Why does my computer suck and how can I fix it?

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Airy2018

n00b
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Jul 21, 2015
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I am not the kind of person who could build a PC so of course, my computer is a Dell XPS 8700. It sucks so bad. It's slow and clunky and it takes a full 40 seconds just to startup. What can I look into to speed things up and get things going at a much-higher optimized pace that would be fairly easy to do myself. How do I find out what specs I have on the system and then from that point how can I figure out what would work better (replace) or be a good addition to the system to get it going faster. I hate my PC. If I hadn't shelled out 1600 dollars for it (Please, I feel sick about it) I would just toss it and start fresh...

Any tips?
 
Clean install of Windows, instead of the Dell install (full of software you probably don't need) should help. An SSD would help with boot times too.
 
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http://pcmatic.com/

It's made in the United States of Amerikuhhh

You can probably relate to these commercials of PC Matic:

Flower shop commercial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wlH3LKmeBo

Sports fan commercial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9u_AAKDu54

Bad advice commercial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=558xzKP4rvk

Guru commercial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImxaAXqHlbk

Virus blaster commercial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ojsw6VaJZM

Furthermore, I suggest downloading more RAM @ http://downloadmoreram.com/. The best part is that it's free!

But for reals, get a Samsung SSD like rive22 suggests. You can use an Apricorn ASW-USB3-25 to convert over without reinstalling Windows. Lastly, make sure to install the Samsung Magician software --> enable RAPID mode --> setup and apply optimizations (this will only work if you have a Samsung SSD).

If you have 4 GB of RAM, I would strongly consider upgrading to at least 8 GB of RAM (or 16 GB if you want extra). According to Crucial, your Dell XPS 8700 takes DDR3, has four DIMM slots, and can handle a maximum of 32 GB of RAM (overkill).
 
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Here's a screen cap from that software...

How easy is it to install SSD? So, I would need to reinstall the entire system and put everything on the SSD? Please forgive my ignorance here. I am a serious newbie with this stuff. :)

Untitled.jpg
 
If you have an ssd do a fresh windows install with out the dell junk, if you don't have one then get an ssd, that's where you are gimped right now.
 
Pretty much what was written above would cover you fairly well, and you can easily get it done cheapyl also.

Looks like you have a good bit of ram already at 16 gb. A ssd will do you wonders, but something I would definitely check is to see if your main 4 tb drive needs a good defragging also or if you have bed sectors on it. There's no reason your machine should be acting bad at all. Yes you may notice a slight delay but it shouldn't be that noticeable if you have that much ram.

A cheap PNY or OCZ 240 gig SSD would do you absolute wonders.

I used to work for Dell back in the day (Early 2k) and while I prefer building my own pcs, I will admit that the components that Dell used back than or now isn't really that awful, just sometimes machines get bogged down or a part is funky.

I hope your problem resolves itself soon for you.
 
There is zero reason for a modern 4TB Hard drive to be that slow. Especially that 4TB Seagate Hybrid drive you have. It is already partially an SSD since it uses flash memory as a massive cache. You don't necessarily need a full blown SSD, although they do make a night and day difference.

Last time I was using an actual spinner hard drive for a boot drive was a year ago. It was a WD 1TB black HDD and was already several years old. It booted windows 7 within 15-20 seconds but I gave it scheduled full defrags weekly (overkill I know, but I didn't care). If you have a 40 second load time with a hard drive faster than the one I had? Something is definitely wrong.

Most likely to least likely culprits...in this order:
1. You have a shit ton of programs running you don't need. Shitty anti-virus programs like McAfee that is usually bundled can be one of many sources.
2. You haven't given your drive a good defrag in a long time. Win7 and Win8 auto-defrag about once a week as it is. However, sometimes the scheduling gets messed up especially if you are on the computer a lot. IIRC, by default the OS will wait for several free hours before it starts the process. I think it does it on Wednesdays also, but someone correct me if I'm wrong. If the PC is shutdown overnight, it never gets a chance to do it. Just go in there and manually schedule one.
3. The drive itself is over 80% full. I'm not sure what the exact percentage is, but I know 80% is in the ballpark. This makes it difficult for the drive to defrag and maintain itself as it runs out of room to re-arrange files for the fastest read.
4. You have a virus or other malware. See #1
5. Your drive is bad. Not as likely, especially since it would manifest itself in other more dramatic ways than just a slowdown.


Other things to consider...
-Clean your computer out. OEM computers put the absolute bare minimum effort when it comes to cooling. If you have the slightest bit of dust, the computer may be running a bit warm. This is especially true since you are using a Haswell CPU (i7-4770) which Intel had the lame idea of putting crappy thermal interface material between the chip and heatspreader.
-Don't expect miracles from that graphics card either. This would have the biggest impact on gaming, but zero affect on just about every other activity. A 650ti will be junk for anything but the lowest settings on many games made in last 3 years.
-If web browsing is slow, it may not necessarily be the drive, OS or these other culprits previously mentioned. It could be the browser's cache is full of junk and needs clearing, it could be a bad plugin (especially if it's firefox or chrome), or any number of reasons.

