Why do manf computers always get slow?

D

dunkindan

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 29, 2003
Messages
300
So many of my relatives and friends who have compaq's and gateways complain of there computers getting slow. Why is this? Is there a way to stop them from freezing? I always tell them I'll reformat there drive but thats about the only thing I can think of.
 
Most likely from overheating from the dust bunnies and lack of defragmentation and removal of cookies and temp files, history, etc. Most users of production machines rarely crack the case and know nothing of routine HDD maintenance.
 
also, a lot of those computers come with barely enough RAM to run the OS, and then they load them down with all sorts of tray applications and stuff that no one uses.
 
Originally posted by jagec
also, a lot of those computers come with barely enough RAM to run the OS, and then they load them down with all sorts of tray applications and stuff that no one uses.
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I agree. Alot of those prebuilts come with a minimal amount of RAM. Sometimes like 256MB. Thats just not enough to run Windows XP smoothly and have descent bootup times. People like to have 50 things running in their taskbar and that all sucks away from what little RAM you have in the system to start with.

Also im sure they are full of spyware galore and need a good defragmenting.
 
Originally posted by burningrave101
I agree. Alot of those prebuilts come with a minimal amount of RAM. Sometimes like 256MB. Thats just not enough to run Windows XP smoothly and have descent bootup times. People like to have 50 things running in their taskbar and that all sucks away from what little RAM you have in the system to start with.

Also im sure they are full of spyware galore and need a good defragmenting.
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256? If you're lucky. Compaq will sell you an XP machine with 128MB of memory:rolleyes: , and so will Gateway. Dell will give you a PC with 128MB of SHARED memory, granted, they usually offer a "free upgrade" to 256. And sooo many people remember the days when that was a lot of memory...that people will buy it.
 
so basically when people come to me tell them to upgrade there memory and delete all of there temporary crap.....or reformat
 
Originally posted by dunkindan
so basically when people come to me tell them to upgrade there memory and delete all of there temporary crap.....or reformat
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upgrading memory is probably the single biggest thing which will help their performance. Of course, ask them, and if they already have 512MB or so you know it's got to be something else.
 
No no no you got it all wrong, its the increasing amount of fucking scumfuck spyware and other adaware companies injecting that shit into people's computers since faggot Gator came into play.

Screw that popup blocker, definatly screw IE, and use Mozilla Firebird.
 
Mozzila is good, so is firebird, but there are several sites that won't work right unless its IE.
Example is windows update
 
Originally posted by MooCow
No no no you got it all wrong, its the increasing amount of fucking scumfuck spyware and other adaware companies injecting that shit into people's computers since faggot Gator came into play.

Screw that popup blocker, definatly screw IE, and use Mozilla Firebird.
Click to expand...

Spyware pisses me off too and i use Firebird also. The people that create the spyware should all be locked up in jail for 100 years till they get tired of playing bitch and being called "toots" by their cell mate and decide to stop trying to stick their noses into everyone elses freaking business.
 
I agree with you guys. Always pump up the amount of Ram. These manufacturers nowadays love to sell a Celeron system with 256MB of PC2100 running XP for a crazy amount of price. Don't even get me started on the older computers. They get the worst deal. Freaking 128MB of Ram and you can only upgrade to 256MB of PC100. LOL.

Other than the Ram, should do a reformat and reinstall of the OS. Hopefully they have an actual OS CD and not the recovery CD that comes with those annoying bundle softwares.

Another thing to do is to Defrag, Disk Cleanup, basically do system management on the Hard Disk. Like a tune up every week or something. Always keeps it up and running.
 
And regarding them Spywares. Screw them 8 ways to hell!

They love to make their crap around IE. Now my IE is basically unuseable because of it. Not like I love using IE or anything, thank goodness for Firebird!!!
 
Yea I usually say screw it and do a clean install with an actual OS CD. It usually works out good but I have a computer here, and when i load xp it says setup failed. dmboot.sys file corrupted please try again. I've tried numerous times to fix the problem but I cant get anything to work. Now the lady im doing it for is pissed. lol
 
There is always some crap wrong when it comes down to computers. Just gotta be patient and actually troubleshoot everything ONE by ONE.

One time, I was trying to reinstall an OS on this crappo old school Dell. Tell my why it would not post or when it did, I cannot input any command from the keyboard? Well it was because I had to use the original Mouse and Keyboard that the system came with. Does that suck or what? I mean, who would have guessed??
 
Originally posted by Chelica
I agree with you guys. Always pump up the amount of Ram. These manufacturers nowadays love to sell a Celeron system with 256MB of PC2100 running XP for a crazy amount of price. Don't even get me started on the older computers. They get the worst deal. Freaking 128MB of Ram and you can only upgrade to 256MB of PC100. LOL.
Click to expand...

