Processors basically live forever 😁 That Sandy Bridge of yours will probably outlive all of us; your motherboard and everything else will give up the ghost long before that chip dies.
Sure, it's old school, but Haswell brought maybe a 20-30% performance bump, and I guess you made up for that with some overclocking.
Pure dual-core Intel chips usually carry an E prefix, like the Core 2 Duo E7200, E7400, or E4400, while AMD uses the Athlon 64 X2 branding, ranging from the bottom-tier 3600+ up to the 6400+ models.
I keep seeing people on eBay claiming those Pentium D processors are dual-core, but you end up with a single-core chip that runs hot enough to melt your desk.
I'd probably pass on the first one since it's just a single-core setup, which is pretty sluggish by today's standards (it says dual core, but that's just HT, so it isn't a real dual core).
The second one seems alright, though I'd still double-check that it's not some HT trickery, like an Intel Pentium D.
You can burn the ISO to a USB using Rufus, and if your motherboard doesn't support booting from USB via Hiren's BootCD, you might need to use PLOP Boot Manager.
Have you checked the capacitors yet? You know how to tell if they're bulging or still look okay, right? http://www.thenakedpc.com/dan/Bulgin...s/close-up.jpg Basically, a good one should be flat on top. If it's bulging outward, it's toast. I see this happen pretty often with older PCs, so just checking.
As for setting up a dual boot, you're gonna have to wipe the WHOLE drive. Once you hit this screen: http://www.dedoimedo.com/images/comp...stall_here.png you'll see all your partitions listed—probably just a C: and a D: drive for you. Pick the C: partition, hit the 'D' key to delete it, and I think you just confirm it by hitting 'L' or whatever the prompt says. Then just do the exact same thing for the D: partition or whatever else is sitting there. You'll know you're done when the only thing left on the list is Unpartitioned space, which should be about 80GB since that's the size of your HDD. After that, just hit enter and create a new partition from that space. Set it to the max size and let it format to NTFS. Whatever you do, don't check the "Quick Format" box; let it run the full format. It takes a bit longer, but it might actually catch some bad sectors and move them around.
If I were you, I'd just set those $17 aside and start saving up for a whole new tower. Honestly? You might grab those RAM sticks only to realize they aren't even compatible. Or maybe they work, but then you find out your hard drive is acting up. Or it's the motherboard, or the power supply... it’s a rabbit hole. Before you know it, you've bought new RAM and now you need something else. It's a money pit, and you can probably find a prebuilt on Newegg for $167 that would run circles around this setup anyway.
You probably won't even hit 2.8GB of RAM since there's still an open slot on that board. And you aren't actually planning on buying more RAM for this thing, right? I wouldn't spend another dime on it if I were you.
Kernel panics and random errors can definitely come from a crappy Windows install, but they're just as likely caused by a dying hard drive or faulty RAM. Like, maybe it tries to load steamui.dll from the disk, hits some bad sectors, and just fails. Or if the RAM is glitching, it might load it but flip a 0 to a 1 somewhere, leaving you with a corrupt file and an error.
The thing is basically a junker at this point, so anything could be going wrong. You should probably: - crack it open and blow out all the dust - check the power supply too—clean the dust out and see if any capacitors are bulging - check the capacitors on the motherboard as well - grab a Hiren's boot CD, run a memtest, and then check the drive's SMART status to scan for bad sectors
Until you do a bit of actual maintenance like that, trying to reinstall Windows is basically just gambling. There's a huge chance something will just screw you over again.
Here’s your thread, just so we stop cluttering up the old one.
A build like this is solid and pretty easy to put together here, though you're probably looking at around $1500. The dollar's been pretty volatile lately, which is why prices feel like they're all over the place. I guess it might be worth mentioning what games you actually want to play, how much you're aiming to save (and when, since there's no point building now if you aren't buying for another three months), and where you're planning to shop—if you've got the cash ready, ordering through an online retailer is probably your best bet.
A quick Google search suggests this might be a BIOS issue, so it’s possible your hardware just doesn't support Windows 7.
Even if you somehow manage to get it installed:
- your processor is pretty weak - your motherboard manufacturer is likely out of business, making drivers nearly impossible to find - you've only got 768MB of RAM instead of a full gig. Windows is going to hog all that memory immediately, forcing everything else onto a page file on an old, sluggish hard drive. It'll probably be slow enough to drive you crazy - your graphics card is underwhelming and will likely stutter even within the OS, plus it probably lacks drivers for the seventh iteration anyway
I guess it's not worth the headache; just stick with Windows XP on that rig. If you really want Windows 7, you're probably better off buying something new—or maybe just grabbing a used Core 2 Duo desktop off Craigslist for like $500.$233
Replying to crimsonstag84, buying a new GPU is pretty much pointless if it ends up being weaker than an integrated chip. I guess he could just install the integrated drivers and maybe play some older games that way.
Maybe check out a review if you can find one, see how quiet it actually is versus how much it heats up—basically just judge the cooler quality—and then weigh that against the price and warranty. ASUS tends to be pricier here in the States since they try to market themselves as this "premium" brand.
The price at Starbucks is kind of a rip-off, so maybe just grab this more expensive one at $10 instead:
Honestly, forget those total nonsense builds; you're just paying extra for the $33 brand name and getting nothing for it.
As for the drive, I’d probably skip the green ones. They seem to have issues and I've seen plenty of them die on me. You can run games off an HDD anyway, so it's probably better to just get a decent, faster drive like the Toshiba, WD Blue, or Seagate options mentioned above...