Another computer query ...sorry

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Evans Electric

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I notice a great deal of  " This page is not responding "  going on lately ....also the BT email  service is getting jumpy and erratic  .  

Could this be to do with Vista & Chrome not being supported anymore  and should I be upgrading to Windows 10 .?

I upgraded my laptop to Windows10  for free , a week later the motherboard crashed  , its still in the corner where I threw it TBH. 

For Vista upgrade I have to pay , apparently .   Just going to look at the cost . 

 
Unlikely to be an OS issue. More likely a cr@ppy internet connection, something we have to live with here.  Which home hub have you got? 4 or earlier does not reset when the sync is lost so needs a hard power cycle. 
 

 
I notice a great deal of  " This page is not responding "  going on lately ....also the BT email  service is getting jumpy and erratic  .  

Could this be to do with Vista & Chrome not being supported anymore  and should I be upgrading to Windows 10 .?


ISP issue. There are various ways of making it more reliable, mainly bin your crappy BT router and set a decent one up with some performance tweaks and it should be a lot better, switching to a decent ISP as well wouldn't be a terrible idea.

I think you would be better off just complaining to BT though.

 
Ducky     I don't use any WiFi  ,its hard wired  

Murdo       Thanks for that ....it is starting look like buying a new PC .

Dave           I ran a Broadband check  ...Download  48.77  Mbs     Upload   9.05 Mbs     is that any good ?   

Lurchio       What is a decent ISP Lurch  ?  I began with Wanado  which was carp  , changed to Orange also carp ,  was led to believe that BT had powerful Broadband so went with them .      

This thing has always had slow speed problems , like before changing to BT  just opening the Forum  used to take about 8 minutes .  

BT   Email used to zip into action , click on an email & BANG !! its there  ...not anymore .     Often it seems to struggle to open  , then the "Page goes unresponsive" etc

 
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deke, you have a BB speed I can only dream of. That is not your problem.

As you have Vista, your PC must be quite old, like mine still running XP (waits for someone to tell me the world will implode if I carry on with something unsupported). It probably does not have much physical memory compared to a modern pc, but I can remember when 4MB (yes magabytes not terabyrtes) was considered a lot.  Chances are with modern memory hungry web browsers and inefficient web pages, your computer is running out of memory and having to write to the swap file all the time.

Also, vista had a LOT of "stuff" enabled by default that meant (on the Vista laptop we used to have) it was ALWAYS reading or writing to the hard disk, even when you were not doing anything.

Download a copy of Process Explorer by Sysinternals  * That is a much better version of Windows task manager, one that actually works and does something useful. It will tell you what is running and how much memory or CPU time it is taking and you should be able to streamline things a bit to delete unecessary processes.

* I tried to look for a link for you to download it, but is seems Microsoft now "own" it. Typical, they find Something better than their offering so "absorb" it. I still have the install files so I will make that available to you if you want it.
 

 
@Evans Electric, going on what PD has said above, another thing you can do is get a programme called CodeStuff Starter.

Install that and it will tell you every programme & process that is loading when your computer boots up.

You can disable them with just a click.

Plus there is a link to PACS Portal IIRC, which tells you which programmes are actually needed or not.

We can help you speed the computer up even running Vista if you like.

@ProDave, I'm still running XP on a couple of machines, because nothing newer will run the software!

 
Dave        My thanks for that offer   , which I'd be interested in TBH .  Or does the one Sidey mentions do the same thing  ?   I'd certainly like to  clean some of the carp up from the PC TBH   Although Norton does have a clean up  occasionally . 

Sidey    I could give that a try later  .       With what I read on Google  and Murdo says the same ...I'm begining to think a 12 year old PC is like a Morris Minor I suppose . 

 
@Evans Electric, the software PD & I have suggested are slightly different.

One of the first things you can do to speed the PC up and sort it out is to dump Norton, the current version on a Vista PC will slow it to a crawl.

Go for one of the free ones, Kaspersky etc. others area available.

 
Upgraded my mate's Vista lethargic/dying laptop to Zorin OS (Windows look a like / Ubuntu base) and he's never looked back. AND he's thicker than soup when it comes to computers.

 
What is a decent ISP Lurch  ?  I began with Wanado  which was carp  , changed to Orange also carp ,  was led to believe that BT had powerful Broadband so went with them .


I would suggest leaving it as it is for now and getting the PC kicked into shape first.

At the very minimum it wants a damn good housekeeping session, at best a re-install. At the age it is it is probably being outperformed by any random cheap PC from any random supplier.

 
That's a very interesting snippet! We have BT internet and 2 pc's, both running Windows 7. 

I've found that disabling the network adaptor and re enabling seems to fix it, and it's quicker than a reboot!

 
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I would suggest leaving it as it is for now and getting the PC kicked into shape first.

At the very minimum it wants a damn good housekeeping session, at best a re-install. At the age it is it is probably being outperformed by any random cheap PC from any random supplier.
Thanks Lurchio .   I think you 're right there . I'm starting to think ...new one  TBH.   Unfortunately I'm of the generation that thinks stuff should last forever .....I realised this when I began to notice people stop and point as I drove past in , possibly the last 2 ltr  Mk 4 Cortina on the road.   I remember filling the tank up in Dunoon for the return trip and the filling station guy made me an offer for it there & then !!    

Just wondering ...does anyone think that by upgrading my Dell laptop  from Win7 to Win10  could have caused to motherboard to carp out or is it just coincidence?  

 
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