Question about fixing an old PC

[PoppyLlama]

So my mother has an HP Pavilion a808x that she got like 6 or 7 years ago, needless to say it';s a POS now, sO she wanted to REFORMAT the hard drive but it wasn't working well enough to even do that..

SO I was wondering if I could just buy a new hard drive for it and just pop that in, and then install windows xp and microsoft office? Would that just make it like a new computer?

I would need to buy an IDE ultra ATA 100 interface, I found some new ones on newegg so that's not a problem.


EDIT: anyone have any idea? pleeeaaaase? I very much would like some help from my lovely Extreme OC family!!

[bravotsx]

Reformatting would be a great step forward, but looking at the system specs, you would be better served by a new machine. An Athlon64 3200+ s754 was fine during its day but it's completely beaten by the modern and admittedly low-end ~$200 AMD E-350 nettops.

last time I checked, IDE hard drives were more expensive anyway, and unless the machine already has 2GB of RAM (you did upgrade from the 512MB I hope) then that's even more of a reason to go to a new machine.

[PommieB]

Problem might be getting the memory to update, depends what type it is, what exactly is happening with the hard drive, what do you mean it wasn't working well enough, a bit more info might help.

Sad to say it will never be like a new computer, but it may work well enough to do what your mother wants, that's if it's still a working computer.

Personally I liked the Athlons, bit long in the tooth now, but they worked well enough in there day, might still get a bit of life out of it, new comps can be had for for 3 or 400, don't like nettops, I'd pay a bit more myself.

[BigE4u]

OEM computers are perfectly fine for the average person who just wants to surf the net, watch videos, listen to music, do document work and play flash based games.

Upgrading(maxing) the system memory should always be the first priority, the minimum thats put in from the factory is rediculous, especially on the older machines and reformating once a year never hurts to refresh the system.

Granted that machine came with XP and chances are it did or didnt come with a recory CD/DVD so there might be a restore partition that might or might not be hidden, either you see in windows or if not, tap the F11 key on bootup for it, if its corrupted as you might think it is that you cant restore it to factory, get ahold of a XP HOME(oem) disk, reinstall it yourself and then get online to HP and download all the hardware drivers needed for your machine.

Figure that would be the cheapest route instead of buying a new IDE hard drive which are getting harder to find... luckily i have a place here in town locally that sells older IDE drives and DDR memory for cheap, granted they are referbished and look like new so im able to breath new life into the older computers i work on for people that dont want to or cant afford a newer computer.

You will need a special bootdisk that will blank out and reformat the entire hard drive so you have access to all of the 160gb capacity unless it doesnt have the hidden/restore partition, then your good.

[~Dad]

I used to have a room that looked like the junk yard that Anni Skywalker worked in as a kid in StarWars. I had a dozen old dead or dieing old machines and boxes and boxes of parts. I think I still have some PC2700 memory! It's fun to redo these old machines and BigE is right, unless Mom is a gamer, an 8-10 y/0 Dell, HP, or Compaq is just fine. I mean, just how fast does she need to play Spider Solitaire or look at the pics from Grandpa's funeral?

BigE said something else that's a problem though. Most of these old rigs didn't come with either an OS or a system disk. Sometimes you can find the system drivers as a download from the manufacturer's site or there might be a restore partition on it (good luck with that!)

You will find that hardware for the older machined is a lot more expensive than for a new one, especially memory. Post up what you need and someone prob has a few old sticks they'll drop in the mail for you. Most of all, have fun with it, Man!

[LMHmedchem]

You might want to think about getting a sata card if the computer has an open pci slot. Drivers may be in issue during reinstall. If you installed a new version of windows, that could help some. Windows, a sata card, and a used sata drive will run $150-$200, depending on what you get the drive for. A nice, but inexpensive new system like a Llano or i3 sandy bridge build will cost $400 or so (maybe less), so don't spend too much on an older box like that.

