What happens to PC's when they get "slow"? (And how do I fix it?)

Our computers all consist of hand-me-down freebies that family has decided are too slow for them. And they are slow. My question is what has happened? A virus? Just old/outdated hardware? Aside from some pictures, I have nothing on them that would hurt my feelings to lose by just wiping it out and starting fresh. 

Main culprit is an HP all-in-one. Sometimes you cut it on and it sorta works, sometimes it's like nothing wants to ever load. And we're just talking web browsing or occasionally my wife trying to remotely view/edit medical charts (and that's still on the web, but it also needs "Citrix", and I'm not ashamed to say, I have no idea what that is or does). 

Any suggestions on how to try to salvage it? Or just toss it and wait for the next "gift" of a laggy computer?

What model hp?  

things do slow down over time but just trying to get a feel for how old a computer we are talking about. If it is old enough to still have a spinning hard drive replacing that with an ssd will speed it up a lot.

If you don't have programs on it that you can't reinstall wiping it and starting fresh tends to be a good option.  

In reply to moxnix :

Old, I think. 

Yeah, there's two ways it can be slow, from the software or the hardware.

Hardware is the easiest to figure out.   And things get slow because operating systems & software is always being updated and the baseline of what "average" is is always moving upwards so software developers don't worry so much if the latest version doesn't run well on 10+ year old hardware, a very small percentage of their users are using that anyway.  Sometimes this is caused by a specific problem due to, say, updating the operating system from major version to major version and it can be fixed by doing a clean installation at the latest version.  Occasionally you get lucky and there's one program that's consuming too much resource (memory, cpu cycles, etc.), and you can either figure it out by watching the task manager or just doing a clean install and you don't install that one program.

Since you have an All-In-One (of some sort), you most likely have a solid state hard drive (SSD) instead of a older style platter-drive already.  You may be out of hard drive space, though, and/or low on memory.   Newer programs just take more more memory space to even open than older programs.

But it could also be that often all-in-one solutions opt to go with the lower power processor, slower memory, and slower harddrive to keep heat down, so you're stuck trying to make a 3 cylinder geo metro keep up with modern highway speeds...

In reply to Spearfishin :

Oooh, good news!   Yes, all of the hardware is slow, but according to https://icecat.biz/us/p/hp/f3d46aa/pavilion-all-in-one+pcs-workstations-0888182121061-23-h024+touchsmart-21588831.html, your computer has an old platter drive & 8Gb of RAM. 

I'm guessing that you'll feel a massive improvement if you replace that with an SSD drive, everything will feel snappier. 

If you can load up SysInfo (hit the start menu, type in "sysinfo"), look under Components > Storage > Disks, and pull up the exact model of the harddrive.  Here's my computer for example:

I'm guessing you'll want something like this to replace it, but the exact model will let you know for sure (you need to know the interface type so it has the same plug):

Samsung Evo on Newgg

According to that first link, it looks like you use DDR3-1600mhz memory, so I'd grab 16Gb of something like this: 16 Gb G. Skill DDR3 1600Mhz on Newegg

Do that with a fresh install of windows and you'll probably be a lot happier.

That is, assuming, that the computer is worth a few hours of your time and $100 to you :)

That's a pretty old system.  Looks like it's got a very old AMD quad-core chip.  To put that into context, this is the benchmarking between that chip and the Core i3-14100 (which would be considered a pretty low-end chip that is currently available):

(Ignore the price one - since you can't really buy that older processor anymore, it's kind of irrelevant!)

You're not going to be able to install Win11 on that and even if you could install Win10, you're not going to enjoy the experience and that will only get you to about October before you're in a "no updates" scenario.  Win8 hasn't been supported for at least a year now, maybe 2, so hopefully it's not still running that.  That Radeon card is also somewhat worthless.  By comparison, the R7 240 is a $40 video card:

Maybe...  *maybe*...  if you put a slimmed-down desktop-focused linux distro on it, you might be able to have something that could do some web browsing and potentially run a Citrix client.  But I just don't think you're going to be happy with that.  A sub-$300 laptop like a low-end Acer Aspire is going to be a much better experience.

