Kate Adams83 said:So, how do you actually go about installing Windows once you've grabbed it from this site? Does it just burn straight to a CD, or is there more to it than that?🙂
It looks like I've hit a bit of a snag—turns out that standard 4.7 GB DVD just won't cut it. The ISO file is sitting a few MBs over the limit, so it's just a hair too big to fit. Any ideas? 😵 It’s because all those updates are baked right in—so yeah, it makes sense that the file is larger than the original ISO. If you don't mind messing around with it a bit, you can just flash it to a USB drive using Rufus. Otherwise, if you'd rather keep things simple, just grab an 8.5 GB dual-layer DVD instead. $5.00And then he just fries the whole thing.
Is that thing sitting in the bottom right corner of your desktop actually supposed to be there? If it isn't part of your normal setup, you're probably looking at some kind of virus or malware—but since you aren't quite sure what it is, I can't really give you a definitive answer just yet.
vividdriver22 said:If that's the case, I might try to piece together a workaround—maybe move whatever I actually need over to another hard drive so I don't have to deal with downloading everything all over again. Does anyone know if there's a way to just perform a reinstall of what's already there?
Here’s my current setup:
CPU: Intel Pentium Dual-Core 3.2 GHz Motherboard: Asrock G41 S3... something like that. Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 4650 1GB RAM: 4GB Hard Drive #1: Samsung 500 GB #2 : Seagate 120 GB
I haven't a clue about the power supply—all I know for sure is that the optical drive is an LG.
Make sure you move all your photos, music, documents, and anything else important over to an external hard drive or burn them onto a DVD first. I wasn't entirely sure what you meant by the reinstall part—do you mean you're going to pop in the Windows DVD, boot from it, wipe the entire hard drive, and then run a completely fresh installation of Windows?
It’s not quite that simple, though. Why don't you just write out the full specs for both machines? That way we can actually see what we're working with.
Andrew Murphy5 said:What kind of graphics card can I pick up for under $1,500?$667Could I maybe bump things up a bit if there’s a solid reason to—like needing more RAM? Right now, I'm running an HD 4870, and honestly, any card longer than that isn't going to fit unless I absolutely butcher my case. Just as a heads-up, I've got a 600W power supply, if that helps with the math at all. Are we looking at a minimum of a GTX 760, the GTX 900 series, or maybe an R9 270 through 290? I've heard some chatter that certain R9 cards tend to run pretty hot—is that true? If so, which specific models should I steer clear of, and which ones are actually worth hunting down?
Are you kidding me? I mean, there’s no denying it’s an awesome card, but looking at your setup—it looks like you're running an Intel Core i3. That's going to be a major bottleneck for the GPU you just picked up. You won't really be able to tap into all that power, you know?
It’s possible that dropping the laptop might have damaged the hard drive—those components can be pretty sensitive to a sudden impact. If I were in your shoes, I’d try a fresh installation of macOS. If you notice the installation process is dragging or taking an unusually long time, then there's a good chance the hard drive is toast and you'll need to grab a replacement.
To start things off, I’d suggest doing a clean reinstall of your graphics drivers. It might actually be a software glitch rather than a hardware issue—it doesn't hurt to rule that out first, right?
So, there are essentially two versions of Windows out there—x64 and x86. You can think of the x64 versions as the "heavy hitters." If you've got more than 4GB of RAM under the hood, you really need to go with x64—otherwise, the x86 (or 32-bit) version won't be able to utilize all that memory. It’ll just cap out at about 3.5GB, which is a total waste if you have more.
The other thing that comes to mind is how software and games behave. For instance, if a specific program or game is built strictly for x64, it simply won't install on an x86 system. On the flip side, if you're running x64, you have much more flexibility—you can run x64 programs, but you can also run those older 32-bit ones without any issues. So, if you have the choice, definitely grab the x64 version and call it a day. There are a few other technical differences, of course, but I think these two points are the big ones you actually need to care about.
You really need to go with a fresh Windows installation—your PC just isn't going to run quite right otherwise, since you're dealing with a totally different chipset and a whole new set of components. Just format the hard drive (assuming you’re sticking with that same old drive) and you should be good to go.
By the way, what kind of hard drive are you actually running? I know it’s a SATA interface, but how old is this thing, roughly? Honestly, before you pull the trigger on a purchase, you really ought to check if the drive is still healthy—like, make sure there aren't any bad sectors lurking around. It would be such a bummer to invest in all these shiny new components only to have everything crash because of an old, glitchy drive right after you've finished reinstalling Windows and hunting down all your drivers... just saying! Though, maybe your HDD is doing just fine.
You can just download CrystalDiskInfo to check its health status.
