New Computer advise?

womble374

We current have a PC which we must have had about 5 years. Its starting to get really slow, so we thought it was time to look at getting a new one. There is so much out there we have no idea where to start. Ours is a Packard Bel, Intel Celeron, with 512MB of RAM, and it refers to a CP2 2.70HGZ - whatever all that means lol.

Anyway what type of thing should we be looking for? We use the internet alot, and Microsoft with teenagers, etc. Also games etc.

Not sure what sort of price, so any help gratefully received.

womble374

Or I should have said, is there something we could do to speed it up, etc. If so how do I find out what information I need from my pc first?

closed

It could be infections

http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam-download.php

it could be running short of ram.

http://www.crucial.com/uk/systemscanner/index.aspx

Reinstalling windows (after backing up data) will put it back to peak performance.

You could try this:

http://www.malwarebytes.org/StartUpLite.exe

and post a hjt log

http://go.trendmicro.com/free-tools/hijackthis/HijackThis.exe

DCFC79

womble374 wrote: »

We current have a PC which we must have had about 5 years. Its starting to get really slow, so we thought it was time to look at getting a new one. There is so much out there we have no idea where to start. Ours is a Packard Bel, Intel Celeron, with 512MB of RAM, and it refers to a CP2 2.70HGZ - whatever all that means lol.

Anyway what type of thing should we be looking for? We use the internet alot, and Microsoft with teenagers, etc. Also games etc.

Not sure what sort of price, so any help gratefully received.

5 years old, only thing you could do is maybe upgrade the ram but as its 5 yrs old the ram may not be available or be expensive, have you done a defrag and a disk clean up.If you were to do as closed says you might want to transfer any files/important stuff to a portable hard drive so its safe and wont be erased

mjm3346

512MB of ram is small by todays standards, 1GB (twice as much as 512MB) is probably the least you get now and 2GB upwards is fairly standard. You may be able to tweak your current performance but newer programmes tend to use a lot of memory which slows things down.
If you were to replace have you a figure in mind to spend? For £350 or less there are lots of machines available with at least 2GB RAM, 320GB hard drives, 19" Monitors etc.

globalds

£379 will get you a fair bit
http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.207-6320.aspx
Compaq CQ5223 Desktop PC with 18.5" PC Monitor (AMD Athlon™II x4 620, 3GB, 320GB, Windows 7 Premium)

This is a quad core processor ..And although no graphics card would be a nice start with an option to stick a £40 card in later if the kids start trying to run more graphics intensive games.
I think you would notice a difference though.

macman

I'd start with a defrag, disk cleanup and CCleaner (all free), then put in at least another 512MB of RAM. Probable cost £25-30.
If you've done no maintenance on it in 5 years then the above should make it run vastly better for minimal outlay.

womble374

Thanks all, will have a good read through and give a few things a go!!