Citrix, by the way, is a VDI (virtual desktop interface) solution.  The Citrix client connects to the server that runs within the datacenter and displays a desktop.  Any applications that the user runs are actually being run on the Citrix server in the DC and the screen is presented over the network.  That means that all the "heavy lifting" is done by the server and all the data stays within the datacenter.  The Citrix client is simply presenting the screen and passing the input devices like the keyboard and mouse through.  You do need some GPU performance to draw the screen and some CPU and memory resources to decrypt/encrypt and manage the transport, but that's usually a lot less than is required to actually run the applications.  In this case, I think that 12 year old hardware is too light to even function as an effective thin terminal.

In reply to wae :

It's only old because the software companies make it that way.  If you need more memory and/or more hard drive, then the culprit is the operating system.  MS normally just adds stuff as opposed to replacing it, so even though updates are not needed, they are still called on, and that slows the process down.

If you take good care of your consumer electronics, they will still become obsolete, even though you never ask more of them than basic things like web surfing and some basic home work.

It's the only home devices we have that makes itself obsolete.

In reply to alfadriver :

While technically correct is always the best kind of correct, that's a bit of an oversimplification. 

If you were only ask that machine to do the things that existed in 2013, then, yes, there would be no speed difference.  And, yes, there have been cases of manufacturers (Apple) intentionally crippling older devices to nudge owners to update.  However, it's not that they're just throwing new features into Windows to do nothing more than chew up RAM and CPU cycles.  "Simple web browsing" has changed dramatically in the last decade with newer standards like HTML5.  People are accustomed to being able to see what the weather is going to be by just looking down at the taskbar.  Folks want some sort of security like running local firewalls and stronger encryption like TLS 1.3.  There are so many things that your computer is doing in the background, not because there's a cabal dedicated to slowing things down, but because Moore's law has been providing us with more and more computing power for fewer and fewer dollars so why not use it?

And, by the way, it's not just the home devices.  In fact, I'd argue that the datacenter is far more aggressive with planned obsolescence.  Most gear that you'll put in there has about a 5 year expected service life.  The normal plan was to sell the gear with 36 months of warranty pre-paid, make the 4th year pretty expensive, and then the 5th year was so expensive that it made more sense to just buy new.

In reply to wae :

Too bad it sucks so badly to transfer everything over to a new computer and even worse to do it every few years.

In reply to wae :

I get that there's more to browsing.  But it's still hardly gaming.  Or modeling.  The slow down to extra security may be real, but even before those got into place, the amount of wasteful "updates" that run even though they are not needed, the computer becomes a brick.  They slow down even before you get into what you want to do.  Sure, it's a simplification, but it's more of the problem than advanced browsing is.  I've had more than one computer run at near 90% before I even get into browsing.

But wasteful is wasteful.  Can't justify adding to a waste problem just because of Moore's theory.  BTW, if I spend $500 on a laptop 3 years ago, and a new more powerful one is $400, it's still better to spend $500 than $900.  And it's pretty pathetic that a 3 year old computer is so unwanted that re-use stores won't take them as even a person who has no money to spend can't make it work.

Given how many 30 year old cars are still running on their original ECU and that the average car on the road is 11 years old, hardware should not be a problem in terms of "wearing out".  Other than needing more space, what is "wearing out" in data centers?  

People think car's are planned obsolescence.  Yea...

In reply to VolvoHeretic :

What's so bad about plugging an external harddrive in and copying your pictures, videos, and files to it? 

It was annoying making old sata drives run over USB to get data back, but as long as the system isn't dead dead, transferring to USB to another system is just a time consumption game. 

Of course with tower computers I'd just install the old hard drive in the new body as a secondary drive. Windows made it fairly simple, although not entirely straight forward, to do that in the past. 

