On 9/15/2022 5:01 PM, Robert in CA wrote:
Exactly,, I'm lucky my stereo is OK,.. but it's partly my fault for
not un-plugging it before I left. I think the cheapest way is
just to stock up on speakers and base modules in case it
happens again. I already have two sets of new satellites speakers
from when it blew before. Kinda of like having spare power supplies
and HD's for the computer.
I wanted to ask you about my sisters computer although
I can't remember much. It's a Hewlett Packard with 3 GB AMD
HD I think running FF off of Vista OS and it's as slow as a dog
She also had an icon for Chrome but preferred not to use it.
She doesn't have any anti-virus/anti-malware protection at all!
She does have her firewall up and automatic updates running but
I checked and uploaded (10) updates. I also checked to see if she could upgrade to Win 7 but apparently not?
I heard that Vista and Win2000 pretty much sucked. I could navigate
OK but it was slow to respond and also didn't have any sound because
the two sets of speakers had only a single input plug. What kind of
system uses speakers with only one input plug? Yet when I checked
it said it was running?
Would not having any anti-virus/anti-malare slow the computer
down significantly? or what else could be causing her computer
to run slow? Maybe malware or a virus she doesn't know about
because she has she has zero protection and therefore is unaware
they may be there?
Thoughts/suggestions?
Robert
It's surprising to me, that Vista SP2 could even do a Windows Update.
My experience with Vista here, is Windows Update just spins and spins,
and produces no updates. This is due to scaling issues on *all* Windows OSes, even on Windows 10. Microsoft chose to hide these issues on W7,W8,W10,W11,
by using "Jumbo Updates". one large file, instead of many smaller files.
This may reduce the rate of slowdown in the Updater.
So right away, your sister leads a charmed life :-)
Since it is Vista, the disk alignment is to 1048576 boundaries (1 megabyte), and this is good for flash memory devices. This means you could buy
a small SATA SSD and install it in the PC in place of the Hard Drive.
And clone the old HDD drive, to the new SSD drive. The SSD has zero seek time.
The machine may be dog-slow, because the SMART is trying to tell you
that drive failure is imminent.
You could start with at least a single backup of the drive, for
safe keeping. This will reduce the impact, the day the PC won't
start at all because the HDD has stopped.
The machine could also be slow, because wususerv Service Host is
railed all the time. This is a side effect of Windows Update.
On the Pro OSes, you can do
tasklist /svc
and list the names of all SVCHOST processes and what services
live inside them (wuauserv). Sysinternals Process Explorer
may also be able to show this information, when run as Administrator.
It's unlikely Vista would receive much in the way of updates
today. But the update subsystem is still capable of wasting
computer resources. Oh, yes.
Summary:
1) Make your backup FIRST. If the recipient never makes backups,
this is a priority item. I smell trouble brewing.
2) Do cleanup, like check %temp% for files. Or check the browser cache
(search for "cache2") and see if that has a lot of files in it.
Some users may be using Piriform CCleaner, in which case
you can skip this step.
3) Next, try defragmentation. JkDefrag-3.36.zip
https://www.kessels.com/JkDefrag/
Start a command prompt window as administrator.
cd %userprofile%
cd Downloads
cd jkdefrag # Assumed location of unpacked goods.
jkdefrag -a 1 -d 2 c: # Draw blocks diagram of disk, showing fragmentation
# The file jkdefrag.log contains info on the volume, but
# you have to wait "until the file stops growing", before
# opening in Notepad. the more fragmented the drive, the longer
# it takes for the jkdefrag.log to stop growing.
jkdefrag -a 5 -d 2 c: # Push disk blocks down towards partition origin.
# This is a crude form of consolidation. Not absolutely necessary.
jkdefrag -a 2 -d 2 c: # This does basic defragmentation, and is not as neat and tidy
# as the WinXP build-in Presidents Software defragmenter.
Do not do this on a sick hard drive. Have a Backup in hand, if doing this.
4) Once neat and tidy, consider cloning over to an SSD.
5) If the disk fails during (3), you have your backup in hand.
6) If Vista needs to be reinstalled... this will be one bitch
of a project. It took me three tries to get this to work, and
about *one week* of work. The trick to getting it to work, is
using a wsusoffline stick from the last Vista version, as wsusoffline
knows more about updating, than Microsoft does.
7) Vista upgrades to W7, at the cost of a license. While you could
still buy them, I think my W7 was about $150 CDN or so. W7 can upgrade
to W10 for free (as long as the free offer continues, and it'll have to
stop when W10 hits end of life).
Personally, I think of Vista SP2 as "just fine", but, to make it
"just fine", you will have to be in top form, as a PC technician.
No mom and pop store is going to invest hours and hours of work,
doing this the right way. Shops like to "nuke and pave", and they
*might* even refuse to touch Vista SP2 at all. Because they know what
an evil festering mess awaits them. I like to think of this as
a "challenge", even if it takes a solid week of trying stuff.
Summary: At least check her drive with the SMART in HDTune.
It could be the reallocations are high, and the drive is
just about toast. And MAKE A BACKUP. You can currently pick
up a 1TB WDC Black for $60 or less, which may be big enough
for the 320GB drive she might have. Given the age of the machine,
I can't tell for sure it even has a SATA port. If you use a
Samsung 870 EVO 1TB, you can run one of those off a USB to SATA
cable -- even if the drive does not appear to have a place to
connect directly, the adapter cable can allow the same drive to be
connected to an exterior USB2 port.
Suited to low-power SSD drives - USB3 to SATA, about 250MB/sec on a good day $12
https://www.newegg.com/startech-usb3s2sat3cb-usb-to-sata/p/N82E16812400542
SAMSUNG 870 EVO Series 2.5" 1TB SATA III V-NAND SSD MZ-77E1T0B/AM (about 600TBW) $100
https://www.newegg.com/samsung-1tb-870-evo-series/p/N82E16820147793?Item=N82E16820147793
Of course, one of your enclosures plus a drive, can easily be used
instead of those two items.
The following are excellent drives if you can find one. I bought three, one was bad,
and that was my first bad WDC... ever. But the ones that work, work fine. I have at least four of these now. This would be, if you just wanted to clone from one HDD to a second HDD. And this is SATA, so the machine needs SATA ports inside to use this. You could make it work with an IDE cable, with an IDE to SATA
adapter, but those will be hard to find (a "good" one). You need different adapters if you expect to plug two IDE to SATA adapters into one ribbon cable. The adapter
I've got, only works on the end connector of the ribbon (it's a Master adapter, not
an M/S jumpered one).
1TB internal HDD $50 Replacement SATA internal HDD
https://www.newegg.com/black-wd1003fzex-1tb/p/N82E16822236625
HTH,
Paul
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