Windows 7 - free/cheap upgrade to Windows 10?

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  • DoaM
    DoaM Posts: 11,863 Forumite
    First Post First Anniversary Name Dropper Photogenic
    https://www.acronymfinder.com/HDD.html
  • EveryWhere
    EveryWhere Posts: 3,249 Forumite
    randm wrote: »
    it's a dell dimension 5150. (what is a hdd??)

    The spinning magnetic disk storage method currently installed within your PC.
    Imagine it like an old automatic record player that takes time to get the arm to the place on the record that you would like to play.

    A new solid state drive is like an advanced form of your USB Flash drive/SD Card etc.

    It is much faster and more robust as there are no moving parts. Your old PC will take on a new lease of life. It will start up in seconds, rather than minutes.

    But on such an old device, don't bother to spend much more than £25, say on a 240/250 GB SSD. perhaps even less for a 120GB SSD.

    Probably better to spend £50 on a more powerful PC Tower unit.
  • mgfvvc
    mgfvvc Posts: 1,179 Forumite
    First Post First Anniversary Name Dropper
    DonnySaver wrote: »
    I would NEVER buy another MS machine again. IF I could it afford I would buy a Mac....but I can't so I'm stuck with my crap Windows 10 machine for now.


    Have you tried Linux Mint?
  • randm
    randm Posts: 491 Forumite
    First Post First Anniversary Combo Breaker
    EveryWhere wrote: »
    The spinning magnetic disk storage method currently installed within your PC.
    Imagine it like an old automatic record player that takes time to get the arm to the place on the record that you would like to play.

    A new solid state drive is like an advanced form of your USB Flash drive/SD Card etc.

    It is much faster and more robust as there are no moving parts. Your old PC will take on a new lease of life. It will start up in seconds, rather than minutes.

    But on such an old device, don't bother to spend much more than £25, say on a 240/250 GB SSD. perhaps even less for a 120GB SSD.

    Probably better to spend £50 on a more powerful PC Tower unit.

    our pc takes around 20 minutes to be usable, even with only a couple of start ups, and most other stuff turned off from booting. I did add in extra ram some yrs ago with the help of someone on this forum.
    Is your £50 spend on a second hand / refurbished tower? and how do i know if our monitor and keyboard are compatible? also how do i measure power??( to get a more powerful tower).
    thank you.:A
  • JJ_Egan
    JJ_Egan Posts: 20,281 Forumite
    First Anniversary Name Dropper First Post
    Measure power ??

    What power electric PSU Processor Memory drive .
    20 mins to be usable is 99% of the time due to junk on the PC .
    Monitor keyboard depends upon what sort of connector .
  • that
    that Posts: 1,532 Forumite
    edited 15 June 2019 at 3:34PM
    randm wrote: »
    i have a similar question, i went from xp, to windows 7, so our pc is quite old, microsoft is not recommending loading windows 10 onto an old computer but says it is better on a new pc, is this just a marketing ploy??.
    The majority of the components have probably been upgraded by now. Your usage seems to be on the lighter side, so it still may work for you, or may need an ssd.

    best to post the specs of your pc including ram, disk size and either make and model, or motherboard details.

    if money is an issue and you want to have a play with something else, try the live mx Linux CD, and since you can run from it, you can try it without installing it, but if you install it it will overwrite your disk.
  • EveryWhere
    EveryWhere Posts: 3,249 Forumite
    edited 15 June 2019 at 7:02PM
    that wrote: »
    The majority of the components have probably been upgraded by now. Your usage seems to be on the lighter side, so it still may work for you, or may need an ssd.

    best to post the specs of your pc including ram, disk size and either make and model, or motherboard details.

    if money is an issue and you want to have a play with something else, try the live mx Linux CD, and since you can run from it, you can try it without installing it, but if you install it it will overwrite your disk.

    They did. In post #21. Best to spend the cash on a new Tower unit, such as the one below, for less than £50.

    Compare;

    2a.png

    1a.png

    Time to scrap the old PC.
  • EveryWhere
    EveryWhere Posts: 3,249 Forumite
    randm wrote: »
    our pc takes around 20 minutes to be usable, even with only a couple of start ups, and most other stuff turned off from booting. I did add in extra ram some yrs ago with the help of someone on this forum.
    Is your £50 spend on a second hand / refurbished tower? and how do i know if our monitor and keyboard are compatible? also how do i measure power??( to get a more powerful tower).
    thank you.:A

    Twenty minutes is madness. Even my twelve year laptop takes around half a minute, but that is with an SSD. With it's original HDD, it was painful to watch.
    But twenty minutes is wholly unacceptable.
    The problem is a combination of a very poor central processing unit(CPU) and the old and slow mechanical storage. The CPU in my twelve year old laptop is actually more powerful than what you have in your PC.

    £50 will cover a second hand tower unit. With an SSD fitted, you will have startup and usability times of considerably under a minute.

    Can you afford to spend anything? If you can, how much would you like to spend?

    Something like this is eight times more powerful than your current PC; https://www.encore-pc.co.uk/hp-prodesk-400-g1-mt-pentium-g3220-3-00ghz-4gb-ram-250gb-hdd-grade-c Under £50 with the 10% discount code offered

    The good thing about devices made for business, rather than the consumer market, is that they are designed for easy servicing and will have comprehensive diagrams and instructions available for doing so.
    http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c03997041 for the PC above
    You can fit an SSD for £17 to £25 and keep the already fitted mechanical drive for data storage.
    So you can have 1 x 120 + 1 x 250GB or 2 x 250 GB

    Examples here;

    https://www.mymemory.co.uk/integral-120gb-p-series-5-sata-iii-ssd-drive-560mb-s.html
    https://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/ct120bx500ssd1
    https://www.mymemory.co.uk/integral-240gb-p-series-5-sata-iii-ssd-drive-560mb-s.html
    https://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/ct240bx500ssd1


    You can continue to use your old keyboard and monitor. Though you can find old flat screen monitors for free or very close to it.


    It's probably worth mentioning that the above device, even without an SSD fitted, would be a massive improvement over what you have anyway.
  • AndyPix
    AndyPix Posts: 4,847 Forumite
    Name Dropper First Anniversary First Post Photogenic
    randm wrote: »
    our pc takes around 20 minutes to be usable,


    Run this on it immediately ..


    https://www.malwarebytes.com/mwb-download/thankyou/


    And then this ..


    https://www.malwarebytes.com/adwcleaner/


    Both are free - you should be able to halve that boot time, at least
  • randm
    randm Posts: 491 Forumite
    First Post First Anniversary Combo Breaker
    edited 17 June 2019 at 12:41PM
    AndyPix wrote: »
    Run this on it immediately ..


    https://www.malwarebytes.com/mwb-download/thankyou/


    And then this ..


    https://www.malwarebytes.com/adwcleaner/


    Both are free - you should be able to halve that boot time, at least

    i do use ccleaner and avast antivirus. also defrag. i had to remove the latest update of malwarebytes as it was causing problems.
    i will give the 2 above a go. i have a problem with page unresponsive if i go on there too soon !!!!
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