New Desktop

[Mantis]

My main PC is now nearly 4 years old and has just gone belly up

I am attempting to breathe life in to the old beast but am thinking it is time for an update. What are your views? Do Apples go belly up every 2-3 years or is this a Microsoft thing ?

I need a reliable PC but do not want to waste money.

[Matt]

My main PC is now nearly 4 years old and has just gone belly up

I am attempting to breathe life in to the old beast but am thinking it is time for an update. What are your views? Do Apples go belly up every 2-3 years or is this a Microsoft thing ?

I need a reliable PC but do not want to waste money.

Self build. Pick the best parts and it will last years. mine is 3/4 yrs old but still running 7 fine.

[robwhizz]

What's broke?

Apple and Microsoft have nothing to do with hardware and a well built PC is just as likely to break down as an apple machine. Apples are PCs anyway. Intel make the mobo and it uses Core 2 Duo or Xenon CPUs, Nvidia and AMD graphics cards.

There is no real reason why a PC or Mac should break within 3-4 years. Half my office PCs are 8-9 years old and run win2K. My littlest son is using an old P3 which is about 10 years old and has no problem running his games.

Power supply's die, hard drives fail, but in all my years building PCs I've rarely come across and motherboard or CPU failure.

The 2 most important questions are, do I need a faster PC and is it more cost effective to buy job lot or upgrade.

[samhs]

Can I interest you in an Apple iMac 24" 3.06GHz 4GB 750GB HDD with 18 month warranty? About to get around to posting it on eBay.

[net-curtains]

If you buy a PC from a decent supplier it should last a good few years. I've got a ten year old Dell here that still works, though to be fair it doesn't get used very often. The only machine that's died on me was an Evesham desktop, the motherboard giving up after only two years. The same thing happened to two other people I knew with the same machine and motherboard, so it was obviously a dodgy part.

I did have a Macbook Pro recently for a few weeks but it ran so hot I didn't hold out it's chances of lasting more than a year. Kept me warm though.

At the moment I'm mostly using a three year old Dell desktop now which gets constant use and apart from a few software niggles seems to be running well.

If you want to spend the time sourcing and learning how to build your own machine or update your old one then that's the cheapest way to go, but not by as much as you'd hope.

Personally as a PC is critical to my business I treat myself to a brand new machine every two or three years from Dell - I can usually quadruple the specs of the old one for about £600 and have a warranty in place if anything goes wrong. They're so cheap now I don't bother to upgrade them myself apart from maybe a bit of RAM which works out cheaper if you add it yourself.

[Mantis]

I tried to boot up . . .  it hung

I tried to boot up in safe mode . . . .

it hung!

I seem to have a problem with any PC lasting more than three years without serious issues. I do not know what causes the problem they just stop working. I dont do porn and do not download anything in any volume that could infect the PC. In addition I do have the latest virus and spyware protection and they are updated often.

I can build my own but life is too short and I would rather spend the time with the family or at the pub

Stability is what I need in a PC at the moment almost above anything else. I am now self employed and am researching a new business.

I do have all my documents saved to an external drive so my paperwork is safe, would a mac be able to read Excell and word files?

[robwhizz]

It could be a hardware issue, but is most likely a bit of software or update causing problems.

Have you added anything new or changed anything recently?
Hit F8 when booting up and you can choose a step-by-step boot. That way you'll find out which part it's hanging on.

Windows get full of crap over time, and a good clean install (wipe drive and reinstall) will return a machine to it's full speed.
If you are not desperate for a new PC, then try reinstalling windows. If you've got a full copy of XP then run that and reformat the drive for a nice clean install. If it's a manufacturers recovery disc then just follow their instructions.

[Mantis]

It could be a hardware issue, but is most likely a bit of software or update causing problems.

Have you added anything new or changed anything recently?
Hit F8 when booting up and you can choose a step-by-step boot. That way you'll find out which part it's hanging on.

Windows get full of crap over time, and a good clean install (wipe drive and reinstall) will return a machine to it's full speed.
If you are not desperate for a new PC, then try reinstalling windows. If you've got a full copy of XP then run that and reformat the drive for a nice clean install. If it's a manufacturers recovery disc then just follow their instructions.

Thanks for that, I will attempt a repair, at least in the short term, but now believe that I need to replace the machine at some time fairly soon.

[Matt]

I dont think there is a huge difference in price between building your own and buying a ready made one, but I do believe there is a big difference in quality and specifications - especially as home built one will be exactly what you need.

You could always get a local (or not so local  ) specialist to build you one.

If not, for the short term try this: go into the recovery console on reinstalling windows do a chkdsk, then reboot again into recovery mode and do chkdsk /r

If that doesnt work, go right through and see if you can hit r on the partition just before you normally wipe it to do a system recovery, which will re-install all the windows files without doing a format.

[Tony]

or, set fire to it and get a new one.

I normally back up and reformat every six months, the only real major breakdown I've had is when one got dropped from a height and the CPU and cooler were knocked off the motherboard, I noticed this as it rattled when I picked it up.

Clipped it back in, started it up and still got the files off it - was a bit noisy though as the chassis was all bent.

Apple or PC? At work I have a room full of apples, no probs with them they are on for around ten hours a day, I have a few PCs, three of them are around five or six years old (Dell), one of them has been running DVD's 24/7 for over a year - reboot it every couple of months and off it goes again.

That said, get a new one - all much of a muchness, but if you're going Dell, the business versions are normally better quality parts than the home versions.