Downloading songs onto computer-does this slow the computer?

Floozie

I am a technophobe so not exactly up to speed on computer knowledge so please be gentle with probably what to most people is an obvious answer.
My other half downloads music onto our computer which is 11 years old, he has around 500 songs downloaded. Can this be a reason why our computer is so slow now or is it due to the age of the computer?
Any advice would be great.
Thanks

gb12345

Floozie wrote: »

I am a technophobe so not exactly up to speed on computer knowledge so please be gentle with probably what to most people is an obvious answer.
My other half downloads music onto our computer which is 11 years old, he has around 500 songs downloaded. Can this be a reason why our computer is so slow now or is it due to the age of the computer?
Any advice would be great.
Thanks

Simply having the songs stored on the HD won't be slowing the PC up, unless you have something like Windows Indexer running.

It is more likely a combination of the age of the computer and the fact that todays programs are more resource hungry than those from a decade ago.

Which operating system are you running and what do you use the computer for?

JJ_Egan

Usual story is that they download everything to the desktop .

jje

somersethillbilly

Follow Closed's excellent guide here
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2436849

waddler_8

Using a P2P File sharing client to download music?

What "technophobe's" don't often realise that P2P networks are a major conduit for malware.

Banacek

Have you defragged your hardrive recently?

Deneb

Floozie wrote: »

My other half downloads music onto our computer which is 11 years old

Try downloading some more recent music, it might be faster.

Im_just_careful

Deneb wrote: »

Try downloading some more recent music, it might be faster.

Very good !

Back to the original question, unless the hard disk is now very full (less than 10% free) the problem is more likely to be lack of memory (RAM) than anything else.

The speed up your PC guides are excellent but RAM is cheap and easy to fit.

Try the Crucial memory scanner http://www.crucial.com/systemscanner/

If you are running Windows XP, the closer you can get to 2GB of RAM the better performance will be. If you have 256MB or 512MB of RAM and can't fit more you need to follow the speed up your PC guide.

Floozie

gb12345 wrote: »

Simply having the songs stored on the HD won't be slowing the PC up, unless you have something like Windows Indexer running.

It is more likely a combination of the age of the computer and the fact that todays programs are more resource hungry than those from a decade ago.

Which operating system are you running and what do you use the computer for?

It is a Microsoft XP system and we use it for internet, email, doing a few spreadsheets and word documentshe has some games on the computer as well.