Posts by Grace Wood5

You have no idea how much this means. 🙂
After dealing with nothing but absolute garbage over the last six months, bumping into you and the rest of the genuine crowd here has actually restored my faith in people. Honestly, I can't even remember the last time I ran into someone actually willing to lend a hand without looking for something in return.
From the bottom of my heart, thanks to everyone.

fadedorca66 said:Did you go with a fresh install of Windows on the new drive, or did you just carry over the old setup? Either way, that power supply situation is a real shame. $23 You really should have invested in a decent power supply that would actually hold up for years. This thing you've got is basically on par with your old one...

Money is tight right now, so that extra seventy bucks felt like a massive hit to my budget. To make matters worse, I’ve got both windows sitting on a new disk because the old ones were completely stripped out.
I have to admit, the guy over at Instar was actually being more than fair. He even offered me some better drives and power supplies if I could swing a little extra cash, but $60 was really the absolute limit of my budget.
Honestly, for me, it all ends on a high note. Chess stepped up and sorted everything out exactly according to plan—which is why I didn't bother giving him a formal shout-out earlier. Now, after this whole ordeal, I finally get my hands on a new toy featuring an i5 processor. R7790 Honestly, getting a Radeon card would be total overkill for what I actually need.
He bought Chess for his kid, but since then, he’s actually managed to earn enough to get a beast of a machine. This old rig has just been sitting there collecting dust for about a year now.
If you actually take a second to look at the big picture, I’m a wealthy man—even if my pockets are bone dry right now. 🙂

Thanks for the advice. I had to swap out my power supply because it started overheating—and I’m pretty sure I dumped about a pound of dirt out of it. 🙈
It’s definitely a budget-tier piece of junk, to put it mildly, but it gets the job done. At least it'll hold me over until I can actually afford a new motherboard and CPU.
Everything is running smooth as silk now, so I can finally get back to gaming.

So, I went ahead and grabbed both the power supply and the hard drive, and NetJak is coming over to handle the whole setup.
I honestly didn't realize there was someone actually competent in my own family. 😁

Here’s the PSU, and this is the hard drive.
With the cash discount, the total came out to about $85.
I'll let you guys know how it goes once it's up and running. 👍

Robert Rodriguez2 said:Based on what you're saying, yeah, that's going to be an issue. Those larger HDDs are basically becoming relics at this point.
If you don't need massive amounts of space, just grab a 120GB SSD specifically for Windows 10 and whatever other software you run. It’ll cost you about $150

If you actually need storage, just go with a standard mechanical drive. Anything under $133 a terabyte is only a few bucks more than a 500GB model.

I'd probably just go for the terabyte one. It'll be useful for storage while I'm scraping together cash for a better setup. 🙂

Edith: Actually, I think I'll pass. I can scrape by on this smaller drive for a month or so, and by then, I should have enough saved up for a whole new build. Once hardware starts failing, it usually happens all at once.😉

Timothy Kim60 said:It’s totally normal for performance to dip toward the end of the benchmark. That other 320GB Western Digital drive should be fine—is its health status looking decent too?

Yeah, it's 100% fine.
Basically, am I looking at buying a new hard drive and nuking my OS for a fresh install?

It only managed to read up to that point. Everything looks fine on the smaller drive, though.



I guess. 🙈

ruggedbison40 said:Windows 10 comes with Office built-in, right?
I feel like such an idiot.

My setup has it, but I guess that depends on which version you're running—Home or Pro.

ruggedbison40 I can't even begin to process this. It’s just one thing after another.
Hey Hogi, I’m trying to stick to a keto diet.😁
A little bit here, a little bit there—just toss in some vitamins and everything will be fine.😁

The exact same thing happened to my computer today as it did to you. Yours is still running great, though; I just call mine Jane. 😁
Hang in there, Jane. She didn't back down today, so she’ll likely hold out for a little longer before she finally hits the wall.
I was so desperate that I actually reached out to quark.😁

I’ll basically just be reposting stuff from your thread.
My hard drive just died on me, and honestly, Jane is getting too old for this.

Exactly. To get a good woman, you've got to be a man worth having. 😒
Stick around. It’s better hanging out with the younger crowd anyway. Honestly, even my old Ford's wheels have stopped squeaking so much lately. 😉

ruggedbison40 said:Just my luck. I only ever figure out how to do this once I’ve already bought the damn thing. How exactly am I supposed to get Office installed on this new machine?
I've never actually bought one of those before.

