I'm trying to decide what to do with my computer. It is running painfully slow and crashes often. When I say slow, I mean I may have to sit and wait 5-10 minutes for this thing to start working when opening a program or a file.
Having been laid off due to the Corona pandemic, I'm not in a position to buy a new one and I'm trying to decide on the best course of action to speed this one up. This computer is a former CAD workstation. It has dual processors, so you would think it would have plenty of horsepower.

Here is the patient:
Dell Omniplex 755, running Windows XP Pro version 2002.
ACPI Multiprocessor PC
2 - Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs E6550 @ 2.33 Ghz
Display adapter: ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT
RAM: 3 GB
Hitachi HD (50% full)

I've defragged it and cleaned up the HD, with little effect.

Is there some hardware I should upgrade? Install Windows 10? Buy more RAM? Get some registry cleaner software? I need to keep this thing running. Thanks in advance.

More Ram if it can take it, and a SSD hard drive to start.

quote:

Hitachi HD (50% full)

SDD? If not that would help, I would think.

I think his problem is in software. I'm betting this is the original install it came from Dell with, right? I had a sister in law that had identical problems and would never allow a reinstall. And it never got fixed.

Is this your only computer? Is there a laptop or netbook around to just check emails or download to while fixing this one? This could be borrowed if you have a friend who is amenable. Also, is 'nuke and pave' an option (save data and reinstall)? That sounds screwed up enough that I wouldn't mess with fixing whatever it is, it'll take forever. If I was reloading a new windows install on a machine of that vintage, might as well go with Win7 if you can. It can likely be acquired for a song by now. It's not supported by MS anymore either, works well with older hardware and should be a nice upgrade.

You could also get a new SSD, install whatever your choice is for an OpSystem, and keep the old drive if you ever want to go back to square one.

Question of my own to the forum: Since this is a Dell machine, do you think he would run afoul of SLIC files from the mainboard BIOS that will require an 'official' OEM Dell copy of windows to install? I ran into this before myself.

I put a 500 GB SSD in my clunker. It made a world of difference. I also upgraded to Windows 10. I figured I could put the SSD in a new box when I decided to put my old machine out of its misery. You can easily clone the SSD from your C drive and make the drive existed C drive a backup.

Get a new SSD with a fresh install of the Operating System.

If you can't spring for a new Drive, do you have an old one laying around? SSD will be faster, but a spindle drive should be fine for the short term.

I've always found re-installing the OS really speeds up older machines.

What do you use it for? I've revitalized a lot of older machines by putting a lite version of Linux on them, such as Xubuntu. This serves the purpose of providing a presumably more secure, less demanding OS, but you're limited on the software you can run.

Reformat the hard drive, fresh install. It's free.

SSD next. This will directly speed up startup and program launch. Not free, but less than $100 investment.

RAM last, if it's still not operating to your liking. More RAM will help with program switching, opening and working with large files.

Everyone would benefit from a fresh install of their OS every couple of years. I used to do it annually, but lately computers have gotten so powerful that that the incremental benefit of a clean computer is less noticeable.

Last year i took a 2007-8 vintage Dell Vostro 1000 laptop out of storage and upgraded it from a stodgy XP machine to a Linux Mint marvel. This was necessitated by my more modern desktop being down for a bit.

15.4” XGA LCD display
AMD Athalon 64 X2 TK57 1.9GHz/ 256Kb CPU
ATI Radeon® Xpress 1150 256MB HyperMemory™ (integrated)
Dell Wireless 1395 802.11g Wi-Fi Internal Card
Hitachi GSA-T21N 8x DVD +/-R


Replaced the failing factory Seagate 2.5” 80Gb 5400rpm hard disk with a Crucial BX300 120GB 3D NAND SATA 2.5" SSD ($27.88 delivered)

And expanded the factory 2Gb DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz with a Crucial 4GB Kit 2X2GB DDR2-800MHZ ($7.71 delivered)

Installed Linux Mint 19.

The laptop now sings rejuvenated with those simple hardware and software upgrades. Highly recommend you consider a similar approach to your old Omniplex!

Thanks all for the advice. I do not have the original software so I don’t think I can do a fresh install. I also get a lot of warnings that my software is no longer supported. Would I still want to do this?