Venturing far from the original question, but this is my area of expertise, so...

Sometimes the answer to what is wearing out in the datacenter is simply "the recurring revenue stream of the OEM".  Renewing support agreements brings in revenue, but not like selling all-new gear does.  And don't get me started on -as-a-service since that exists primarily to keep you from owning anything and committing you to an MRC number.  That said, though, there are parts that just wear out.  Power supplies, fans, and hard drives are the main mechanical parts that are prone to failure.  Solid-state components will fail as well.  SSDs (NVMe, included) may not have have any moving parts, but they store data by "burning" bits into hardware.  Those bits can only be burned so many times and while the SSD will engage in wear-leveling to distribute the writes across all the available NANDs, eventually all of those "spots" will be used up and electrically useless.  Fun fact, though, we all expected the lifetime of the SSD to be exceptionally short, compared to spinning disk, but they've actually proven to be quite a bit more reliable in the average deployment.  But moving on from that, you have similar issues with other electronic components; they're getting hit with electricity constantly over time and eventually they just wear out.  None of those make the system noticeably slower, but they do cause outages.  The other reason for getting rid of "perfectly good gear" is that as you have more and more CPU and memory demands, data center floor tiles, power, and software licensing can get pretty expensive.  So if you can run your workloads on a fewer number of blades, you can license fewer cores, consume less power, and maybe even give back a floor tile or two.  Or at least use those resources for something else that will generate some revenue.  Hell, I can remember putting in storage arrays that took three floor tiles and 6 redundant pairs of L6-30s to provide less capacity and fewer IOPS than I can do with 2U and a bare portion of a couple 15amp circuits today.  Even back in "the day", we used to take out IBM 'frame storage with a Symmetrix and pay for the whole project with a just a portion of the power savings.

And, by the way, the concept of computers in cars wearing out is a huge concern of mine.  Something in my Saab's 30 year old ECU wore out and suddenly it wouldn't start one rainy evening at the White Castle.  I think it was Pete that had the story of a relatively modern S-class that was essentially mechanically totalled because the traction control computer gave up the ghost.  All these cars that have LCD monitors instead of an instrument cluster are going to get real interesting in about 20 years.  But at least the auto manufacturers are doing a good job of making all of those components standardized, well-documented, and easily repairable.  Oh wait.

In reply to wae :

So if I read that right, the computers are designed to "wear out."  As fast as the consumers are willing to pay for new ones.  Which mostly just adds to a huge pile of electrical waste that we can't deal with.

But it's really interesting that you are worried about a 30 year old Saab when you are replacing 3 year old computers on a regular basis.  It makes sense.  Hilarious that you think automakers should be held to a considerably higher standard than the computers you work with- can you even get parts for a 5 years old computer if they were even useful?  We used to get most of our computer parts from Motorola- maybe they should be responsible for their computers lasting 30 years or not.

What is actually wearing out on old cars are the soldering joints and the connectors- sometimes the failures do corrupt the memeory and system.  Of course, some are so small that it's not realistic to actually repair them.  But there's no reasonable expectation that a car company should replace 30 year old parts if you are ok with replacing computers so fast.  Or even make them standardized or well documented when laptops never have been.

Computers don't necessarily "wear out", although there are some components that do. Mostly mechanical components like fans, spinning rust drives etc.

The bigger issue is that as more powerful hardware becomes available, software makes use of it so when you upgrade to a later version of the software it suddenly feels less snappy than it used to. While there have been huge advances as to what you can do with web-based software, that does come at a pretty high cost when it comes to processing power and that's often why a still perfectly working computer feels like a three legged dog that's misfiring on most cylinders.

wae said:

In reply to alfadriver :

While technically correct is always the best kind of correct, that's a bit of an oversimplification. 