Cerulean said:
http://pcmatic.com/

It's made in the United States of Amerikuhhh

You can probably relate to these commercials of PC Matic:

Flower shop commercial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wlH3LKmeBo

Sports fan commercial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9u_AAKDu54

Bad advice commercial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=558xzKP4rvk

Guru commercial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImxaAXqHlbk

Virus blaster commercial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ojsw6VaJZM

Furthermore, I suggest downloading more RAM @ http://downloadmoreram.com/. The best part is that it's free!
Click to expand...
IGNORE ALL OF THIS ADVICE. He is joking, especially about the downloading RAM.

Cerulean said:
But for reals, get a Samsung SSD like rive22 suggests. You can use an Apricorn ASW-USB3-25 to convert over without reinstalling Windows. Lastly, make sure to install the Samsung Magician software --> enable RAPID mode --> setup and apply optimizations (this will only work if you have a Samsung SSD).

If you have 4 GB of RAM, I would strongly consider upgrading to at least 8 GB of RAM (or 16 GB if you want extra). According to Crucial, your Dell XPS 8700 takes DDR3, has four DIMM slots, and can handle a maximum of 32 GB of RAM (overkill).
Click to expand...
Good advice if you consider an upgrade.
 
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Thank you all! I'm currently defragging and looking into possibly putting in an SSD. I am just nervous about actually installing that. I think the most I have done as far as installing anything was putting a dvd burner in the computer. Is it close to that type of assembly?

It seems like there could be a lot of things to actually get though to put the SSD IN the computer. Should there already be a slot for it? Will I have to get housing for it and the actual cords? Are those already supplied inside the computer? Also, how does the installation work as far as with my current OS on my hard drive. Do I erase that or can I keep that as it is? I'm a little confused about that aspect.

I just actually reinstalled windows about a month and a half ago because my wireless stopped working and the customer service reps said a clean install would get things back and running (I don't know why) which actually worked. But, I lost so much and am just now getting back and running despite the sluggish startup and choppy usage.

I can't seem to run multiple applications without getting choppy reaction times and delays. For instance, while running a game, I minimize it and try surfing the web or using other applications and it's almost torture. It's so sticky and freezes and locks and goes in and out and in and out...etc...etc.. It's annoying. Is that just the normal way of things with running a game in the background, minimizing it and trying to do other things?

Overall, I would buy an SSD in a second if I was confident about getting it in there with no hassle. I wish I had a tech savvy friend who could do it for me. :\
 
Chances are the SSD (2.5-inch) won't fit snugly in the hard drive (3.5-inch) spots. A lot of retail-boxed SSDs will come with a 2.5-->3.5 adapter bracket, though.

That being said, the SSD doesn't necessarily need to fit snugly. There are no moving parts, unlike a 5-lb mechanical hard disk drive spinning 7 thousand times each minute, so having it get dinged and bumped is not all that bad.

Though understandable if you would prefer things be mounted safely anyway. I do; my SSD is mounted 2.5-->3.5 adapter bracket in a 3.5" HDD slot. A couple friends/colleagues have their SSDs just sitting in there loose. They've never had issues, neither have I. Matter of preference really.
 
Thank you for the instructional video! Also, thank you Highwind for letting me know it could just sit in the case. I think I might buy some double sided tape and stick it down in there if it doesn't come with whatever is needed to mount it in. Another dumb question...are all SSD's created equal? Meaning, are they are pretty much good to go with my Dell computer? Is one brand better than others? I know several mentioned Samsung...is that the best to go with? Is there a cheaper option that would work just as well?

What's the best software to clone the functioning drive I have now?
 
I just wouldn't bother to clone the drive, just in case you have a a virus. I would install the SSD, install a FRESH copy of Windows, and then use your hard drive to store data.

Don't run any of your old programs from the hard drive, and you'll be virus free.

Also, do you have an up-to-date virus scanner installed?
 
Right now I'm running a trial of Kaspersky Total Security. I have it up to date though. I haven't decided on which anti virus program to go with for my yearly subscription yet.

So, just leave the main hard drive as it is and install a fresh copy of Windows onto the SSD. How do you set the computer to run from the SSD instead of the hard drive and when you say to not run any of my old programs from the Hard Drive does that mean I should reinstall all of them onto the SSD and run them only from there? This is starting to confuse me even more. I'm going to need to research! Haha! So, the hard drive essentially just becomes a big storage drive? You never run things from it? So, you have to install all of the things you use fresh onto the SSD and just store data on the hard drive? Ugh. I wish I could wrap my head around things easily. :\
 
Personally, I would clone the system and then see how it runs, if it runs like crap, then do a fresh install.
I would do it this way to save time since it takes 3+ hours to just get Windows 7 fully updated.

