Computer acting up

Rocker

My HP desktop computer is acting strangely these times.  When powered up, it stays stuck displaying the 'Blue' HP screen.  Power down and up and it then goes through the bootup procedure perfectly.  This happens every time and is consistent.  Another thing to note is that it takes several minutes to complete the bootup routines [when the hard disk activity light finally extinguishes].  Running Windows 10.

I suspect a virus has 'done something' to cause this.

Options are to take the machine to one of the computer repair shops in town.  Get them to install a SS hard disk for the OS?  
Replace the existing hard disk with a new faster bigger one.

The PC itself is 8 or 9 years old.  I upped the RAM a few years ago but any speed gains from this seem to have gone down the tubes.  The machine is probably way over its best before date so I might be better off scrapping it and buying a new floor box.  What do you guys think I should do?  Requirements are the usual suspects, email, internet browsing, music server, MS Word and similar programs.  No heavy apps like CAD or gaming.  No recording activities or music editing/manipulation either.  Thanks.

Legionreturns

Rocker said:

My HP desktop computer is acting strangely these times.  When powered up, it stays stuck displaying the 'Blue' HP screen.  Power down and up and it then goes through the bootup procedure perfectly.  This happens every time and is consistent.  Another thing to note is that it takes several minutes to complete the bootup routines [when the hard disk activity light finally extinguishes].  Running Windows 10.

I suspect a virus has 'done something' to cause this.

Options are to take the machine to one of the computer repair shops in town.  Get them to install a SS hard disk for the OS?  
Replace the existing hard disk with a new faster bigger one.

The PC itself is 8 or 9 years old.  I upped the RAM a few years ago but any speed gains from this seem to have gone down the tubes.  The machine is probably way over its best before date so I might be better off scrapping it and buying a new floor box.  What do you guys think I should do?  Requirements are the usual suspects, email, internet browsing, music server, MS Word and similar programs.  No heavy apps like CAD or gaming.  No recording activities or music editing/manipulation either.  Thanks.

8 or 9 years old = not worth spending money on. Everything has moved on. Get yourself to cex and get a second hand laptop for a hundred quid and it'll be light years ahead of what you've got 

Myranda

Pop into PC world and find a computer that will let you plug in any peripherals you use ... you could spend maybe £250 have a years warranty and likely be as fast as what you had... something like: 
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/computing/desktop-pcs/desktop-pcs/hp-slimline-411-a000na-desktop-pc-10158387-pdt.html ;

Emp_Fab

Linky no worky.

Myranda

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/computing/desktop-pcs/desktop-pcs/hp-slimline-411-a000na-desktop-pc-10158387-pdt.html

Both cut-and-paste, but this one worked... 

Emp_Fab

Your first one appears to have a trailing semicolon, which I suspect broked it.

digitalscream

This can happen when the hard drive is on its way out - the motherboard is waiting for the drive to register itself as available, but it takes too long to get its shit together. The reboot triggers it into life and off you go.

Step 1: Back everything up.
Step 2: Spend £30 - £40 and get a decent drive, or spend £100+ and go SSD.

I disagree with @Legionreturns - if it's a relatively high-spec 2010 machine, it's still perfectly usable. Hell, I've recorded albums with machines older than that.

Myranda

digitalscream said:

This can happen when the hard drive is on its way out - the motherboard is waiting for the drive to register itself as available, but it takes too long to get its shit together. The reboot triggers it into life and off you go.

Step 1: Back everything up.
Step 2: Spend £30 - £40 and get a decent drive, or spend £100+ and go SSD.

I disagree with @Legionreturns - if it's a relatively high-spec 2010 machine, it's still perfectly usable. Hell, I've recorded albums with machines older than that.

Though, if it's a low spec machine from 2008 it could be a dog that needed putting to sleep for a while... 

octatonic

digitalscream said:

This can happen when the hard drive is on its way out - the motherboard is waiting for the drive to register itself as available, but it takes too long to get its shit together. The reboot triggers it into life and off you go.

Step 1: Back everything up.
Step 2: Spend £30 - £40 and get a decent drive, or spend £100+ and go SSD.

I disagree with @Legionreturns - if it's a relatively high-spec 2010 machine, it's still perfectly usable. Hell, I've recorded albums with machines older than that.

My studio computer is from 2010 and is still going strong.

