Browsers

Due to various stuff I havn't yet purchased a new PC ,  in fact I've just been re-reading your various advices to remind me of the spec I need to buy.     However    I've just installed a new browser as its a constant waiting game these days with Firefox  and Chrome ....example :-  3 mins to open this Forum ...same to open  BT email  and Word has become erratic .

So I'm trying Opera  and in the last few mins it seems ....(to me)  ..very quick .

Just opened Amazon ....10 secs  , usually 2 mins .

Here's an idea Deke,

Get yourself an external hard drive,

Save all your files to it that you need to keep,

Get yourself a notebook, and write down all the programmes that you need to use,

Then,

Completely re-install your OS, it seems as if its totally over-run by bloatware, 

A whole new install might just speed the whole show up 

I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but as above, it's all the lettuced you don't want that is making your computer slow, not the age of it.

Lurch said:

I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but as above, it's all the lettuced you don't want that is making your computer slow, not the age of it.

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That's what I was getting at Lurch,

So is it worth a try then,? 

Lurch said:

lettuced

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sigh. This is pidgeon-poop. I get the sweary word replacer thing, but ffs at least use words that don't make the tango'd sentence complete tango'd Radishes.

steptoe said:

So is it worth a try then,? 

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Certainly is.

Hhhm  I think I'm probably  coming across as an idiot with this  ,  thing is , anyone  of my age has no experience of what can & cannot be done with computers .  The OS is Vista, which I'm told is lettuce and it has been abandoned by MS  ...a great deal of  programmes  "Not responding"    ...often " Windows Explorer is not responding " 

I don't even know what Windows Explorer is FFS ...what the hell does that do ?  

But I take your point about an external hard drive.   

Evans Electric said:

The OS is Vista, which I'm told is lettuce and it has been abandoned by MS

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You can install whatever you want on the laptop. I have a couple of old Vista laptops, but because Vista is total garbage I have Windows 7 on them instead.

Obviously when I say you can install whatever you want, I mean you can have installed whatever you like!

Evans Electric said:

I don't even know what Windows Explorer

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Basically the desktop. Windows Explorer (or explorer.exe) actually runs all the current programs and tasks, so literally everything that you are seeing/doing now is being run in explorer. If that keeps failing, it is basically just courgetteed. Even re-installing Vista would be better than nothing, but the biggest PITA with Windows is that they have slightly different versions of each OS so it's not as easy as insert disk and click OK. I often give up and grab my illegal pirated bootleg copy of Windows and use that, works first time every time!

Can someone phone Deke pretending to be Microsoft and log in to his pc via a remote desktop connection and get rid of all the useless junk? 

I know someone that has an OEM W7 disc.

My Luddite chippy mate was forever bringing me his Vista laptop to "fix". 

Gave up in the end and put Zorin OS on it. It's Linux but so like XP/7 it might as well be. Unless you want to run say AutoCAD there's nothing not to like about it. It'll even run MS Office. 

(Not tbh as quick as Ubuntu on which it's based I guess because of the Windows like front end).

But if my mate can get on with it anyone can!

Re browsers for old PC's on old OS's.

I used to use Opera, but updated a year ago to the latest version. It was carp. Not only was it slow, it kept crashing.  Strike that one off the list.  I used Firefox for a while but that is so memory hungry it almost ground to a halt.  I can't recall the exact issues with Chrome but that was no good either.

Then I found Pale Moon.  It's based on the Firefox engine, but seems to run much faster and use a lot less memory. I have been using it for several months now with no issues (other than it took a while to get flash player and a pdf viewer to work initially)  For XP and Vista you need to look in the archive and install version 26.5, then turn auto updates off. Later versions of Pale noon won't work on XP or Vista.

Blue Duck said:

Can someone phone Deke pretending to be Microsoft and log in to his pc via a remote desktop connection and get rid of all the useless junk? 

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I get those lovely guys from India offering to that every day  Ducky.     They'd never rip me off 'cos they'd get the programmes to open . 