Squeeze the quark if you have to, just make sure you shut him up before he goes telling everyone he’s some kind of cyclist. 😁

I don't care what anyone says, this whole situation is a joke.






#ITprofessional

Once I finish scanning this second drive, I'll get that posted too. 🙂

Haha, well look who finally decided to show up. You're actually getting stuff done now, while I'm stuck here feeling like a total washout who missed his window.
But honestly, that’s just how it goes. At my age, the only thing I have to look forward to is birdwatching and being completely broke. :rofl.

mellowtiger83 said:I'm free until 3 PM every single day, and I've got the whole day open on Sundays.

I was thinking about taking my son out for a little experiment on one of his days off, but my wife is already breathing down my neck, saying she won't let me go anywhere without supervision anymore. 😳

Robert Rodriguez2 said:🐔
When you finally decide to pull the trigger on a new PC, just let me know.🙂

Hey, give my best to lady number one... I haven't seen her in a hundred years. 🕺

Hey, what's up.
Give her a big hello when she gets back. My daughter just dragged her off for a coffee and some girl talk.
Hey Jane, next time you come to Washington, D.C., don't think you can just ghost me. I’ll track you down myself and give you a piece of my mind. 🙂

🤣 Coffee with milk has always been better than that egg coffee nonsense. How does your schedule look from Tuesday onwards? 🙂

mellowtiger83 said:Joseph Allen71, try resetting your BIOS to factory defaults first. Then, try plugging the drive into a different SATA connector. If that doesn't work, just unplug the drive that doesn't have Windows on it and see if it boots.

If you want to do a fresh Windows installation the right way, don't just hit "reset." You need to wipe the slate completely clean. Format the entire drive, kill the old partition, and build it from scratch. I’m talking about creating two separate partitions this time—keep your OS on one and your data on the other. It’s much cleaner.

Maybe some of this could actually help.

Don't mention it!

Thanks for the effort, man, but I'll pass on that one.
I’ll have to foot the entire bill at the shop for everything you just listed. I know how this goes—it's like being Mary in a courtroom, always the one left holding the bag.
I'm just too exhausted and honestly too lazy to sit around studying stuff I never wanted to learn in the first place. Look, if you really need my help, I’ll wire up the electricity for your entire house, but don't expect me to touch anything under 220V. That's just not my speed.
What can I even tell you? You start talking about resetting the BIOS, and all I hear is incoherent mumbling—exactly like those kids in Philadelphia. Peanuts They’re listening to us adults talk. 😉

Alright, folks and trolls alike, thanks for the advice and for being willing to help an IT-illiterate idiot like me.

As soon as the trash can started acting up, my first thought was just to haul it straight to the local landfill—thanks again for showing me that I actually had it right for once.

I’m just going to let this thing run until it dies; there’s no point throwing money at old junk. Now that I've got a taste for it, I've been eyeing this other thread. If any of those bins are still for sale after New Year's, I'll finally get this headache sorted out.
If they aren't, expect another one of my "help me" posts. 🙈

*Yeah, Trinitron, that goes out to you. 😛

Robert Rodriguez2 said:For what he's actually doing, the amount of VRAM on the card doesn't even matter—especially since he isn't playing games.
When I'm trying to push an image to the screen, nothing else matters. Period.

Look, Joseph Allen71, regardless of whether you decide to fix this thing up or just cut your losses and buy a new rig, there is one thing I’d absolutely recommend: get an SSD. I picked one up for my own setup about two months ago, and honestly, it’s been a total game-changer.

Buying a rig with only 3 sticks of RAM is just a waste of time. For what you're looking to do, there’s zero point in hunting down used parts when you can take that same amount of cash and walk away with a decent, brand-new PC. 🙂

Sure, if you just want to browse the web, watch movies, listen to music, and stuff like that, it's fine. But if you actually plan on gaming—and I'm assuming you don't—then we're talking about a completely different story. 😛

Look, your current setup is perfectly fine for the tasks you mentioned. My only issue is that you won't find any new motherboards like that on the shelves anymore. You’d be forced to hunt down used parts, and honestly, buying secondhand gear that could be a total lemon is just throwing money down the drain.