Software is a big question, since it can cost allot by itself. Do you have re-install disks, or did you by products like MS office? There alternatives like open office, an even free OSs like Ubuntu. If the computer is just going to be used for firefox, thunderbird, word processing, you may want to look into free alternatives.

LMHmedchem

[jimh425]

You are probably at the HD's end of life. It probably would be ok with a new hard drive. I'd probably put a refurb hard drive in it along with upping the ram to at least 2GB.

[Witchdoctor]

Scrap it,

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...0695&CatId=332

you never know what will go next on these, may start to nickel and dimming you

[BigE4u]

Originally Posted by Witchdoctor

Scrap it,

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...0695&CatId=332

you never know what will go next on these, may start to nickel and dimming you

Add $100($428+ shipping) for needing the WIN7, these parts will be useless w/o the operating system.

Way cheaper just to reformat the hard drive and upgrade the memory to 2gb(max), his mom will not even come close to filling up the original 160gb hard drive in the HP.

[Witchdoctor]

yea I always forget that as I have so many windows disks laying around it is not an issue .....

But I still would never recommend investing a dime into tech that old is all.

Don't you have any scrap parts laying around to slap something together ?

[BigE4u]

Yes its old, but it depends on how it will be used... again, for the average person who will just surf, watch videos, listen to music, do document creation, view pictures, play windows and flash based online games, its fine, so theres no need for a 4core cpu system(waste), XP still has support for another 2years(2014), then after, i say upgrade to win7.(dualcore would be ideal - amd or intel)

Figure if the system goes kablooey before then, by all means, it will be an excellent excuse to upgrade.

[Rockman99]

Personally I don't care if they are dis continuing support for XP I will continue to use it I think it's the best OS MS has put out. All the new stuff is great but I like to go into true DOS so thank you very much I'll stick with XP.

[maxgull]

I do this all the time (replace an old HDD). Before investing in the HDD, check the caps on the motherboard and make sure they are not leaking. If they are, don't buy the HDD. Scrap it, build new. Use the OEM key for a fresh install.

The SATA pci card is a good idea, however I have never been able to boot from a sata card connected hdd...maybe me.

[BigE4u]

As we all know, XP doesnt have any sata drivers in it whatsoever, but thats where slipstreaming comes in... if anyone goes that route, they would have to make sure to use the correct sata chipset drivers for the install and should be problem free after that.

When using vista/win7, the sata drivers(generic) are integrated within the OS disk, so installing a sata drive should work right off the bat.

[PommieB]

Actually native sata drivers were added to XP during a sp update, if the motherboard is capable of using native sata drivers then there shouldn't be a problem. I used gigabyte motherboards with the bios set to native, never had to install sata drivers at F6 after sp1a.

[bravotsx]

I disagree with upgrading such an old rig. Why spend $100 on something that will get utter obliterated by a new $300 desktop?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883103466
You could spend $450 and get one of the Dell Vostro i3 combos w/ 20" LCD for $450

The A64 3200+ was great in its day, but in 2012 it's just bad. For example, the Passmark CPU score for the A64 3200+ is <550...a far cry from the AMD Athlon II x2 220's ~1600 and the i3-2120's ~4000+. To put things into perspective, even the lowly E-350 APU is a significant upgrade with a score of ~700

My grandparents have an old Acer with a Pentium D 805 w/ 1.5GB RAM. On paper it seems quite decent as a web-surfer/basic email machine, but even under XP + Chrome, it struggles with modern workloads. Websites have become much more dynamic over the years and while it's true that any computer can access Facebook, it takes quite a powerful one to have a seamless experience. Poorly optimized code like Farmville simply chokes on old hardware, and even chatting in Gmail can feel laggy.

[PommieB]

I wouldn't spend money on it either, but it's probably still useable, they probably wouldn't notice the lag anyway, besides maybe they haven't got the money to spend on a new computer, depends on your priorities. Up to the OP, I would think.