Looking for upgrade advice

[Datman]

My wife wants to move her work at home office to the basement and upgrade that computer because she says it’s to slow. All she will be doing is working via remote desktop, and playing movies off HDD on extended 2nd monitor, often at the same time.

It has an AMD 6000+ dual core in an Asus M3A78-EM mobo. I just installed a fresh copy of vista home 32 upgrading from XP pro. I would consider upgrading to W7 I do like it better but I don’t think it will improve the speed on this system.

I thought if I doubled the ram to 4g and replaced the 45g IDE HDD with a SATA 3.0 or even a SSD there would be a noticeable improvement and save me the trouble of a complete rebuild.

Or am I wasting my time and effort and I may as well replace the mobo and processor?

Please pardon me if this is not the best location for this issue.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hello Datman mate personally I would just get the SSD and do a fresh install of 7 (64bit if the board supports it) rather than muck about with upgrades but that is just me.

If you go the SSD for the OS and boot do this http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/113967-ssd-alignment.html

As for the large HDD I don't really like anything larger than 500GB but do use 1TB's from time to time - a lot to be lost if it dies - you can alway back up to externals

 

[essenbe]

Hello Datman, I agree with John. An SSD is the most noticeable upgrade you can do to almost any computer. My Daughter had an old 1.8GHz laptop with Vista on it and was so slow it was almost unusable. I upgraded the ram, put windows X64 on it and installed an SSD. Now, it is almost like a new laptop. I can assure you, it will make a big difference.

 

[Datman]

I ordered the hardware 120g SSD, 3tb external drive (movies) 4g of DDR2 ram and a better wireless adapter. The only thing I’m not sure about is W7 64. What is the upgrade license cost? Can I turn the Vista 32 into a 64 with a fresh install? I have both discs. I think our biggest problem with internet speed has been internet explorer and all the advertising. I just started using Firefox and it is much better, there are some things about it that are not working so good but I will figure it out.

 

[essenbe]

I'm not sure what you mean about all the advertising. A lot of people use Firefox and I used to also. But firefox will use more resources. Going from Vista to 7 can be done with an upgrade disk. You can do an in place upgrade or a clean install. The clean install is a little trickier, but it can be done. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/31402-clean-install-upgrade-windows-7-version.html

An upgrade Windows 7 is $119. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116713.
Or $97.98 http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Win...=1360526489&sr=1-1&keywords=Windows+7+upgrade

 

[Datman]

You know all those active ads on the right side of the screen. In Internet explorer you can't do anything until they get finished loading.

Firefax seems much better

 

[Datman]

An upgrade Windows 7 is $119. Microsoft GFC-00020 Software - Newegg.com.
Or $97.98

I thought in might be less if I installed it off a disc and bought a new key.

 

[Wrenches]

Don't bother with upgrade, just get an OEM.

Microsoft GFC-02050 Software - Newegg.com

I think the memory and drive upgrades will improve your system greatly but I see you already ordered the SSD but will it work in IDE? I don't think your BIOS has the option from going to AHCI from IDE.

It may be ok as I don't know that much but seeing that you have an older system raised the question.

 

[essenbe]

If his motherboard has sata connections it will work. AHCI will give better performance, but it will work in IDE mode as well and still be considerably faster than a mechanical hard drive.

 

[Wrenches]

That's good to know, thanks.

 

[Datman]

Don't bother with upgrade, just get an OEM.

Microsoft GFC-02050 Software - Newegg.com

I think the memory and drive upgrades will improve your system greatly but I see you already ordered the SSD but will it work in IDE? I don't think your BIOS has the option from going to AHCI from IDE.

It may be ok as I don't know that much but seeing that you have an older system raised the question.

The mobo has sata inputs. I just used what I had lying around when I built it. I would not be surprised if its a 5400 rpm

 

[Datman]

Thanks guys it worked great. I set it up in diskpart and cloned the cdrive it went smooth. I very happy with the speed. I'm not sure I completely understand the deal with the bit locker. I followed the SSD alignment instructions but this small partition is not visible and the size appears the same, so I’m not sure it is setup correctly.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Thanks guys it worked great. I set it up in diskpart and cloned the cdrive it went smooth. I very happy with the speed. I'm not sure I completely understand the deal with the bit locker. I followed the SSD alignment instructions but this small partition is not visible and the size appears the same, so I’m not sure it is setup correctly.

Datman run the Partition Wizard Partition Manager Software, partition magic server and server partition software for Windows Server 2000/2003/2008, Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP. it should give you a clear picture of it in that as mine doesn't in Computer Management > Disk Management.
Having said that my laptop version doesn't show that small partition in PW or DISKPART either.

 

[Datman]

Thanks guys it worked great. I set it up in diskpart and cloned the cdrive it went smooth. .

As always I spoke to soon. I was getting a few weird issues. I was getting a blue screen of death as I shut it down and would always reboot and have to be manually turned off. Moving the wireless usb adapter would cause a blue screen. I did a fresh install and the drive disappeared during the install and caused an error. I moved the sata and power cables around and that seemed to help with the SSD staying stable and the blue screens with the wireless adapter. I also updated the bios and chip set drivers today. It still will not shut down and a get a blue screen for a few seconds right before windows would normally turn off but it cycles back on. I haven't really used it yet to tell if it will run OK but it definitely will not shut down.

 

[Datman]

One of 2 things must be bad. The SSD or my PS.

I forgot to set the bios from sata to AHCI so I thought that must be it. Then windows wound not boot but if I switched it back to sata it would. So I thought I must need to install windows again with the bios set to AHCI and it seemed to work. I installed all the mobo software, SP1 and 2 restarted several times everything was looking good then I opened Internet explorer and it prompted me to install IE9 and I did. When it rebooted I am back to BSOD everytime I reboot. I have to hold the power button and the next time I boot I get a ctrl alt delete to restart error and if I go into the bios the drive is gone again. I give up.

 

[Golden]

Please follow steps outlined here to get BSOD help:

http://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-debugging/96879-blue-screen-death-bsod-posting-instructions.html

 

[Datman]

Please follow steps outlined here to get BSOD help:

http://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-debugging/96879-blue-screen-death-bsod-posting-instructions.html

thanks for the link Golden.

I will study it later when I have more time. As it turns out the problem is my USB wireless adapter. It has been on this computer for years and as far as I can tell it is still good but for some reason after I hooked up the SSD I started getting ther BSOD but if I replace it with a different unit everything works fine.

That's why I thought I was all good at first then after I installed the adapter and did all the updates is when I had problems. I never dreamed it could be the adapter, weird.

 

[Wrenches]

Maybe not so weird. Usually something tries to use the same resources as the others thus causing a conflict. Changing the unit usually solves that.