I NEED a new computer ...advice needed!

My daughter (IT student) has helped me out tremendously with giving my old computer a longer life expectancy but it is dying a painful death once again and it is time to put it and me out of our misery! It takes minutes to go from one computer screen to another, it takes hours to do very slight edits on a photo! I just loaded slightly over a hundred photos and it took about a 1/2 hour and it takes forever to open one photo!!! When I use photoshop I have to wait and wait and wait for the computer to catch up with me constantly! Now I can't even use the internet without a constant "not responding" message! I'm going crazy ...I am not a patient person to begin with!

#1 - I have not one penny at the moment to spend on a computer!
#2 - I have no choice but to sell my 100-400mm to get a new computer :(

My thoughts ...sell the 100-400mm and buy a used 200mm 2.8 II once again and use the rest of the money for a computer. When I have additional cash available, buy an extender for the 200mm to give me more reach. If that doesn't leave me with enough, then my longest lens will be 150mm :( I can take out of my current computer the additonal RAM, hard drive, graphics card that I just bought for it and put it in the new computer if need be. I could also take out Windows 7 Professional and put it on the new computer so it has to run 64-bit.

So, any thoughts on the best bang for my buck computer I can get or the cheapest place to buy one from or the main things I should look for?? I need to be able to load, edit and multi-task without growing older waiting for the computer to do it and what good is any of the photo equipment I have left if I don't have a computer.

Denise

FYI - I should mention up until 2 days ago, my computer was running perfectly, no problems! Why all of a sudden it has decided to go at such a super slow, barely moving pace I can't figure out!

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Originally Posted by ddt0725

FYI - I should mention up until 2 days ago, my computer was running perfectly, no problems! Why all of a sudden it has decided to go at such a super slow, barely moving pace I can't figure out!

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Hey Denise,

don't decide too quickly I would say. If your pc worked fine up till two days ago there must be something wrong.
I don't know exactly what's wrong with it, but since it did work two days ago it's hard to believe you completely broke it.

I don't know your set-up, but it sounds like the RAM could be broke.
If you have multiple slots filled with RAM, try to remove all but one and check how it works. Do this with all the RAM-thingies you have.
It would be even better to check all individual RAM-thingies using Memtest86+. You will have to boot with this program and then it checks all the area's on your memory-thingies(no idea how you'd call them in English:p)

If it isn't the RAM, it could be numerous things. You could also take a screen-shot of the Task-manager while you're in Windows . See if certain things eat up all your RAM. Sometimes Anti-Virus or Malware can really slow down your pc.

This is just a start, but it might save you selling your camera-gear...
I'm pretty sure your daughter could do all this with her hands behind her back. Better yet, you could do it yourself:rolleyes:

Let me(us) know how it goes.

Edit: You could also start by trying Memtest86+. If there's something wrong with your RAM it will quickly show. After that you could do the testing on the separate RAM-thingies if you have more than one.

Denise, do a system restore, and restore the computer to a point about a week ago.

Sounds suspiciously like a virus/malware to me ... also scan the disk drive(s) with Windows security essentials or whatever anti-viral program you can.

I would try a restore, then run virus software as suggested before. Sounds like you have a bug.

I agree with the others, it sounds like a malware issue, or a broken automated update. I know someone who's computer became unusable after an automatic HP printer driver update... It took 10 minutes for the desktop to redraw. Every minute or two you'd see the mouse move. Completely and totally unusable, thanks to a printer driver.

Boot in safe mode, and run system restore. If you see an update from 2 or 3 days ago, I'd suspect that. Attempt to restore to before that update, and attempt to cancel any auto update that starts on boot-up and find a way to disable the auto update from recurring.

If you don't have automatic restore points, you may need to reinstall Windows to get it usable again.

If you have restore points, but there's nothing showing up in the last few days, it may be malware, or a driver update that doesn't trigger restore points. Figuring it out might not be easy. Perhaps find a bootable linux cd, and check for files that have been modified recently in the system directories.

Good luck.

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Originally Posted by Sheiky

Hey Denise,

don't decide too quickly I would say. If your pc worked fine up till two days ago there must be something wrong.
I don't know exactly what's wrong with it, but since it did work two days ago it's hard to believe you completely broke it.

I don't know your set-up, but it sounds like the RAM could be broke.
If you have multiple slots filled with RAM, try to remove all but one and check how it works. Do this with all the RAM-thingies you have.
It would be even better to check all individual RAM-thingies using Memtest86+. You will have to boot with this program and then it checks all the area's on your memory-thingies(no idea how you'd call them in English:p)

If it isn't the RAM, it could be numerous things. You could also take a screen-shot of the Task-manager while you're in Windows . See if certain things eat up all your RAM. Sometimes Anti-Virus or Malware can really slow down your pc.

This is just a start, but it might save you selling your camera-gear...
I'm pretty sure your daughter could do all this with her hands behind her back. Better yet, you could do it yourself:rolleyes:

Let me(us) know how it goes.

Edit: You could also start by trying Memtest86+. If there's something wrong with your RAM it will quickly show. After that you could do the testing on the separate RAM-thingies if you have more than one.

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Ram-thingies works for me! It's the only computer lingo I understand ...LOL! She just checked my RAM-thingies with Speccy and all was good! I told her the free anti-virus software that she re-installed the other day may be the problem. She had to re-install it because it kept shutting itself off. So then she just used Windows Task Manager to see how much RAM it was using and saw that it was using pretty much ALL of it!!!! So she uninstalled it just now. "IT" being AVG anti-virus program. She now installed Comodo, another free anti-virus program and is currently doing an initial scan. Even while it is doing the scan, I am able to type this and have been able to have multiple screens open and WOW!!! I have speed!!!