If you were only ask that machine to do the things that existed in 2013, then, yes, there would be no speed difference.  And, yes, there have been cases of manufacturers (Apple) intentionally crippling older devices to nudge owners to update.  However, it's not that they're just throwing new features into Windows to do nothing more than chew up RAM and CPU cycles.  "Simple web browsing" has changed dramatically in the last decade with newer standards like HTML5.  People are accustomed to being able to see what the weather is going to be by just looking down at the taskbar.  Folks want some sort of security like running local firewalls and stronger encryption like TLS 1.3.  There are so many things that your computer is doing in the background, not because there's a cabal dedicated to slowing things down, but because Moore's law has been providing us with more and more computing power for fewer and fewer dollars so why not use it?

This.

If you want to use a wayback machine to curate a list of sites that existing in 2013, download them, and browse them offline with a fresh Windows 8 install, it would probably perform just like it did 12 years ago.  But that doesn't really exist.  I'm fairly sure part of the reason this computer is perceived as slow is that its being asked to do modern tasks.

Its a double edged sword.  Not only is new content (even browsing) more demanding on the hardware, the hardware keeps getting faster and our frame of reference for what "slow" means is constantly redefined.

Its also worth noting that even in 2013, that was an absolute bottom dollar low-power laptop/mobile processor.  Even your low end mobile i3 was like 50% faster.

 

When you get to data center equipment, it comes down to the power bill.  Computer tech is still advancing at an exponential rate, and a machine that's 5 years old is so much slower than a new one that you rapidly reach the point where it's less expensive to replace it than it is to pay for the electricity to run and cool it.

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

When you get to data center equipment, it comes down to the power bill.  Computer tech is still advancing at an exponential rate, and a machine that's 5 years old is so much slower than a new one that you rapidly reach the point where it's less expensive to replace it than it is to pay for the electricity to run and cool it.

Even on the workstation side, if you're doing serious CAD/CAM work (I run a CAM contract programmer (shameless plug: https://www.vector-mfg.com )).   I plan the lifespan of a $4000+ laptop to be at max 5 years.   I've been doing this for 4 years now, and I'm about to replace my laptop.

If the average toolpath generates even 10% faster, and a file takes 10% less time to load, that's HOURS saved per week.  Every hesitation opening a file or dialog is a chance to get distracted working on the other file I already have open, etc.   For a full-time CAM programmer or CAD Engineer, I'll be saving ~$10k year in focused time if it can be a net +10% improvement in programming output, literally up to (more?) $20k/yr from an output perspective.    And I've seen sooo many companies "save" money by making their engineers and programmers use 10 year old computers!

I'm writing this comment while a toolpath generates, and it's been done for about a minute or two.....  :)

Either way, back to the OP, if it's worth ~$100 and a few hours of your time, you can make that computer feel a lot snappier with some more memory and a better drive.

But no, you can't improve the processor & video card of that computer any better than you can "easily" swap in a better engine into your 3 cylinder geo metro :)

If it's not worth $100 and a few hours of your time, I'd save up buy a decent computer instead of always starting out 8-10 years in the past. 

So, I'm hearing "just get a newer computer"?

We legitimately only use it to very occasionally browse the Internet, or when my wife needs chart access from home (which isn't all that often). Otherwise we just use our phones for most everything. I've pulled the newer hand-me-down all-in-one inside from the shop, so really just down a shop computer, at this point. Which was even less frequently used. 

In reply to alfadriver :

I'm tremendously confused by your response so I'm thinking that I didn't articulate my thoughts clearly.  I apologize for that - I'm a little distracted working on something else at the moment so I may not have written everything that I was thinking.  If I understand correctly, you made the point that you don't like that computers become so obsolete so quickly whereas an automobile that is 30 years old is still running down the road on that original hardware.  What I was trying to express in my reply was that a lot of the reasons for general-purpose computer hardware needing to be replaced have to do with being powered on and staying hot for 50,000+ hours at a time, the cost/benefit analysis of being able to save money on space, power, and licensing by leveraging more powerful systems, and that the demands that we, as consumers, make of the hardware grows over time.  My follow-on point to that was to express a concern that as our reliance on embedded computers in automobiles increases, there may be a decrease in the ability for those cars to experience the extremely long lifecycles that we've seen so far.  A concern which I thought you might share, because of your positive feelings towards cars lasting 30+ years combined with your negative feelings around the comparatively short life-span of computers.

