Even if it is only a single core CPU it's going to be fast enough to basic daily tasks in a SOHO environment, we have a 2.4ghz p4 at work, it's more than enough for email/internet browsing & doing the books on.

Also his peripherals might not be compatible so worst case scenario he's gonna need another mouse, keyboard, printer and scanner as well as all the components of the PC (mobo, case, psu, ram, CPU, video card, hard drive).

my comp is 5 years old.
runs better now than it ever did.
cant play latest games though.

run spybot ?

my comp is 5 years old.
runs better now than it ever did.

unless you were doing something wrong, nah it doesn't.

do you play any games faceman?

How do I know when my PC is on it's way out?

Usually it gives you the finger then it opens the door, and not necessarily in that order either.

main use is surfing, pics, email, music, streaming to my 360, no online games here.
how can i tell if it's my HDD? (ran the diag whoop and it passed) could it be my board? or anyting else contributing? are the HDD and motherboard usually the main culprits?
i think i'd rather just grab a new HDD. is it true you can't get windows xp anymore?

Why would you want it when Windows 7 will be out soon enough?

When you start making threads like this.

crazy

http://umart.com.au/pro/products_listnew.phtml?id=10&id2=78&bid=2

Try running windows disk cleanup + spybot S&D and since I gather you're using XP go get jkdefrag or mydefrag or whatever he's calling it these days & let it defrag your drive.

Probably work out easier (but more expensive) to just upgrade the whole thing.

is it true you can't get windows xp anymore?

Nope, not true at all.

Contrary to popular belief, OEM licenses can be transferred to new machines.
Computer Alliance would regularly state that you had to purchase a new copy of Windows even if you had an existing legitimate OEM copy installed on the old machine.

All it takes is manual activation of the old key if the automated process fails and state to the MS operator upon calling "severe hardware failure required replacement components and a fresh install of the OS. No it isn't installed on any other machines" and they would happily activate it.

That PSU and possibly mainboard would almost certainly have popped caps.
open them up to confirm. I had a media centre with similar specs, shuttle brand and I had to get a new PSU for it about a year ago.

That PSU and possibly mainboard would almost certainly have popped caps.

what exactly am i looking for here?

popped caps

My PC is as old as yours and it's still going strong, I'd say if you've reformatted recently then it's may be hardware issue. Also you may have contracted some virus/spyware etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

oi Dodgymon are you still doing capacitor replacements for older mobos?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

now those symptoms are exactly what i'm experiencing
righto i'm going in...it was nice chatting with you all....wish me luck