How To Tell What Needs To Be Replaced?

[Rand]

Hi, recently my laptop broke so I've been using my grandparents old computer. It is a desktop computer running Windows 7. It's EXTREMELY slow. Opening up a browser takes like 5 minutes and even typing has a delay.

This computer has not always been this bad. Over the years it's continually decreased in speed. I'm not a computer guru so I'm not quite sure why. My suspicion is that the processor has steadily been going bad over time, but again, not a computer guru here.

Is there any way I can find out which part of my computer needs to be replaced? Like I said, it's a desktop. I have experience taking apart desktops, replacing parts, etc etc. I'm just not quite sure what exactly needs to be replaced. Can I check the speed of my processor and compare it to its advertised speed? Could it also be the video card maybe? As far as I know, EVERYTHING lags. There is a delay on any program I open, I experience lag any time I try to refresh a webpage, and like I said, there's even lag when I'm typing.

Any advice is appreciated

 

[rowcon123]

Might just need a good clean mate both ing the hard drive and inside the case give it a clean see if it fixes it

 

[Celery]

Download Speccy and post the summary. It might be pretty old even though it has Win 7 (may have been updated).

It may need to be dusted out as mentioned as dust cause heat buildup especially when the CPU heatsink gets clogged and the CPU has thermal slowdown to protect itself. Also the CPU fan may not be running.

Anyway the Speccy program will tell us where we stand as to problem solving.

 

[techi3]

It's probably not worth buying parts for depending on how old it is. What web browser are you using - Chrome takes a lot of juice and would be slow if your computer is old.

Click start and type msinfo32 in the search bar and hit enter. This will give you your processor speed and other info.

1. Download CCleaner.
2. Click start and type msconfig in the search and hit enter, click the startup tab and un-check all items you don't need to be running.
3. Click start and type prefetch in the search and hit enter, delete all items in this folder. Do the same with %temp%, this will remove anything that CCleaner missed.

This should speed it up a little.

Like rowcon123 said, keep it clean. Also, make sure your cooling fans work. Heat will slow it down.

 

[setishock]

Clean up the hard drive first before you consider wasting money on replacing things that don't need replaced.
http://www.computerforums.org/forums/cyber-safety-computer-security/pc-cleanup-toolbox-219988.html

 

[BK_123]

How big is your current hard drive too?

 

[SethWilliams]

Like others have said, if we know the specs of the computer, we can help narrow down where your problem is and give more suggestions as to what is slowing your computer down.