In reply to Spearfishin :

I've had pretty good luck in the past with the Dell Outlet or getting lease returns/refurbs of "name brand" stuff on eBay/FBM.  I'd look for something that is capable of running Win11 which would put you at something from at least about 2018.  That would be a Core i3/i5/i7-8xxx or higher.  Those should hit the compatibility matrix from Microsoft and also have the TPM 2.0 which they are requiring for...  reasons.  You should be able to pick up something on the used market for not much more than the cost of a new SSD.

I know at some point Microsoft stops supporting their software, but why is that a problem? If it's still working just fine, why won't it continue to do so for many more years?

I have a computer in the shop that is used strictly for web browsing (looking up parts and such) or running Internet Radio, it's been down there for about 5 years already and still works just fine. Seems like if I'm not asking it to run a new cad/cam program or the like, it should just keep going?

One slight issue, I've worn the letters of many of the keys, and I am by no means a touch typist! 

MiniDave said:

I know at some point Microsoft stops supporting their software, but why is that a problem? If it's still working just fine, why won't it continue to do so for many more years?

It's all relative to the amount of effort Microsoft (and, well, everyone else in the software ecosystem) can put into testing various combinations and ensure that modern security practices can still be followed.  

Think of Windows/Mac/Linux/etc. as a chassis.   Anyone can buy that chassis and put whatever engine, interior, electronics, etc. they want on it.   Microsoft is building a chassis that supports all of the normal components that people would want to bolt on it.   Apple is the guys who provide only one chassis/engine/interior.   Linux is the wierdo in the garage with a grinder and a welder slapping a BBC into a Corvair chassis. :)

It's up to the guy who threw an engine in the chassis to provide the ECU to run it, right?  Same thing in Windows.  The people who make your sound card to play your internet radio are responsible for running it (called a Driver in software parlance).   That all needs wired in on top of the chassis.

At some point, people start demanding electric or hybrid cars.  The old chassis just really wasn't designed with that on the roadmap, and although some efforts have been made to graft them on, it's sub-optimal.   And, 10 years on, the guys who designed the original chassis have moved on to other companies/projects, and so a lot of tribal knowledge kinda gets lost.   

Same thing is happening with windows, except, instead of putting a hybrid battery pack on the chassis, it's malicious actors trying to take control of the system.   There's new ones coming out all the time, and the threat vector might just be the drivers that you installed for your sound card.  

At some point, it stops making sense for them to test the latest security threat models against 10 year old sound card drivers.  Now, multiply that by every single type of device that can be plugged into a computer, and the complexity is mind boggling.   So they're saying, "hey, we're not putting any more effort into this.  We did our best, but you're on your own if you want to run hardware that's older than 10-15 years." 

I dunno if that made sense, but I tried it weave it into something that might make sense to a car guy :)

tl;dr:  It might work just fine for the next 50 years.  It might get compromised next year.  Microsoft is disclaiming responsibilty for maintaining it, basically.

MiniDave said:

I know at some point Microsoft stops supporting their software, but why is that a problem? If it's still working just fine, why won't it continue to do so for many more years?

I have a computer in the shop that is used strictly for web browsing (looking up parts and such) or running Internet Radio, it's been down there for about 5 years already and still works just fine. Seems like if I'm not asking it to run a new cad/cam program or the like, it should just keep going?

Security is the one word answer.  Unsupported machines do not get security updates, and once an exploitable bug is discovered in the old version of Windows people will start trying to attack such machines with it.  So yes, it still "works fine", but the risks of it getting infected by malware or used as a part of a botnet go up substantially.

The other factor is that (as mentioned above), "web browsing" is not a static task.  Over time web sites get more complicated and more processing power is required to render them.