Opinions on upgrades for a old PC

[Amateur_Barbarian]

@Omniscient

Context please?

The context was in the post you quoted this from. You said:

@Omniscient

I was just thinking that this is what a modern browser does today making my home PC a dinosaur.

However, on rereading that I think I missed your actual meaning. You mean modern browsers are a heavy load on older computers, which I don’t think is all that true; even a fast, deep-rendering browser is a mediumweight app at most. It may well use all available resources for speed and performance, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it needs all of them.

I read your comment as the common trope that browser-based services replace the notion of PC apps, which I now see isn’t what you said. (And I meant that was true only for a subset of “apps.”)

[Omniscient]

Well, I’ve been paying closer attention to my computer all day with task manager open and I’m less convinced that the memory usage/amount is a major contributing issue here.

I’ve been using FF all day and it’s constantly hanging and page stop loading in the middle of download. Looking at the task manager and the CPU and Memory are in reasonably acceptable ranges.

Their are fairly long stretches where my disk usage is maxed out at 100% when it seems like a simple download shouldn’t be doing that. My network activity is littered with a ton of spikes, but that’s probably expected from web browsing.

I’m starting to think this is a hardware issue of some kind, either a bad NIC, a bad router, or something on the mobo. No idea how to isolate.

[BigT]

@Omniscient

System interrupts is constantly oscillating always between 0.1% and 01%. It rarely jumps over 1% and never sits at 0.0% for more than a second or two. Issue? This is on the problem home PC, btw.

No. I was rounding down, as I forgot you could get data to the tenths place. The number is the percentage of time that the CPU is dealing with interrupts. 0.1% is fine.

That’s actually one of the ways to check and see if you have a hardware problem. An interrupt happens when CPU has to interrupt what it’s doing with software to deal with a message sent by the hardware. It’s normal to happen occasionally, but it should be relatively quick. A higher percentage tends to mean the interrupts are lasting too long, meaning the hardware is having trouble talking to the CPU. This can be because of the driver (software) or because there is something wrong with the hardware itself.

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I agree with you that a memory leak does not seem to be your problem. But there are a few other software problems to check if you want to completely eliminate a software cause.

The first is one that I hesitate to mention, since its got a bad reputation of being suggested by people who don’t know anything about computers. But it’s relatively easy the possibility needs to be eliminated. Do a malware scan. Slowdowns can be caused by malware stealing CPU or memory resources, and many hide that fact from tools like task manager. Usually it’s a bit more obvious than your symptoms, but checking won’t hurt.

Also, you are using Firefox, and Firefox has freezing problems sometimes. It probably would do you some good to refresh Firefox. You will lose your extensions and download history, but not much else. (And you can get them back if you really want to–Firefox makes a backup.)

If you want to try it, go to Firefox > Help > Troubleshooting Information and click the “Reset Firefox” button. A backup copy of your profile will be placed on your desktop. If you don’t want to mess with that, you can also always make a system restore point before you start it all.

To be sure it’s hardware, you also need to take one more step (if the above doesn’t fix the problem.) And that is, yes, reinstalling Windows 8 fresh. You need to eliminate problems caused by the in-place upgrade. This will also allow you to reinstall software one piece at a time to see if any of that caused the problem. And it will also eliminate any malware that you couldn’t get rid of normally or couldn’t detect.

After going that far, then I would pretty much assume it was hardware. And, unfortunately, hardware problems are not my specialty, so I’ll defer to people who seem to know more. If you haven’t already, definitely try the heatsink thing.

[BigT]

@Omniscient

Their are fairly long stretches where my disk usage is maxed out at 100% when it seems like a simple download shouldn’t be doing that.

You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But it seems fairly typical. It happens all the time here, and does not cause any problems.

I’m starting to think this is a hardware issue of some kind, either a bad NIC, a bad router, or something on the mobo. No idea how to isolate.

I said I don’t know much about hardware, but I do know the most basic isolation method: temporary removal (and replacement if necessary). For example, if your router is not also a modem, you can take it out of the loop and just connect your computer to the modem directly. If your router is also the modem, you’d need to borrow another modem or router/modem.

