Do ppl exist who who can speed up my PC? Freelance "IT" people?

[LawnmowerBlues]

I have a 7 year old home PC, an all-in-one type. It's painfully slow to the point that I can't use it. I've been getting all Microsoft updates but it's still on Windows 10 as the processor is not compatible with Windows 11.

Are there people out there who can come round and basically soup it up and make it run like new-ish, maybe replace this processor? If so, where do I find one? And what sort of money might they charge? Basically I want to "raise a ticket with IT" except it's my personal home PC that I don't use for work so I can't 😂

Or do I just have to buy a new one?

I don't use it for anything heavy-duty and the memory has hardly been used (I save to the cloud and don't have loads of big files or apps), but I prefer the experience of a desktop PC to a tablet or something.

Any PC capable of running Windows 10 should be perfectly capable of doing what you are asking of it without it dramatically slowing down or running at a crawl. The Operating Systems can get corrupted over time, Registry too, and if your drive is choked with redundant files, browsers swamped with cookies etc then it can lead to the machine running sluggishly.

If it is 7 years old, then a simple CPU upgrade is not going to be feasible as the Motherboard socket will limit you to CPU's or the same architecture as your current one. You should not have to go buying a new PC either just for everyday office-style tasks. Likely it needs a bit of a clean up, and at worst an OS refresh from an image or back-up. You can do this without losing personal files, but it really needs somebody who knows what they are dealing with.

Do you know if the main drive is an old mechanical/platter style drive rather than solid state? It is possible in a 7 year old PC that it came with a mechanical drive, and if that is on the way out then that might need replaced.

Wow @XDownwiththissortofthingX , thanks so much, you clearly know your stuff! That's encouraging to hear that you think it should be performing better. Not sure how to check about the main drive, not sure quite what you mean tbh - where would I look? It's a Lenovo Ideacentre AIO 300-22ISU if that gives you any clues!

Apparently all my system updates are up to date too.

I think your best bet would be to get in touch with a local pc repair shop. They can reformat it and install fresh windows, clean any dust out and see if there is anything obvious to upgrade (eg more memory or a faster disk). They should do all that for £50-100 but of course any actual upgrades you decide on would cost extra.

You can do all these things yourself, there are tutorials etc online. You still have the option of taking it to a pc shop if you get stuck or mess it up 🙂

Ok, the main issue here is All-In-Ones are not easily upgradeable in the same way that true desktops are. I think your model is a mechanical rather than solid-state drive, but that's unlikely to be the issue anyway, far more likely it's just a case of degraded, cluttered systems rather than failing hardware.

Microsoft's last couple of OS come with built-in antivirus and malware protection that is actually pretty effective, but most pre-built PC's usually come with some additional third-party AV installed on top. This is usually far more of a hindrance than it is a help, and MS's own in-built protections render it superfluous. Having said that, it might be worth your while to download and install something like Malwarebytes free version and let it run a scan just to see if there's anything on there that shouldn't be.

Have you ever run Disk Defragmentation tool in Windows? If your main HDD is a mechanical drive then it should be Defragged occasionally, and if this has never been done in the 7 years you have owned the PC then you really should be running it now.

Machines often get clogged by tons of superfluous programs running on Start Up, especially if you've owned the machine for years and not periodically cleaned that sort of stuff up. Easiest way to check what is what is type 'start up' in your windows search bar to locate that page in settings, open it, and check what is flagged to start up when you start your PC. Unflag anything that you do not use or that you know is superfluous.

There's a limit to what you can actually do with limit knowledge, and TBH it probable needs someone to come around, save all your personal stuff to an external drive, flatten the OS and do a factory reset. If you are confident enough to do this yourself great, but if not, I'd suggest trying to uninstall any third-party Anti-virus, Internet Security, or real-time monitoring software that might be running on there top begin with. They are notorious resource hogs, do nothing worthwhile above and beyond what Windows inherent protections do, and they are notorious for slowing machines to a crawl when left unchecked.

I have an IT guy who comes to sort me out once in a blue moon. (Misbehaving IT gives me absolute rage so once I get to that point, I ring him.) I just googled him the first time.

He was round this week, it was £55 for an hour's work.

My lovely son can help you remotely as he has remote access systems to do it-and does this stuff all day, every day. he works full time for a top end IT services company at a good level and is patient and very personable and will give you a fixed affordable price - so long as you can have it done in an evening or weekend. he's just upgraded his dads iMac - let me know if this would work for you on here and if so I will send you a PM and out you in touch

Could you try a disk clean up followed by a defrag if it's a mechanical hard drive (try to avoid defragging a SSD) Both are easy to do (just google and follow the instructions) and speed up processing.

Windows 10 should have scheduled optimisation turned on and do should be cleaning up but after a time, things do start to slow down and defragging can help.

Good luck!

Thanks so much, everyone! Looks like there are a few computer repair businesses near me, so I will give one of them a try. Really appreciate all your advice and suggestions. Amazingly, it is now behaving (after I fiddled about with various settings, I think largely to do with the Microsoft sign-in), but I fully expect the usual problems next time I switch it on! Thinking back, I even did a full factory reset a couple of years ago, and yet the problems didn't take long to reoccur. So it needs a proper seeing-to!

Thinking back, I even did a full factory reset a couple of years ago, and yet the problems didn't take long to reoccur. So it needs a proper seeing-to!

That sounds like the typical case of software/function bloat that usually occurs on pre-built Windows PC's that are left to their own devices. Just ask someone to clean it up and streamline it, get rid of all the excess stuff that you don't use and keep the basics.