The easiest program to migrate your OS to an SSD is Paragon's Migrate OS to SSD, I am actually using it as I type this to migrate my HTPC's drive to an SSD.
Program is $20, I've used it a lot over the years with zero issues, https://www.paragon-software.com/technologies/components/migrate-OS-to-SSD/

I am using my garage PC to do the clone since the program can see all drives with OS's on them and you can choose the OS you want to migrate, in your case, you would only have 1 choice so the window to choose an OS would not show up.

paragon-migrate-01.jpg


Here is where you would choose the destination drive, you should only see your new SSD,
paragon-migrate-02.jpg


This next screen shows you how much space the migration will take.
If you have more data that can fit on the SSD, you would click the blue text and deselect files and folders so that the OS will fit.
paragon-migrate-03.jpg


This is the window that pops up so you can deselect files and folders,
paragon-migrate-04.jpg


My migrate just finished as I was typing this out, took 20 minutes using a USB cable on the SSD,
paragon-migrate-05.jpg


I have the HTPC's drive in the front hot swap bay and the new SSD on the USB cable,
paragon-migrate-00.jpg
 
Hey all.

In my recent review of OCZ's Trion 100 SSD, we included a Western Digital Green 7200rpm, which is from a few years ago but is still fairly representative of what's actually out there in the world.

We've been beating the SSD drum at HardOCP here for a while- it is the single biggest performance-increasing upgrade for most people (who have plenty of CPU power and RAM but buy a PC without necessarily thinking about storage, other than capacity).

While the old WD Green that I tested won't be as fast as the brand-new drive that's currently in your system, it's not orders of magnitude slower. SSDs, however, are orders of magnitude faster.

My personal recommendation: a Samsung 850 Evo. Here's a comparison with some other SATA SSDs, and more detail- link. You'll want your operating system and applications on the drive, so 120GB is probably sufficient (though with SSDs, larger capacities tend to be faster, which is true of the 850 EVO). It's only a $20 difference between the 120GB and 250GB variants, so the 250GB is the practical choice.

Also, don't clone an HDD to an SSD. While you _can_, your performance won't be ideal (without tinkering) because of alignment concerns.

Because of this and Dell's pre-installed applications being mostly unnecessary, I strongly recommend a fresh install on your new SSD, without the Dell crap. You said you've installed a DVD burner before, and the physical installation of an SSD is extremely similar.

The trend now is towards smaller retail packaging, and a lot of SSDs won't come with the 2.5" to 3.5" adapters. This is reinforced by the many, many SSD samples that I'm sent (usually in retail packaging), and I still have a perpetual shortage of 2.5 to 3.5" brackets around the house. Newegg sells them starting under $3, depending on how fancy you want to get. I'd spring for the $5 model, as it's sold and stocked by Newegg (rather than a third party) and includes screws. Otherwise, yeah, you can just tape it somewhere. Also make sure you have a spare SATA cable, which no manufacturers really seem to include with SSDs anymore.

You have way more than enough in terms of CPU, RAM, and video card. Do a fresh install of Windows to your new SSD (hey, Windows 10 is here anyway, so why not), install your programs to the SSD, skip the Dell apps, and keep your current 4TB HDD around for media and whatever. It will feel like a night and day difference.

Other things you can do:
  • Disable your page file. This really slows hard disks down, and you are highly unlikely to need it with 16gb of RAM installed.
  • Start -> Run -> msconfig. Then go to Startup, and disable anything that doesn't sound critical to have running when you start your PC.
  • As others have also mentioned, defrag. For the record, do not defrag an SSD, it's unnecessary and bad for the drive.

Once you've physically installed your SSD, here's a link on how to configure your PC to boot to it. You'll still want to set it to boot to your USB stick or DVD of Windows first (at least until you get Windows installed- you can change this afterwards so that it doesn't look for boot devices before the SSD).
 
Chris_Lonardo said:
Also, don't clone an HDD to an SSD. While you _can_, your performance won't be ideal (without tinkering) because of alignment concerns.
Click to expand...

The Paragon app makes sure that the partition is aligned, can't speak for other apps as I only use this one.
I've used it over 2 dozen times on a bunch of various machines, desktops and laptops, the oldest being the 3770K machine which was migrated over 3 years ago, and the OS was installed 6 years ago, it also runs 24/7.
crucial-128-256-ssd-life.jpg


HAL-X100 is the 4790K in my sig and HAL-9000 is the 3770K,
win-install-dates.jpg


Do these speeds look normal? And what would an alignment issue cause?
SSD-marks-128-256.jpg
crucial_MX100_512GB.jpg
 
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Zepher said:
The Paragon app makes sure that the partition is aligned, can't speak for other apps as I only use this one.
I've used it over 2 dozen times on a bunch of various machines, desktops and laptops, the oldest being the 3770K machine which was migrated over 3 years ago, and the OS was installed 6 years ago, it also runs 24/7.
Click to expand...