Another method of isolation is to just go ahead and fix potential problems. Hence, fix that heatsink. If that fixes your problem, then you’ve isolated the problem to the heatsink. Seems obvious, but some people forget this.

There’s also, in your specific case, something else you can check: do you have problems when you aren’t using your web browsers or are otherwise online? If not, that makes it highly unlikely to be a motherboard problem.

[Omniscient]

@BigT

No. I was rounding down, as I forgot you could get data to the tenths place. The number is the percentage of time that the CPU is dealing with interrupts. 0.1% is fine.

That’s actually one of the ways to check and see if you have a hardware problem. An interrupt happens when CPU has to interrupt what it’s doing with software to deal with a message sent by the hardware. It’s normal to happen occasionally, but it should be relatively quick. A higher percentage tends to mean the interrupts are lasting too long, meaning the hardware is having trouble talking to the CPU. This can be because of the driver (software) or because there is something wrong with the hardware itself.

Seems like there’s no way to see a history of interrupts. Obviously not staring at that task every second and while I noticed it occasionally in the 3% range while I was opening programs and running Office apps, but I’m not sure how I’d know if it was periodically getting into double digits or more.

I agree with you that a memory leak does not seem to be your problem. But there are a few other software problems to check if you want to completely eliminate a software cause.

The first is one that I hesitate to mention, since its got a bad reputation of being suggested by people who don’t know anything about computers. But it’s relatively easy the possibility needs to be eliminated. Do a malware scan. Slowdowns can be caused by malware stealing CPU or memory resources, and many hide that fact from tools like task manager. Usually it’s a bit more obvious than your symptoms, but checking won’t hurt.

I run Malwarebytes periodically so I’m pretty sure it’s not a issue, but it’s no trouble to do it again. Might as well.

Also, you are using Firefox, and Firefox has freezing problems sometimes. It probably would do you some good to refresh Firefox. You will lose your extensions and download history, but not much else. (And you can get them back if you really want to–Firefox makes a backup.)

If you want to try it, go to Firefox > Help > Troubleshooting Information and click the “Reset Firefox” button. A backup copy of your profile will be placed on your desktop. If you don’t want to mess with that, you can also always make a system restore point before you start it all.

I reinstalled FF a couple months ago as this problem was starting to get a little annoying. I don’t think it’s isolated to just FF. FF is my most used application, but my computer is pretty laggy and hangs when I load other apps as well. It’s possible that the other issues are cascading from a FF issue. I’m going to spend the next couple days using Chrome and see if it reacts differently before I reset FF.

To be sure it’s hardware, you also need to take one more step (if the above doesn’t fix the problem.) And that is, yes, reinstalling Windows 8 fresh. You need to eliminate problems caused by the in-place upgrade. This will also allow you to reinstall software one piece at a time to see if any of that caused the problem. And it will also eliminate any malware that you couldn’t get rid of normally or couldn’t detect.

After going that far, then I would pretty much assume it was hardware. And, unfortunately, hardware problems are not my specialty, so I’ll defer to people who seem to know more. If you haven’t already, definitely try the heatsink thing.

Yup, re-installing the OS is something I may end up doing this weekend. I still have a nagging feeling this is connected to hardware, but it’s smart to try that before laying out cash. Will probably swap the OS to my newer, faster HD and reseat the CPU with new paste. Won’t necessarily root cause the issue if I do them all at once.

@BigT

I said I don’t know much about hardware, but I do know the most basic isolation method: temporary removal (and replacement if necessary). For example, if your router is not also a modem, you can take it out of the loop and just connect your computer to the modem directly. If your router is also the modem, you’d need to borrow another modem or router/modem.

Currently bypassing the router. Will start there. Had the ISP replace the modem last week.

There’s also, in your specific case, something else you can check: do you have problems when you aren’t using your web browsers or are otherwise online? If not, that makes it highly unlikely to be a motherboard problem.

It’s a little tougher to gauge since I use Windows 8 apps which are essentially always online, Outlook which is always online and Office files that are saved on Skydrive. I don’t really spend that much time in truly desktop apps these days

Anyways, appreciate you playing sounding board here.