PC probs

[womble]

I have 3 problems.

1. (the easy one) I need to backup my photos in some way. I was thinking the best way would be to stick them on CDs and get an external hard drive to back them onto as well.

Any thoughts on this? Which hard drive etc and how easy are they to use?

2. My PC is really slow at some points, I need an idiots version of how to speed it up please.

3. I have started getting the blue screen of death, often when the PC boots again after sleep mode thingy. Help!

[DiscoDes]

What OS are you running?

[meeee]

Click free to quick a good backup hard drive which automates backing up files.

What bsod message do you get?

[womble]

XP, the pc is about 6 years old I think and was never the fastest, but now it's a bit silly. We only really use it for email and web work.

[womble]

Dec 21, 2012 15:14:39 GMT meeee said:

Click free to quick a good backup hard drive which automates backing up files.

What bsod message do you get?

Click free? That's a back up drive? I've just had a look for it and one problem it might have, is that someone said you can only replace the files from one pc on the same pc. So if you have a total failure, you can't put them on a new machine?

I can't remember the bsod message, something about a I*** value being too low. I'll write it down next time.

Thanks alot. Makes me feel a bit better that there is someone here to call on when it all goes wrong

[DiscoDes]

Get an external USB Hard drive like THIS and save whatever you want to it. You can then transfer the files to anywhere you want. It draws it's power from the USB so you don't need any extra power supply. As your PC seems to be a bit old I doubt if it has USB 3 so as this one is USB 2 it should serve your needs.

[Deleted]

Ways to speed up your machine, if using windows, make sure you have done a complete disk clean, then a full defragmentation of your hard drive. If this doesnt help, consider upgrading your ram to it's max allowed amount, changing the ram is a very easy thing to do.
You could wipe your drive and install a Linux operating system such as Ubuntu or Linux mint, this will considerably speed up your machine as these operating systems are designed to work on older hardware.
Back all your data onto a good external hard drive such as one made by Seagate, don't worry about CD's as they degrade too easily.
I've worked in I.T for 10 plus years, if you need anymore help or want to discuss any of the options I have listed, feel free to message me.

MP.

[womble]

Thanks everyone.

Is the Hitachi as good as a Seagate? I don't mind paying a bit more for quality.

[smudge]

I have a Hitachi external and it's brilliant. Because of one bad experience with a seagate many moons ago (it shattered into a million bits) I've never had another, but that's just personal preference - I know plenty of people who've had them and not had any trouble. Like everything else, you get what you pay for, so if you're willing to pay the extra it's worth doing

Edited to add - if you are only using the PC for email/web type stuff I'd agree with mp2012 - get ubuntu (free to download) and put that on instead. It works pretty much the same as windows in that you don't need to be a tech geek to use it and you'll find it runs much smoother on an older machine

[Mev]

how much space are you talking about for backing up your pics ? because you can get very good 64gb usb flash cards and it's what I'd use if the space was enough, if not i'd go with a Western Digital External Drive.
For speeding up the pc I would download CCleaner and run it, unless you go into options and tell it which cookies to save you will need to enter your name + password for every site if your browser saves them though. Defragment your hard drives if you haven't already.
As for the BSOD you'd have to check the info on the blue page to be able to diagnose what is causing it.