My first comp was a prefab by compaq.
I now have it in my possesion again adn I did a bit if reading on it.
400mhz AMD Athlon
max ram is 384 pc100:D
currently has/came with 128
 
That is not bad tho, it sucks when you are stuck with a Celly and a max cap at 256MB PC100. What can you really do with that?
 
Once I began acquiring some computer knowledge only a few short years ago, this question was a very staunch one in my mind.

To this day, it's also the #1 reason why I absolutely REFUSE to purchase a system from a manufacturer. The only possible exception would be a Dell laptop, which are pretty good.

This also boils down to the following credo - Knowledge is power. I can't tell you how many people are confused why I constantly talk down a Dell, Gateway, or Compaq computer when they are perfectly happy with sluggish performance with a crummy warranty. They can have their bloody warranty, I have Newegg or ZipZoomFly and their RMA process!

Dark Assassin
 
Haha, Dark Assasin, I agree.

I myself started to get into this computer deal not to long ago, about 1 1/2 years, yeah around there. But it is crazy how these manufacturers would try to take advantage of their customers.

But ironically, I sell these PCs made by these manufacturers for a living, not permanently, only till I finish my College schooling. But yeah, knowing the real truth and the street prices for these items and at the same time selling them to the customers for a crazy amount of price is just gut wrenching.
 
Another thing that relates to the question posted at the start of this thread. Maybe these manufacturers put some sort of a bug that actually kills off the system in a few years. That way the consumers would have to purchase a new system from them once again. And so it starts...
 
When i first opened my "place of business" I got BOOKS from dell, compaq etc. to hawk their crappy junk.
 
Originally posted by MajorDomo
Most likely from overheating from the dust bunnies and lack of defragmentation and removal of cookies and temp files, history, etc. Most users of production machines rarely crack the case and know nothing of routine HDD maintenance.
Click to expand...

Exactly what I was thinking. I've been surprised to find how many mainstream users know about cleaning out temporary internet files by now. But they NEVER think about defragmenting, etc.
 
....some computer n0Ob buddies of mine bought what looked like a nice Dell 2.4G machine that ran like a slug. I opened up Device Manager and found.....128 MB of shared RAM. Unacceptable. Their jaw hit the table when they saw what a 512 MB stick brought to the mix......:eek:

That and a decent spyware / adware / spamware clean up, and the system ran like a champ.

FWIW - B.B.S.
 
Its unbelievable what they do to save a few bucks. I mean c mon if you're an oem buying another 128 megs (at least) of ram is only gonna add 10 bucks or so to the total cost.

That price can be offset by not butchering windows.
 
Memory is definitely the primary cause, but also keep in mind 99% of those people have no idea how to clean and maintain a system. All their AOL and Webshots shit, etc just grows like bacteria, slowing down the PC.
 
The reason it happens is maintainence, or lack of. This is a software issue, not hardware.

1. HDD/page file needs defragging. Built in defragment won't touch the PF in XP, this is a big problem for some people.
2. Crap software installed, usually includes every version of Gator, 20 startup items, 10+ smiley/e-card programs, 40+ spyware processies.
3. Temp files.

Simply put all the comments about hardware are crap. Hardware doesn't "get slower over time" it only gets slower in comparison to newer equipment. The fact that a manuf. machine has 128 MB RAM doesn't make it slower that when it was purchased, it does make #2 a bigger problem.

Format/reload ANY machine that just isn't as fast as it used to be and you will breath new life into it, at least it will be as fast as it used to.

Edit: Sizing of RAM is a problem, esp. for home users, but it doesn't solve the problem, it only delays it. The reason why they get slower over time isn't hardware, period.
 
Originally posted by Phoenix86

Edit: Sizing of RAM is a problem, esp. for home users, but it doesn't solve the problem, it only delays it. The reason why they get slower over time isn't hardware, period.
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*over time*, of course it's only software. But aren't we also talking about them being slow in general?
 
I see a lot of people packing the hardrive full and then add another hard drive without cleaning out the main one and wonder why it is still slow.
I like to have at least 1.5 gigs free on my system drive.
 
Originally posted by jagec
*over time*, of course it's only software. But aren't we also talking about them being slow in general?
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Well we could, but the topic is "Why do manf computers always get slow?"

Just trying to point out the difference between a slow machine and one that 'gets' slow, implying over time. A slow machine is a slow machine, one that 'gets' slow has other issues. So the comments about adding RAM would help. But like I said it's only delaying/masking the real issue, maintainence, by allowing more junk to run w/o swapping. Get rid of the junk and you shouldn't not need more RAM, unless of course your running apps that need more, in which case your requirements of the machine have changed, so you should change the machine to meet these new requirements. Beefier software requires beefier hardware, duh.