What are you using it for / what application software are you running on it?

If you don't absolutely need Windows for anything, you might try a beginner-friendly Linux distro like Linux Lite or Zorin OS Lite. Either should run well on that hardware.

-Rob

Is there a 'rescue' partition on the disk? They used to do this so you could easily do a reinstall. That would be worth looking to see if it's there.

This is a total shot in the dark but you could try calling Dell to see if they might send you an OEM Dell XP disk. Explain your situation. You never know, they might still have them around and a CS rep might see that as an opportunity to delight you enough that you might purchase another Dell once you're able to replace it.

Also, try to get CCleaner installed, go to the registry cleaner, use the registry back up option, and go for it.

This might come in handy. Dell technical guidebook for OptiPlex GX755. I think this is the right one. Which version do you have?

It sounds like it really needs nuked & paved (windows reinstalled).
I would suggest you download DoubleDriver to back up the drivers you are using to a USB or something just in case you can't find them later.

It's old & outdated, so I wouldn't throw any money at it that can't be used in a new system later. The only thing I'd suggest to buy is a decent sized SSD for 50-80$
For Example
There are plenty of others in that price range. Samsung is usually considered the bar, but WD is usually a little cheaper for a 'good enough' SSD.
The benefit of this plan is that you can then install Win10 & see if it gets better, if not, you can then try XP.
The downside of going to Win10 permanently is you'll need a new license.
Cheap Win10
I haven't used this site for cheap licenses, but I do trust the source I got it from

You can download win10 from microsoft & set up a USB stick to install - you won't need a license for 30 days.
I probably have an XP & win7 image somewhere if you need to install those. That would be more of a private discussion....

5-10 minutes to open a file or program?? - your Hard Drive is probably failing.

Please - BACK UP ANY/ALL IMPORTANT FILES to some sort of external drive NOW. Don't wait.

Then, a new SSD Hard drive will make a big improvement. More RAM would help too.

However ... and I know you said you are out of work right now, but a new SSD and more RAM will cost a few hundred bucks minimum. You might be able to get a decent Chromebook for the same price if everything you do can be done in Chrome.

But again, and I can't stress this enough - back up your data immediately.

See if it has multiple antivirus programs running simultaneously. Those can interfere with each other and cause slowdowns. Sometimes older machines can get programs installed without earlier similar programs being uninstalled first.

Have you cleaned out the insides lately? In the past I have worked on a lot of computers where the problem was overheating in that CPU heat sink was clogged with dirt causing poor performance due to CPU overheating. Make sure all case vents, CPU heat sinks (including video card possibly), and power supply vents are clean and that CPU fan is spinning fast.

Task Manager can show you load on CPU/memory/hard drive to give a clue also and what processes are involved in heavy use and often they are start up programs that do not need to be started when computer starts up. It would be worthwhile to boot into Safe Mode (do not use internet though as AV may be disabled in Safe Mode) also to see how performance changes if at all. I would also run Check Disk on main system disk and any data disk.

https://www.howtogeek.com/4058...-the-complete-guide/

https://www.raymond.cc/blog/ru...sy-to-use-interface/

Programs like CPU-Z can also tell what CPU temp is.

https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

JimmyRayBob has a good point. I had a friend with the same problem and it turned out the disc drive was failing. Download and run Crystal Disk Info (free). It will give you a S.M.A.R.T. readout of the drive and show if any parameters are out of bounds.

https://crystalmark.info/en/download/

Rob

Since you don't have the media/license to reinstall OS, I think you're just throwing good money into a bad XP-era machine. Rather than spending $40-50 on a SSD, I would suggest buying a Certified Refurbished PC like one these from Tiger Direct - $79.95. They come with Win10 pre-installed with license, keyboard, mouse and 1-year warranty. I've bought 7-8 of these over the years from Tiger and all have been good.

HP Pro 6305 SFF Desktop PC

Lenovo ThinkCentre M77 SFF PC

I'm going to be in a different camp on this. Rather than tinkering and pouring money into what is a very antiquated PC at this point, I'd recommend finding a deal on a nice Dell Outlet machine. With it you get a current OS, more RAM, a current CPU and GPU, and a SSD. And best of all, you set it up, plug it in, and you should be ready to do whatever you want on it.