You can still find plenty of new motherboards that support your current RAM, so if you’re planning on upgrading, you might just want to swap out the CPU and the board. Honestly, you can probably hang onto most of your other gear.

If I can scrape together about $100 to $120, I’ll get it fixed. If not, I'll just let it run until it dies, then pick up a replacement after New Year's. Something like this....or something like that, honestly.Insane. Regarding Intel. 😳
That SSD really should have just waited for better times.

analogtiger19 said:Let's see if we can actually figure out why his PC is lagging so much.

Can you open up the case and read exactly what power supply is in there from the label? And how old would you say it is, roughly?

The power supply is an MS PRO 550W ATX P4, and it’s been running for five or six years now. If you're going to kill me, I can't remember exactly when the warranty expired—I had to scramble through all my old paperwork just to check. Either way, once it starts screaming at me, I'm planning on "selling" it to the local scrap yard.

crimsonstag84 said:Something's definitely off if your boot times are that slow. If you've already checked the drives and there aren't any bad sectors or hardware errors, you're likely looking at a motherboard issue. It could technically be the power supply, but based on the symptoms you're describing, I wouldn't bet on that.

I’ve seen some junk lately, but this listing is a special kind of mess. Someone is trying to move a PC that belongs in a museum, not on a desk. The specs are a joke. We're looking at an old Intel Core i3 paired with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX series card. If you think this thing can handle anything modern without choking, you're dreaming. It’s basically a glorified paperweight at this point. They’re running Windows 7 Pro, too—which, let's be honest, is a massive security nightmare waiting to happen. You'd be better off running Norton on a toaster than trying to browse the web safely on this setup. I remember back when I was building my first rig in Chicago, I learned the hard way that you can't just slap together outdated parts and call it a "gaming PC." You end up wasting money on hardware that can't even open a Chrome tab without stuttering. This seller clearly doesn't get it. Save your cash. Don't fall for the "good deal" trap. This isn't a bargain; it's a headache.

I’d probably just slap a 120GB SSD in this thing and throw an old graphics card in there to get by. But honestly? It’ll be sold before you even figure out what the hell is actually wrong with it. 😁

I'm going to try and patch this mess up. Right now, I've got 1,600 pieces scattered everywhere—it's like trying to organize the entire Appalachian Mountains. 🙂

mellowtiger83 said:Look, man, it’s totally normal to have questions about a GPU. We all know what chip is under the hood, but there's a massive performance gap between DDR3 and DDR5 memory that people tend to overlook. The card you're talking about is basically running at 95% slower speeds, just loaded up with a ridiculous amount of VRAM that doesn't actually do anything for you.🙂

I picked up this rig about five or six years ago as a pre-built budget build. It was basically just some kid's hand-me-down that he used to scrape by playing World of Warcraft on the lowest settings until he finally saved up enough for something decent. Now, I’ve inherited the thing. Honestly, for what I actually do with it, the graphics card is complete overkill—I''m just talking the occasional game of chess, watching YouTube clips, or a quick round of Solitaire.

Hey, man. 🙂
I’m not going to waste my breath talking about stuff I don't understand, so I'll just drop this rig off at a shop in Downtown (right by my place) and see what they quote me. 😳
Back when I cleaned out all the dust two months ago and swapped the CPU cooler, I did a fresh install of 64-bit Windows 7 Pro—miraculously a legal 😁 version—and I ran the latest Norton straight from a thumb drive, so the machine was already protected before I even hopped online. I've got an automatic scan running once a week.
It’s running two drives, a 500 GB and a 320 GB, both Western Digital and both working fine. Honestly, that 320 GB one came out of an old tower, and for the price, it's a steal.

Alright, I’ve got a boot issue. It’s telling me I need to replace the "spark plugs and platinum"—basically, some hardware component is shot. 😉 It takes about forty minutes just to get the thing to start up. During that whole wait, the only thing happening on my monitor is the power LED blinking on and off.
I don't need anything high-end, so I’m wondering if this is even worth fixing, or if I should just scrap it and look for a cheap new or used rig for around $3,000.
Intel Core i3 3.07GHz, socket 1156 LGA
ASUS (Intel) H55M-LE motherboard
4 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX series 2GB
500W power supply

Punching the wall and praying "why now, when I'm broke" hasn't done much to help. If you guys have any ideas, lay them on me.

Edith: To save you all from asking about the GPU, here it is: