Boss has asked me to sort his snail pace pc out, upgrade or new??

gtir666 · 20 Jun 2006 at 19:34

My boss, well my bosses boss to be excact has asked me to sort is mega slow (takes approx 10mins to boot!) pc out, not sure to advise on upgrading or just build a new one. It is running loads apps, internet all at the same time. It takes a good minute or two for ie to load with nothing else running!

Brief spec as obviously hes a busy man only had time to quickly run cpuid to see basic specs:

Fujitsu siemens mini tower purchased about a year ago for approx £800quid :eek:

Skt 478 micro atx mobo, from what i could tell its basic of the basic.
P4 2.8ghz cpu
256mb ddr pc2700 <--- i know a lot of the problems for slow running lye here!

This all i know of the spec, im not confident that just upgrading the memory will speed it up enough.

Problem with going new is, it runs various software etc that have been installed and setup by peeps from companies eg, phone management system, dealer managment system etc. And cost needs to be low due to the fact it was only purchased around a year ago.

What do you guys reckon?

Messiah Khan · 20 Jun 2006 at 19:49

Depends what your budget is, but I would be inclined to suggest to buy a new one, and maybe keep the harddrive etc.

Darkwave · 20 Jun 2006 at 19:49

Kind of odd, it doesn't actually seem like a terrible system to me from the specs, at least not for just doing work on. Can't really explain why a system like that would crawl so much without anything running.

I'm assuming you've done the usual maintainence; Defragging, scandisk, antivirus, antispyware, and stuff like that?

lee87 · 20 Jun 2006 at 19:52

I agree with Exsomnis, it looks like a fine system for doing work on. As you said he runs a lot of apps I would just upgrade to 1GB ram, this should speed the system up a lot.

squiffy · 20 Jun 2006 at 19:54

Fresh install. Sounds like it has loads of spyware, it shouldn't take 10 minutes to boot up. 256MB in XP is enough for light work, although 512MB is ideal. You could upgrade to 1GB though.

basmic · 20 Jun 2006 at 20:32

You don't mention anything about the harddrive - ie: make/model/size of it.

It's a beefy enough system. It just sounds as though it could do with lots more RAM, and give the existing install a tidying up - ie: delete temp files, remove unwanted programs, remove unwanted startup items, regclean and defrag.

tim_enchanter · 20 Jun 2006 at 21:13

Yeah I would say the mobo and cpu are a fine base for the system, would second the recommendation to get a gig of ram.
A fresh installation would also be a good thing.
That is probably all it needs.

gtir666 · 20 Jun 2006 at 22:33

Ive a 256mb pc2700 stick lying around ill shove in it and then do the norm defrag etc to see if it helps it. Maybe get some more specs.

Anybody else think that spec is 800quids worth

squiffy · 20 Jun 2006 at 22:35

Check disc for lost clusters, corruption etc. Also run anti-virus, spy/adware, delete temp folders, corrupted files (usually .CHK in root) then defrag. If you don't want to do a fresh install.

gtir666 · 20 Jun 2006 at 22:39

Thinking about it, can any of you guys reccomend progrms for certain tasks.

Sorry never had any one comp running long enough to worry bout cleaning it up lol :rolleyes:

Energize · 20 Jun 2006 at 23:21

add another 512mb ram and reformat. Add anti-spyware programs, problem sorted.

trojan698 · 21 Jun 2006 at 00:00

Yeah more ram should do the trick. As for recommended programs.. Try - spybot, adaware, an antivirus such as AVG (free.grisoft.com) or avast. tunexp is also very good. Some people may recommend a registry cleaner although I personally have never noticed any benefit from using one. All those progs are available for free btw.

uvarvu · 21 Jun 2006 at 07:44

I use the crap cleaner - http://www.ccleaner.com. I thought I was pretty good when it came to maintaining my pc until this tool found another 500mb of crap to delete!

Stelly · 21 Jun 2006 at 08:33

lee87 said:
I agree with Exsomnis, it looks like a fine system for doing work on. As you said he runs a lot of apps I would just upgrade to 1GB ram, this should speed the system up a lot.

I agree

Stelly

samcat · 21 Jun 2006 at 08:33

My suggestion, take it to 1 gb of ram (cheap enough at the mo) and purchase a new Hard disk... That way a reinstall can be done on the new hard disk, fully updated and complete with antivirus/spyware/firewall etc... Then plug the old drive back in and perform virus/spyware scans, recover his data from it onto the new drive... Then format it and use it for the swapfile/temp files.

Cya,
Sam C

jbloggs · 21 Jun 2006 at 08:52

gtir666:

This is also supposed to be a good Clean up utility, seems to get what CCleaner (as good as it is) misses.

kidloco · 21 Jun 2006 at 09:04

as a few have mentioned before

New Hard drive

1 gig of memory

That spec and problem is nearly identical to a work mates that I recently sorted, 2 simple changes made the world of differance

gtir666 · 21 Jun 2006 at 20:57

cheers guys,

just to update i put the 256mb stick i had lying about in, defragged, disk clean upped and it helped a little bit.

Its got a herendous setup, aside from the fact its only got two slots for ram, its onboard graphics is using a chunk of it. And even worst still its got one them horrible 'the psu cools the cpu' kind of setups which i dont like the look of atall.

Just to top it off, my oldmans got my car whilst his is in for an mot and the car i borrowed tonight broke down :mad:

Not related atall but im annoyed and thought id throw it into the mix

Scott Salisbury · 21 Jun 2006 at 21:39

Bung in another stick of memory or one stick of 512mb, a new hard drive and start a fresh. It will be as good as new.

That's what I would do anyway.

basmic · 21 Jun 2006 at 22:34

If you've got 2x 512mb sticks laying around, plonk them in and say to your boss "if you pay £70 (?) for 1gb of RAM, this is how much faster it will be".

What size is the hard-drive? Perhaps it's only a 5,400rpm drive - in which case a 7,200rpm one with 8mb of cache would make a massive difference.