Legionreturns

Ok yes I made an assumption, but if it was a high end machine in its day then you could salvage it. I have 2 Windows laptops and a Linux media centre desktop plugged into my tv, and they get changed roughly on a 6 year cycle. 

frank1985

Try updating the Bios if HP have a win10 update for your model. If not, try downgrading to 8.1 or 7.

digitalscream

Legionreturns said:

Ok yes I made an assumption, but if it was a high end machine in its day then you could salvage it. I have 2 Windows laptops and a Linux media centre desktop plugged into my tv, and they get changed roughly on a 6 year cycle. 

Well, to be honest even a medium-spec machine from 2010 would be worth a spruce up - that'd probably be a Core 2 Quad machine (given that Intel were on to the second-gen i7 CPUs by that point), and they've still got plenty of grunt for most people's needs.

Rocker

Checked out the machine and it was bought in 2007.  At that time the company I worked for were replacing old machines with HPs and I bought one for home use.

PolarityMan

digitalscream said:

This can happen when the hard drive is on its way out - the motherboard is waiting for the drive to register itself as available, but it takes too long to get its shit together. The reboot triggers it into life and off you go.

Step 1: Back everything up.
Step 2: Spend £30 - £40 and get a decent drive, or spend £100+ and go SSD.

I disagree with @Legionreturns - if it's a relatively high-spec 2010 machine, it's still perfectly usable. Hell, I've recorded albums with machines older than that.

I thought the same thing. Sounds like dodgy drive. 

Axe_meister

Sometimes windows 10 does produce some odd behaviour when restarting.
For instance on my machine, when it applies an update and reboots it seem to forget it has a boot drive
but restart manually and it is all OK.
Have you ever added a drive in the past or taken one out/replaced?
If so go through the bios, sometimes old drives seem to hang around and can't be deleted, in which case update the BIOS to the latest version, that seem to clear out old clutter.

Rocker

Myranda said:

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/computing/desktop-pcs/desktop-pcs/hp-slimline-411-a000na-desktop-pc-10158387-pdt.html

@Myranda, I have been told that I need an i5 [or at the very least an i3] processor with 8 Gbytes RAM and a large hard drive.  An additional SS drive would speed things up too.

Is this over speccing for a home computer?  Running the usual apps and operating as a music server.  I do now want a laptop, a mini tower or similar will replace what is there right now.  I have a 60 cm monitor which is good and does the job.

Thanks.

Myranda

Rocker said:

Myranda said:

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/computing/desktop-pcs/desktop-pcs/hp-slimline-411-a000na-desktop-pc-10158387-pdt.html

@Myranda, I have been told that I need an i5 [or at the very least an i3] processor with 8 Gbytes RAM and a large hard drive.  An additional SS drive would speed things up too.

Is this over speccing for a home computer?  Running the usual apps and operating as a music server.  I do now want a laptop, a mini tower or similar will replace what is there right now.  I have a 60 cm monitor which is good and does the job.

Thanks.

Usage is key... If you want to browse the Web, run iTunes/Winamp/foobar, use Office and not much else then a 5 year old Atom processor is probably fine... 

If you have a LOT of tabs open in browsers, want to encode video, record music with a lot of tracks run Virtual Machines, play computer games then you'll need more... 

Personally I'd build a PC with enough horsepower that I need to consider cooling the room especially... But we might use our PCs for different things ;-) 

Axe_meister

@Myranda  You'd love the systems we'll sell. Up to 512 servers with 2x22 cores 1.5TB memory each attached to a SAN with upto 8 controller Engines, hosting Petabytes if SSD storage with 100Gb networking (both IP and fibre channel).
All with a single support call and patch management part of the service.
All delivered and working within 45 days.

Myranda

Axe_meister said:

@Myranda  You'd love the systems we'll sell. Up to 512 servers with 2x22 cores 1.5TB memory each attached to a SAN with upto 8 controller Engines, hosting Petabytes if SSD storage with 100Gb networking (both IP and fibre channel).
All with a single support call and patch management part of the service.
All delivered and working within 45 days.

But, can it play Crysis?

DesVegas

Pop to garage and buy Club International.

Sorted

ThePrettyDamned

Myranda said:

Axe_meister said:

@Myranda  You'd love the systems we'll sell. Up to 512 servers with 2x22 cores 1.5TB memory each attached to a SAN with upto 8 controller Engines, hosting Petabytes if SSD storage with 100Gb networking (both IP and fibre channel).
All with a single support call and patch management part of the service.
All delivered and working within 45 days.

But, can it play Crysis?

Yeah, I didn't see any graphics cards in that list...  

@Rocker for basic use stuff this looks like it'd deliver and have a bit in reserve for those times you want more tabs open or whatever. 

https://m.johnlewis.com/asus-vivopc-k20cd-desktop-pc-intel-core-i3-8gb-ram-2tb/p/2961360 ;