[rbico]

I am helping a friend who bought an HP a few years back and has had chronic problems with "not responding" and major lags. I have done basic maintenance on it and it helps, but it is a really slow computer and really shouldn't be (specs below).
I was thinking that her 240 watt PSU might no be enough for her system and her PC habits (small form factor case so a larger PSU might not be possible). She likes to have 10 chrome tabs open, plus photoshop, plus illustrator, plus itunes and stuff like that. I have run her machine without all of that open and it runs better, but still not that great. My machine runs 10x's better and mine is not as powerful.
I was thinking of possibly taking her down to 3 cores to see if that might eat less power, but this is theory I am not really qualified to suggest - which is why I am here. Can someone point me to a tutorial on how to do this if this indeed seems like a good idea?

THANKS!!!!!

Here's what I will do first
1) check for malware and viruses.
2) Clean out startup (msconfig)
3) update all drivers
4) run memtest
5) possibly drop down to 3 or even 2 cores.

Then try to duplicate the not responding probpelms.

Her system:
Windows 7 32 bit - all service packs and updates current

Processor 1 x Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 / 2.4 GHz ( Quad-Core )
Cache Memory 8 MB L2 cache
Cache Per Processor 8 MB
RAM 4 GB (installed) - DDR2 SDRAM - non-ECC - 800 MHz - PC2-6400
Storage Controller Serial ATA ( Serial ATA-300 ) ; IDE
Hard Drive 1 x 250 GB - standard - Serial ATA-300
Optical Storage DVD±RW (±R DL) / DVD-RAM with LightScribe Technology
Graphics Controller Intel GMA 3100
Audio Output Sound card - stereo
Networking Network adapter - PCI Express x1 - Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet
Power AC 120/230 V ( 50/60 Hz )240 watt
Chipset Type Intel Q33 Express
Data Bus Speed 1066 MHz

[rbico]

I ran memtest overnight and it found nothing. I ran seatools on the c-drive and the short test failed. I made a bootable seatools disc and ran it and it failed. I will be doing the long test and have it try to fix the bad sectors, but I don't know if a hard drive can cause these problems (hard to google these facts).

any advice?

[Goatz]

I would think disabling cores would be a bad idea. 240w should be plenty for those sys specs imo. However, Illustrator and Photoshop are extremely demanding graphics-wise especially if she's got YouTube running in one or more those 10 tabs she might have open in Chrome. The DD2 mem and the on-board integrated graphics controller are not helping either and could be causing a bottleneck type situation when she has all of that running at once. If you're getting error reports on the drive that would be the first place I'd start though. It's hard to upgrade with those slimline cases in regards to PSU's or graphics cards sometimes because of the limited space especially if the gpu you're upgrading to needs more power. But there a several lower tier cards available that aren't that power hungry that would provide a significant increase in performance over what she's working with now imo.