Nice, maybe I'll check the software out. I'm still supporting the clean install, though- bloatware needs to go.

Your numbers look pretty much where they should, as far as I can tell. Intel has a good paper on how misalignment particularly effects write performance- link
 
Dell rarely updates their BIOSes (BIOSi?) on consumer products. So it's not likely ready for an update.
That said, OP, here's a simple set of instructions:
1- Go to Best Buy
2- Buy this drive: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/pny-cs1...lack/3935037.p?id=1219609310365&skuId=3935037
3- Buy this cable: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/dynex-1...lack/8720321.p?id=1219361172606&skuId=8720321

4- Go home and crack that computer open. When it's turned off and unplugged, install the drive (very easy to do, see video above) using the cable you bought.
5- Use the included software to migrate teh OS from the old drive to the new one.
6- Shut down
7- Remove old HDD and keep it in a safe place as an emergency backup.

Total time:
- Labor- 30min
- Waiting on migration software- depends on how much data you have, but if it's a relatively fresh install, 45 min to an hour.
 
You guys are dumb

He has no clue what he's doing and you want him to buy a ssd, clone it, and install? That's a joke, right? It's far too outside his skills to suggest.

OP- create a bootable w10 or w7 disc or USB (very easy), when you reinstall windows you will be given the opportunity to format your drive (very easy) Do it.

Back up your photos, music, whatever.
Download essential drivers from dell.

Your computer is slow because of random bloat from dell. Going to ssd will fix your problems but it won't increase your technical abilities to avoid the next shitty computer buying decision a few years down the road.
 
Optik said:
You guys are dumb

He has no clue what he's doing and you want him to buy a ssd, clone it, and install? That's a joke, right? It's far too outside his skills to suggest.
Click to expand...

seriously? You act like swapping a drive is like building a PC from scratch. He has installed a dvd burner before. Installing an SSD is nearly the same process. The software listed in this thread will put his OS image from his HDD to the SSD with a few clicks.
 
mnewxcv said:
seriously? You act like swapping a drive is like building a PC from scratch. He has installed a dvd burner before. Installing an SSD is nearly the same process. The software listed in this thread will put his OS image from his HDD to the SSD with a few clicks.
Click to expand...

And many SSDs come with cloning software that makes it a point and click affair.
 
I noticed something about your RAM timings, OP, that others have overlooked. 11-11-11-28 with 2T command rate is fucking DOG ASS SLOW for DDR3-1600. Slap a CL9 kit in there and it will give your PC a healthy boost. Just make sure to install it in pairs so that your i7 is properly fed across both memory channels. Many OEMs like Lenovo like to use only one stick to save costs. Be sure to look up which slots need to be populated for dual channel operation for optimal performance.

Also, if you're planning on playing games, get rid of that GTX 650. That's another large part of your issue. The 650 was a budget $119 offering three years ago. And shame on Dell for offering such a card in a "gaming PC" to begin with.

For 1080p gaming, you can't do better for $200 than a GTX 960. Others may suggest an R9 28x as the superior option, but more often than not I've had migraines dealing with AMD/ATi card issues with either the hardware itself, or compatibility issues with games because they are much slower to update their drivers. So be well aware of that.

Back to the 960, I bought this one because of the support being based on the eastern seaboard, lifetime warranty, and the fact that if nVIDIA trusts them to build their insanely expensive Quadro professional cards, that speaks volumes about their reliability which I can vouch for. Of all the PNY boards I have owned, I have had no issues with them. Can't say the same for EVGA, ASUS, or XFX. Their product is no frills, no muss, no fuss - and I'm okay with that. 100% stock doesn't bother me, nor should it bother you, especially since it's going in an OEM system.

If you're willing to spend more, get a 970. It will work great with every game visually maxed out up to 2560x1440. Alternatively, you could go the R9 290X/390X route, but as I said before, caveat emptor.

And while everyone here will beat the SSD drum, I also advocate RAID0 arrays with mechanical disks as a secondary option. While it won't be as fast as an SSD, it will still haul balls compared to a lone mechanical drive and you still can't beat the $/GB ratio these drives offer. Just be aware to back up your data often in case there is a power failure and you can't rebuild your array.

If you need help with any of this anyone here will be more than happy to help, myself included. Plus, there are a ton of videos on YouTube giving instructions on installing RAM and video cards. It's very easy, just be patient and don't force anything!
 
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