NEW COMPUTER?

[Grandad]

Well not really, but I have posted this just in case any of you have old and rather tired computers….

I have had my computer for about seven years. It was getting rather slow and I often had problems such as, my mailbox closing when I opened some emails, I could no longer download and run Google Earth, it just locked up everything, and, I was always getting those ‘can’t do this and can’t do that’ messages with the option to ‘Tell Microsoft’.

I have tried all sorts of things to resolve the problems, often with the help of a friend on here, and although some things improved I was not happy with the general performance of my machine SO………

At the weekend I bit the bullet, burnt a ‘restore’ DVD from the system restore program, and booted from this disc. OK, it restored the software to the original factory settings of years ago but I had a clean machine once more. ALL I had to do was rebuild all my programs and ‘MY Docs’ folder.

It took a while in between watching the F1 from Spain and yesterday the Wimbledon tennis. I have now got there with all my programs installed, even Google Earth, my files and photos transferred back from my back up, and even the blue tooth for transferring from my mobile.

Everything is running real fast now and surprise surprise, somehow I have 30gb of hard drive memory MORE than before I did the restore. So where did all that come from????? Obviously I had some corruptions and conflicts in there that had accumulated over the years. It now takes less than 2 minutes to boot, was over 15, and the hard drive is not working away for no reason when there is no computer activity.

I know I have waffled on but the lesson I have learned is that if you are not too conversant with all the ‘under the bonnet’ stuff, like me, and your computer is throwing up messages and running more slowly; consider a full restore…..takes a while but worth it in the end.

And before anyone asks, I have continuous online virus screening, I do a weekly full virus check, I use a registry cleaner regularly, empty the 'temp' folder, and of course, I back up My Docs folder at least once a week……

[Horus]

You did the best thing possible Grandad many of us (myself included) tend to work on the "if it aint broke then don't fix it" principle, which of course is the wrong way of thinking. All PC's regardless of how well they are maintained will eventually clog up with all sorts of garbage that slows it down or have lots of unwanted bits left over from other applications, many no longer used.

Many like myself will just find the whole task too much grief with all the older programs that you occasionally use, but can never find the disks or drivers again. However your clean install and restart is the only real way to go if you wish to speed up your PC, but it ideally needs to be planned in advance and to decide what you must keep or reinstall and what you no longer need and can dispensed with, which is all the more reason to do it before you are forced into it.

At least now you should be blasting along Grandad.

[LovelyLadyLux]

This is my first post from my new laptop as the old one just got totally hot and did nothing other than scroll iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii. I blew out all the dust etc (thanks for the tip H!) but didn't help. Juat an old laptop......however I've had a devil of a time getting onto E4U cause I need Adobe Flash player and my new laptop is 64 bits and not 32 bits......bit of what I have no idea but I can't get any photos or graphics on here.

Not sure how to fix this, have been in 'install' heaven and am sure I'm still needing to do something else to get on here fully......

[Grandad]

It certainly has speeded things up Horus but what surprises me is that over the years a build up of about 30gb of memory was just holding accumulated dross.

As for re-installing programs, I keep the discs for everything that I have installed in one of those disc wallets. I then had to just load them one at a time.

As I said in my post, it has re-juvenated an old computer so it is not always necessary to invest in a new one if your old one is getting tired......

Just to re-itterate, if any of you folks out there do not yet back up your data...do it soon, you never know if or when your machine might crash catastrophically...

[Horus]

LLL, try using the 32 bit version of IE on your PC
Go to START, then ALL PROGRAMS and see if you can see more than one version listed i.e. 32 & 64 bit, if you can, select the 32 bit version.

Alternatively try clicking on START, then in the SEARCH BOX type in Internet Explorer and if required go to the Adobe site and download the 32 bit version for Windows 7
http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/flashplayer/

Remember to put yourself a 'Shortcut' on your desktop for your 32 bit IE.

Hopefully this should work

[Horus]

LLL, just in case you are wondering what this 32 & 64 bit thing is all about, well to most people it will not make a lot of difference.

Most Laptops & PCs sold today have 4 Gig of Ram installed and the shops make a big thing of telling you this. However most are running the 32 bi version of Windows 7, so in reality they are only ever capable of using about 3 Gig of this available memory, a good example of miss-selling a product.

However the later 64 bit version can use all of this 4 Gig of Ram so can in theory run more programmes at any one time. This is fine if you are into gaming, or using heavily graphic dependant programs with lots of windows all open at the same time, but most people do not do this.

Most 32 bit programmes will still run under 64 bit systems, but some things will require the installation of a new 64 bit driver and if the device is old, it may not have one available. So the device may not work. Virtually all equipment that says “Windows 7 compatible” will be OK with either 32 or 64 bit systems.