How old is your computer?

8 years old, the soundcard crashed for 1 year ago.

I was buying a used card for 2 Euro (ebay).

My computer system: Peppermint OS (Linux), running very fast.

Windows is too slowly.

I can believe it. I have 2 HP notebooks. The older one is 4 years old: a 1.4 GHz AMD Turion processor with 2 GBs of RAM and a 250 GB hard drive. I was amazed at how hot it got until I got my new HP last December: a 2.3 GHz AMD quad core with 6 GBs of RAM and a 640 GB hard drive.

The new one integrates the processor and video on one chip (an "APU instead of a CPU) and this summer its gotten hot enough, on several occassions, that it did a thermal shutdown - all while I was just surfing static web pages. During the winter, I could only get it do a thermal shutdown very rarely, and that was when playing Shogun 2 (which runs ok on it).

I got a cheap cooling pad for my netbook.  Worth every penny.  I was afraid my system would meltdown when crunching games with SCID and Stockfish.  Heat is a big destroyer of laptops.

Fun topic, woodie!

My 5-year-old hard drive went *pap!* on Sunday. I got a pretty blue screen now.

They just don't make them like they used to lol

I would like to know what would be a good one to buy, if I do, but I don't know how to find out. I guess no HPs.

We bought my husband's new laptop from Microsoft:

http://signature.microsoft.com/

They omit a bunch of the junk other places put on computers. His is a Toshiba. It is incredibly light, and has worked much better than his last one (an HP).

Mine is a Dell, and it has done pretty well. I got it in 2008, and it is still ticking along despite heavy use.

Still pretty new.

Mine's a Toshiba, and it's still working, but it came with that damn IE installed, that I can't get off.

I use both IE and Firefox. Firefox works far better for fb and chess.com, but IE works better for some other things. I usually have both open.

At work, we can only use IE because the "major corporations'" web sites are only compatible with IE and we have to be able to interface.

I can't install, Firefox because some kind of software crap on my computer won't let it happen.

 That's good to know.  Thanks!

I had to work on a friend's computer once because he was complaining about malware on it.  So I look at it and what he did to the laptop was beyond belief.  There are a bunch of these toolbars for smilies, emoticons, and a whole lot of junk.  He had a number of infections on his system that were actively running.  And the antivirus that he decided to get from free by googling "free antivirus", was a rouge Windows 7 antivirus on his Windows XP system.  That was a nightmare.  I ended up nuking the system from orbit and starting over clean.  I couldn't figure out what that guy was doing to get all that.

Sounds like a bunch of very bad ideas linked together.

Still think your computer probably okay CP.

I do think you should maybe get someone to save your files & re-install the operating system for you (windows ?)  

Sounds worse than mine! :) I've got Norton 360, which probably sucks, and not all those tool bars.

XP. How much would that cost?

Anyone you know who is ok with IT will probably do it for nothing ?

Is the same situation Conquistador outilines in post above.

You will get a clean-install but may take a day or so to do all the updates & software-downloads. Your computer should perform like brand-new after though so worth it if you have corrupt/files/viruses. WindowsXP is also user-friendly to work with.

Don't know anybody, alas.