Onoff said:

My Luddite chippy mate was forever bringing me his Vista laptop to "fix". 

Gave up in the end and put Zorin OS on it. It's Linux but so like XP/7 it might as well be. Unless you want to run say AutoCAD there's nothing not to like about it. It'll even run MS Office. 

(Not tbh as quick as Ubuntu on which it's based I guess because of the Windows like front end).

But if my mate can get on with it anyone can!

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My thanks for all that info .     Its not laptop Lurch , thats beyond all hope I think , Win 10 finished it off.

This is my desktop ,  which at the moment has become much faster using this Opera Browser    ( remember I would click to open the Forum , then pick up my guitar while it gurgled away wading through treacle)  

No its definitely time to upgrade ...I need 8 GB  RAM ...HDD 1TB...CPU i3 to i5  ..

The one I have was 1GB  RAM when I bought it , being assured that that was what I needed  ( I now know better thanks to you guys)  , I upped it to  4GB .   

Deke,

this is my everyday computer

*-cpu
description: CPU
product: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13GHz
vendor: Intel Corp.
physical id: 400
bus info: cpu@0
slot: Microprocessor
size: 1867MHz
capacity: 2133MHz
width: 64 bits
clock: 1066MHz






certainly not a core i3 or i5 , and runs happily on 4G RAM

plays videos great , but I did put a bit better graphics card in, but nothing massively great or expensive.

Thanks Stepps ,   a lot of that goes over my head TBH  .    Graphics card is for games  I think ,  ?  which I rarely do as they give me headaches.   All that rapid eye movement I think. 

OnOff is sending me some copy discs Ubutu ETc to try in the laptop ...if I can get it working again , I've not looked at it since the great black out . 

However thanks again . 

Evans Electric said:

Thanks Stepps ,   a lot of that goes over my head TBH  .    Graphics card is for games  I think ,  ?  which I rarely do as they give me headaches.   All that rapid eye movement I think. 

OnOff is sending me some copy discs Ubutu ETc to try in the laptop ...if I can get it working again , I've not looked at it since the great black out . 

However thanks again . 

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not just for games Deke, I dont play them either (except space invaders etc on my machine), even a basic cheap card like I have, £20 iirc, (which would probably be useless for games anyway) can help take a load off the main processor chip when watching videos, or youtube,

I think thats how they work anyway, it has its own "RAM" so doesnt need as much of the computers RAM, and also has its own "basic" onboard processor

OK  I'm logging that away for future. 

steptoe said:

I think thats how they work anyway, it has its own "RAM" so doesnt need as much of the computers RAM, and also has its own "basic" onboard processor

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That's pretty much it. It's not so much about having the latest all singing all dancing whizzy fast graphics but more about just taking the load off the main processor and memory. None of my PC's are a great spec, they are all dual core around 2-2.5Ghz with 4 or 8GB memory. They all have a random 512GB graphics card in (basically whatever was on offer at ebuyer at the time so you'd be looking at probably 1or 2GB cards now).

I use them for day to day stuff, they all drive 2 or 3 monitors  and they also do AutoCAD, Visual Studio, Photshop etc without struggling. Certainly no brand new computers needed just for looking on the internet. I am 100% certain the issue is the OS, partly Vista being generally poor but also it just being clogged and knackered. Shoving the restore disk in and resintalling would make a huge difference. Sticking an Ubuntu disk in would be even better if you don't need it for anything other than internet/email/office.

If you can persuade the laptop to boot I'd install Linux and run it side by side with the desktop. See how that goes - you may not need to upgrade, yet.

cheers, Paul

I just had the keyboard off the lappy ,  what appears to  be the HDD seemed a bit slack as I wiggled it  (Technical term)  so unplugged it , plugged it back in , seemed a better fit .  

Then spent an hour trying to reattach the various ribbon plugs ...I presume they have a 3 year old child with tiny hands to assemble those things ! 

Long story short ...it still gives 7 beeps and sod all else.