Diagnose My Computer Problems

In My Humble Opinion
1

Ok, my 3-year old Dell has pretty much stopped working. The problems had been getting worse and worse for over a year. The computer would not turn off. Occasionally the screen would freeze. Some days it would be sluggish, other days fine. Usually when the computer would not shut down normally, I would have to cut the power and reboot. My Norton Anti- virus software is up to date and was scanning weekly (more on this in a minute). The results were always clean. I used to have Kaspersky, but when the time came to renew I couldn’t get it to update properly so I switched to Norton.

But over the last year the problems have been getting worse. Good running days were fewer and fewer. Last week when I renewed my Norton anti-virus software, i paid the extra 10 bucks to have one of their computer people work remotely inside my PC to supposedly return my system to operating as if it was new. After the remote work nothing got better. Now I can’t even work on the thing for more then a minute or two before the screen freezes and the little circle appears and spins and spins and spins… There is also a sort of clicking noise from the tower that can always be heard when the screen is freezing up.

Windows 7. Usually I use firefox as a browser. I live in the boonies and thus have a Verizon Hot Spot to connect to the internet.

Any thoughts before I take it to the shop for repairs.

2

Sounds like your hard drive might be dying (clicking noise). Take it to the repair shop and let them replace the drive before it’s too far gone.

3

  1. Definitely take your machine to the vet and get your hard drive looked at. And your power supply. And your cooling hardware. And your graphics card, if you have one.

  2. Get rid of Norton Antivirus and also the extra remote desktop thingy. I haven’t used anything on my or my family’s computers in years, except for Microsoft’s built-in anti-virus. No, it’s not perfect. Nothing is. MSE is fine and it stays out of the way.

  3. Update to Windows 10 in another week or two and choose the clean install option (if Win10 wasn’t right around the corner, I’d tell you to reformat and reinstall of Windows 7. But since it is, just go for 10.)

  4. Make sure to install Adblock and NoFlash or NoScript Firefox addons.

These later versions of Windows are much more hands-off. Just let it download and install updates automatically and let it reboot regularly. They need very little in the way of maintenance or upkeep. High-maintenance security suites like Norton are not necessary.

4

Good advice. I will take it to the shop this weekend.