Is my PC past it?

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vibrantcolour

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My PC is starting to feel sluggish again, i'd reformatted it just before Christmas :S

It is:
Dell Inspiron 531 - AMD Athlon Dual core 2.6ghz 5000+
3Gb RAM
500gb HDD
ATI Radeon X1300

Vista Ultimate

2x 19" screens

Its mainly Firefox, Fireworks and Quark that sort of feel a bit sluggish really?

Do i need to upgrade - i bought it in Oct 07???
 
It's twice as good as my system...and mine still runs like a dream :lol: Must be software issues!
 
Yeah - i think its Vista, but i don't want to let that go because Media Center i use on a daily basis and is far better than on XP.


Grr
 
I'm on Vista too, x64 though... It is occasionally sluggish but only if I'm running Adobe stuff etc, probably due to only having 1GB of RAM...I really should upgrade!
 
you could turn off the fancy jingly vista bits to see if it helps any
 
Your graphics card is a bit lame (especially for driving dual screens) and you could possibly look at upgrading your processor to the best that will fit in your motherboard but otherwise it is not too bad.

Yes, you may be heading towards the point where you are going to want to upgrade. If your Dell uses a standard ATX motherboard you could possibly upgrade your motherboard, processor and ram too otherwise its a new base unit.

Just as an example Scan have a Nvidia 9500 GT 1Gb graphics card at £45 http://www.scan.co.uk/product.aspx?ProductId=26200

If your motherboard is AM2 as I suspect then the best you can stick in it is the Athlon 64 6000+ dual 3GHz at about £65
 
Drive indexing is a major cause of " sluggish feel" in vista (also XP later service packs )

If you dont use the search function much then turn off drive indexing.

My computer > right click and properties on your hard drive and untick "index this drive for faster searching"
Or start>run type"services.msc" and in the box that pops up disable windows search service
 
ok many thanks.

Yep, i've got all the fancy bits turned off, and it is a standard AM2 board. I guess the GFX card should be my first point then??

Would the jump from 5000+ to 6000+ be worth it? I also thought AM2 was Phenom capable, or is this not the case?

I also need a second HDD, because this one only has 30gig left...


Now i do use Vista's search facility quite regularly - would there be a way of setting this to Low priority and would it help?
 
Try running something like ccleaner, it will remove all the crap and tmp files on your machine which is likely to be slowing it down. Also defrag your drives etc. Just a bit of general maintance should get your machine the way it used to be... Also disable all the program you dont need on startup.
 
vibrantcolour said:
3Gb RAM
Click to expand...
Three? Three?!

See if you can find another 1GB stick on the cheap and make it up to four. It'll help.

vibrantcolour said:
Yep, i've got all the fancy bits turned off, and it is a standard AM2 board. I guess the GFX card should be my first point then??
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No, not really. You've not said anything about playing games and that GPU ought to be sufficient for basic Windows use.

vibrantcolour said:
Would the jump from 5000+ to 6000+ be worth it?
Click to expand...
No.

vibrantcolour said:
I also thought AM2 was Phenom capable, or is this not the case?
Click to expand...
Phenom is AM2+ and will operate in an AM2 motherboard but only with HyperTransport 2.0. It wouldn't make much difference anyway.

vibrantcolour said:
I also need a second HDD, because this one only has 30gig left...
Click to expand...
And there's the source of some, if not all, of your sluggishness.

Get yourself a new HD and pick something like the Samsung Spinpoint F1 320GB for speed or the F1 1TB for storage space.
 
First thing to do is uninstall unnecessary programs, then run "msconfig" and disable unnecessary start up items, then maybe run "services.msc" (be carefulwith this one).
I also use iolo system mechanic to clean windows.
 
I've got a Samsung 500gb in it, a Spinpoint HD501LJ if that makes any difference. I'll do some cleanup etc and see what difference it makes - considering i only reformatted before Christmas.

And no, i don't play games. The programs that get the most use are:
- Fireworks
- Media Center
- iTunes
- Dreamweaver
- Quark
- Ms Office 2007
- Photoshop
- Digital Photo Professional
- Illustrator
 
strobemonkey said:
First thing to do is uninstall unnecessary programs, then run "msconfig" and disable unnecessary start up items, then maybe run "services.msc" (be carefulwith this one).
Click to expand...
I'm sorry, but that's the worst possible advice to give in this situation.

This is no sleight on vibrantcolour, but if he/she had sufficient knowledge to start poking around is those places it wouldn't make sense for this thread to exist. PCs don't just start to run slowly out of choice. It's always by design. And if someone has suddenly found their PC to be 'sluggish' it's usually because of how they're using it, not because of something you can simply switch off or do without.

vibrantcolour said:
I've got a Samsung 500gb in it, a Spinpoint HD501LJ if that makes any difference. I'll do some cleanup etc and see what difference it makes - considering i only reformatted before Christmas.
Click to expand...
Ah, but it's not an F1. Your new HD, if you buy one, ought to be.

You could go really old-fashioned and try a defrag*.

vibrantcolour said:
And no, i don't play games. The programs that get the most use are:
Click to expand...
Then your graphics card is fine. No need to upgrade.

EDIT: *Assuming you've switched the automatic defrag off. Do check the time of operation though as it might be this that you're finding to 'slow' down your PC.
 
If you want windows to be really snappy but don't care what it looks like put it in performance mode.
Right click my computer > properties
choose advanced system settings from the left hand panel
select the advanced tab, in the performance box click the settings button.
now select adjust for best performance, click apply

It`ll make it look like windows 2000 but will be very snappy
 
glitch said:
I'm sorry, but that's the worst possible advice to give in this situation.

This is no sleight on vibrantcolour, but if he/she had sufficient knowledge to start poking around is those places it wouldn't make sense for this thread to exist. PCs don't just start to run slowly out of choice. It's always by design. And if someone has suddenly found their PC to be 'sluggish' it's usually because of how they're using it, not because of something you can simply switch off or do without.
Click to expand...

:'( I agree.
 
vibrantcolour said:
......

I also need a second HDD, because this one only has 30gig left...

.........
Click to expand...

I think that may well be a factor in your sluggish problem.

Stick on another HDD, as per glitch, then move some of your stuff across.

I always work with at least 10% of my HDD free.

Also set up your Scratch Disk for Photoshop etc. on the new drive.
 
Before you do that, check that you can actually connect another drive to your motherboard. I.e. that you've got a SATA connection free.

Yours wouldn't be the first Dell I've seen where the upgrade path had been somewhat curtailed.
 
To be fair the cpu that is in there is a pretty good chip. With a new motherboard you could overclock the badboy to 3.2-3.3ghz easily. That would add a bit more punch. Then just a new graphics card!
 
You can get a 1TB SATA drive for £70 from online stores.

Also, download and run CCleaner (www.ccleaner.com). This allows you to clean your PC up a bit and get rid of a lot of the bloat that may be running. It also allows you to see what loads on startup and you can disable stuff to see if that helps.

That is an AGP card I believe so you will struggle if you decide to upgrade it anyway, best bet would be to look at second hand cards.

Also, how many services are running in the background?
 
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