If one read the thread from the begining they could walk away with the idea that more ram is the solution, and they would be wrong...
 
If you ever have to buy a manufactored PC, the first thing you should do is reformat and reinstall your OS. ;)
 
Originally posted by jagec
also, a lot of those computers come with barely enough RAM to run the OS, and then they load them down with all sorts of tray applications and stuff that no one uses.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Not to mention none of these manufacturers have instructions or easily accessible information on how to maintain a computer, like reformatting every so often or degfragmenting from time to time.

If I was going to make my own huge computer company, I would schedule defragmenting when CPU utilization is very low. Kinda like Diskeeper, except better.
 
Originally posted by Northwood
If you ever have to buy a manufactored PC, the first thing you should do is reformat and reinstall your OS. ;)
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lmao

Most people that buy those type of PC's dont know what a reformat is.

Some dont even know what OS means.
 
Yeps, that is another topic regarding computers and their consumers. People do not know that if they have crashes, hella errors popping out and what not, they can try to fix it themselves by doing a reformat. Instead, they bring their old PC to some computer store and pay a crazy amount of dollars to perform a Reformat and Reinstallation of the OS. But then again, if everyone knows about computers, there will be no money to be made in the computer tech. side of things.
 
I've fixed my fair share of pre-builts for people, and the best thing you can do is format the drive and install a retail version of the O.S. Every pre-built comes with a buffet of installed crap software, and most of it is active, loaded at boot up, waiting for the day that the ignorant user clicks on the application so that it can tell them they now have to purchase the non-shareware version of whatever it is.

Since all the pre-built companies, such as dell and compaq and such use dumbified versions of real hardware, it's easy enough to install a retail os, then go out and get drivers for the hardware. In most cases you end up with onboard everything anyways, so a simple unified chipset driver takes care of the problem.

If your unwilling to install a retail version, I highly recomend openeing up "Add/Remove programs" and uninstall all the junk you don't use, then install a copy of spybot and clean out all the muck.
 
Originally posted by Phoenix86
1. HDD/page file needs defragging. Built in defragment won't touch the PF in XP, this is a big problem for some people.
2. Crap software installed, usually includes every version of Gator, 20 startup items, 10+ smiley/e-card programs, 40+ spyware processies.
3. Temp files.
Click to expand...

exactly right.. and like almost everyone else said is the fact that they come with 128 MB of RAM and 256 at most.. my cousin bought a compaq with an athlon 2400 in it but with... guess what.. 128 MB of RAM.. it was so slow.. i almost cried when i saw it start up.. it took forever and as soon as u tried loading a program and it would grind to a sudden halt.. so the first day she had it i ordered her another 256 MB stick from newegg.. sped it up tremendously

even with fast hardware.. when u load it down with 40 spyware programs and tons of crap startup programs its gonna grind to a halt.. 95% of the people who buy premanufactured computers dont know much about them.. so they install tons of crap they dont need and dont understand the concepts of hd maintenance

i also work in retail and sell/watch people buy hardware at outrageous prices.. if only they knew...
 
shit, 128mb?! you guys are livin large. my gateway (the 800 mhz p3) came with 64mb of 133.
 
Originally posted by fallsincluded
shit, 128mb?! you guys are livin large. my gateway (the 800 mhz p3) came with 64mb of 133.
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but you can bet it isn't running winxp.
 
of the 2 prefabs I've had, I have never had less than 128megs., stock.
I kinda feel special :D
 
i guess the only thing to do is make commercials for peoples to see on tv when sometime during their 4 to 5 hour tvwatching day and explain that you need lots of help when purchasing a prefab computer from some "name brand" computer company.
 
Damn, a 2400 with a 128MB of Ram, what a shame.

fallsincluded-We are talking about how they are packaging their PCs now, knowing that XP takes a buttload of Ram idle. With 128 of Ram, you can't do nothing with XP. Maybe look at your Desktop, thas it tho.

You know what else realllly irks me?? When I open up almost all of the Compaq/HP PCs we sell at our store, most of them are missing an AGP slot. I do not see the harm of giving their consumers a freaking AGP ready Motherboard. Manufactures would want their consumers to upgrade and whatnot forcing them to buy "their" newest and greatest model, but I mean c'mon, even the old Acer with 500MHZ P3 comes with a generic Motherboard supporting AGP.

That is why I try to push out (sell) The newer EMachines. At least they use real name brand parts.
 
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