Question Time to replace old faithful - New or refurb?

[kep55]

Back in 2008 I built my 2nd PC. Here are the specs:
Product Name: GA-MA770-UD3 (1.0)
BIOS Ver: F9G
Brand: Nvidia pci x16 500mb
Model: Athlon 64 X2 5200+
Operating System: Win 10 64-bit
Brand: Kingston DDR2-667
Size: 16 GB
Power Supply: 800w
Memory Part No.: KVR667D2N5/4G
HDD: Western Digital 500GB
Monitor: TCL 6-Series 55" via HDMI

I currently use it with win10 24H2 19045.5371for web viewing, scanning photographs into my NAS, using a Fujitsu fi7140, online meetings, and word processing (LibreOffice). Obviously I don't need to get a Ryzen 9000X3D pumping thru a Radeon 7900 XTX and 32GB Kingston FURY Renegade Pro DDR5 RDIMM.

Anyway, it's taking up to 5-6 minutes for the kit to boot, and compared to my ACER TC-875-UR15 which replaced it, it's become a real bowl of molasses in Norway. Firefox for some reason won't load anymore, and forget about getting Zoom running. I don't use it that often so I really don't think a new box is necessary. And I'm cheap.

Any suggestions what I should keep in mind for getting a replacement? I'm leaning towards a refurbished unit five or fewer years old.Thank you.

 

[USAFRet]

Maybe for this system, a full wipe and reinstall is in order.

Hardware rarely gets slower. The software, however...

 

[kep55]

Hmmm...I didn't think of doing that. Now where did I put that win7 install disk?

 

[ohio_buckeye]

You may not need the windows 7 disk. If you know the product key. You should just be able to download the windows 10 media creation tool and use that to create a bootable USB that you can boot from.

I notice you’re using a hard drive. Do yourself a favor and pick up a sata 500gb of 1tb ssd drive. Shouldn’t run much more than 50 bucks or so, and install on that. If you’re using a spinning hard drive now, you will be amazed at the difference. I can almost guarantee it will make your olderpc feel like brand new.

In fact I think the way I would consider doing it, some of the folks here could recommend some software, but get a 1tb ssd, then clone your hard drive onto that. Once done, unplug the hard drive and try to boot from the ssd. If it works well, all your programs and data should come back up but the computer should feel like a shored demon compared to what it was.

I think one of the popular programs is called disk genius. There are lots of others but seems like the last time I tried to clone a drive for my wife’s computer there were limitations on some of the others.

 

[USAFRet]

Hmmm...I didn't think of doing that. Now where did I put that win7 install disk?

Why the Win 7?

No.

Just a reinstall of Win 10.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[geofelt]

Replace your HDD C drive with a ssd.
You should be able to clone it.
The quickness of your pc will be notable.
And... the ssd can be used if you do a rebuild in the future.

 

[USAFRet]

Replace your HDD C drive with a ssd.
You should be able to clone it.
The quickness of your pc will be notable.
And... the ssd can be used if you do a rebuild in the future.

Here, I wouldn't clone.
That's just moving the apparent problems to a different drive.

SSD yes. But with a fresh OS install.