CPU-Z snip:
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How do I give my PC a thorough overhaul?
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All right, that fits with the age of the machine and what little reliable information I could find from the model number you provided. Core 2 Duo was a good CPU in its time, though that's far from the top model, and that was a *long* time ago.
There should be a lot more useful information under the other tabs of CPU-Z. Screenshots of those would be helpful, as well as of GPU-Z.
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So, *not* an Nvidia graphics card, but an AMD one. That requires a completely different set of drivers.
Let's get started. Download all of the following, then run them in order, one at a time:
Ninite installer for Firefox, Chrome, Java, Flash, K-Lite Codecs, 7-Zip & .NET 4.6
Display Driver Uninstaller - boot in Safe Mode first, use the "Clean & Restart" button.
AMD Driver Auto-Detect Utility
With any luck, that'll clear out most of the problems.
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Okay, so video stuff is now working, and Firefox is no longer crashing? If so, that's great news.
The next stage, I think, is to try to speed things up a bit. There's only so much we can do for an old machine, but defragmenting the hard drive is usually a sure bet. The defrag utility built into Windows is crap, but Defraggler seems to work well.
Let it "replace" the Windows defragger when it asks, then set it up to run a "Defrag" session overnight. It might take more than one night if it's a tough job, so don't be afraid to stop it to get some work done, and start it again later.
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Quoth Chromatix View PostSo, *not* an Nvidia graphics card, but an AMD one. That requires a completely different set of drivers.Any fool can piss on the floor. It takes a talented SC to shit on the ceiling.
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No, but Nvidia seems to have chugged right along, year upon year.“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.
One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.
The other, of course, involves orcs." -- John Rogers
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It could be a deeper problem than that. It's unlikely to be your graphics card; faults with that wouldn't affect just one application at a time. Ninite should also have replaced your old copy of Firefox with a new, up-to-date one.
I can't discount the possibility of an intermittent hardware fault elsewhere in the system, though. After all, you've already lost the use of the integrated graphics. Firefox is a very memory-hungry program, and is thus the most likely to stumble across a weak memory chip. It really is time to start saving up for a new machine.
If you have a spare USB flash drive (if not, get one), another overnight maintenance session could involve running Memtest86+. A copy is included with most Linux distros these days; you might also want to try using Linux for a day, to see whether the problem goes away while using it (and can thus be traced to bitrot in your Windows installation).
Here's a download link for a LiveCD of Linux Mint, and a utility to correctly install it on a USB flash drive. Because it's a LiveCD, you don't need to install it on the HDD to use it, but you probably won't be able to save files or browser history between reboots while in Linux.
To run Memtest86+ instead of Linux, press any key during the "countdown" while booting from the flash drive, and choose it from the menu that then appears. Let it run overnight. You could reasonably watch it for a few minutes to see if it turns up a problem very quickly.
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I've finally, FINALLY, defragged the C drive. I am now defragging the D drive (26%). Then it'll be the external hard drive.
Chromatix, that Defraggler works like a charm! I still don't know what the effect will be, but it's really cleaning things up!
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