I am so glad I posted this and got such quick responses before putting my lens up for sale!!!! Thank you, thank you EVERYONE so much for the suggestions and getting us to further investigate the problem with the computer!! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the problem has been solved!!! I was able to type this at 70 wpm and my computer kept up with me ...LOL!

I am scrolling up and down the forum pages and flipping from screen to screen just for the sheer fun of it ....LOL! This ol' computer still has plenty of life left in it!!

Glad you are up and running again. Antivirus software is notorious for bogging down systems.

I ditched AVG something like 3 years ago when it started to bog down my system, and started dropped down in the rankings of effectiveness. "Avira AntiVir" and "Avast!" are both good free alternatives.

AVG hasn't been good for awhile. Crashes lots of systems, and more hackers hit it since it got big. Comodo is pretty light on resources and should do fine. It does sandboxing too which might create issues, but your IT can handle it.

I didn't know AVG moved down in the rankings. Kellie just tried to explain "sandboxing" to me, just looked at her with a blank expression and said you'll handle it for me, right? LOL! She had Avira and didn't like it so much but I will keep Avast! in mind if this doesn't continue to work. Right now though, my computer is running fantastic and I am thrilled with it!! I ran the initial scan and it didn't find anything so now I hope the program is just doing what it is suppose to do!

Just to kick into this one, on older computers I'd highly recommend Microsoft Security Essentials. It's very light on resource so doesn't slow your machine down at all.

It may have weaknesses in that it's made by the people who made the un-safe operating system :D but unless you download things from torrents or go on naughty websites it'll cover you.

The other thing to recommend whenever this happens is a program called Malware Bytes Anti Malware. It's not an antivirus, but it's a virus scanner and will remove pretty much any nasty you come across. So use MSE as your day-to-day "let it do it's thing" AV, and then run MBAM when you think you might have caught something, or just once a month or so.

So many people buy new computers when all they need is a bit of maintenance, so you're always better off asking some techies before ditching a slow machine.

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Originally Posted by ham

Just to kick into this one, on older computers I'd highly recommend Microsoft Security Essentials. It's very light on resource so doesn't slow your machine down at all.

It may have weaknesses in that it's made by the people who made the un-safe operating system :D but unless you download things from torrents or go on naughty websites it'll cover you.

The other thing to recommend whenever this happens is a program called Malware Bytes Anti Malware. It's not an antivirus, but it's a virus scanner and will remove pretty much any nasty you come across. So use MSE as your day-to-day "let it do it's thing" AV, and then run MBAM when you think you might have caught something, or just once a month or so.

So many people buy new computers when all they need is a bit of maintenance, so you're always better off asking some techies before ditching a slow machine.

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One other person recommended MSE but my daughter told me it is one of the top unsafe ones to use. Even her computer was hacked while using it. What I have going now is working pretty good, at least the computer is running 100x faster anyway but I will looked into the MBAM program as suggested.

When funds ever do become available it would be nice to get a new one but for now it looks like this old computer still has life left in it for what I need it to do! Keeping my fingers crossed that all continues to run smoothly!

Depends what she's referring to. They do safety tests on various sites once a month and I've never seen a consistent leader, they change as they each adapt their engines to suit the newest threats.

Put it this way, I look after about 20 PCs for friends and family, and only my mum has ever managed to get her machine infected when she clicked on an advert she shouldn't've clicked on. Which, to be honest, is user error.

I maintain that if you're sensible with a PC and don't do anything dubious with it, you could get away without AV...

If you don't want to use MSE, I'd try Avast. But it's a bit more resource hungry, and every 12months you have to play a game of "hunt the link to the free version" on their registration e-mail... :D

Good to hear your computer problems weren't that bad Denise. I was hoping you could understand my bad English, but thingie seemed to work;)

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Originally Posted by ham

Put it this way, I look after about 20 PCs for friends and family, and only my mum has ever managed to get her machine infected when she clicked on an advert she shouldn't've clicked on. Which, to be honest, is user error.

I maintain that if you're sensible with a PC and don't do anything dubious with it, you could get away without AV...

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It's still a game of chances. To be fair, I think if you have a good firewall and you are using the pc like you say, you chances of getting into trouble are very small. Still they exist. A few months back the most popular news website of the Netherlands (www.nu.nl) had placed a banner/commercial I think. It was only online for an hour before people noticed, but it had the Sinowal virus in it. In that little time it had infected a possible 100.000 computers. Normally this is a very safe site and I read it daily. With things like this you are pretty much srewed without an AV or good Firewall.

I have used MSE and Windows Firewall for a long time. Tried AVG after that and I liked it better, but it did slow down the pc noticeably. I now have bought BitDefender Total Security and I really like it. It's not expensive(30 euro/year), is very simple to understand and work with and gets good grades in the tests. But to be very honest it does slow down my photo-exporting a little bit. Non of the photo-editing is slowed down, but exporting from lightroom is definitely slower than it used to. Luckily still fast enough, but I just wanted to say that even with payed packages you can have these problems.

By the way if your girlfriend has a 14 year old brother that loves to play games without paying for them/cheating/hacking/downloading/doing pretty much all that god forbid and you'll have to take care of that pc... Good luck! Even without Admin rights and AVG installed he managed to screw things up with his "online friends who know how to work around all that". Luckily it all decreased quite a bit when I made a screenshot of all that he did and all that I had to repair and placed it as his background photo :rolleyes: