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  #1  
03-18-2014, 03:14 AM
Sossity Sossity is offline
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As posted in my earlier posts, I have a dell PC, that is fairly old now, but is trucks along, slowly. It was bought from Dell in 2003 or 2004.

It has windows XP home service pack 2, 2002. It has 1gb of RAM, and had its original 80GB hard drive replaced with a 160 GB hard drive. (A whole other story, but long story short, an attempt at installing service pack 3 on it in 2009, seemed to be the end of its original hard drive, but other things may have caused it too, my story & post is here some where on this forum.)

It also has an at&t 2wire gateway, specifically the 2701 g model. This router/modem is hard wire via Ethernet to this PC, and it was originally configured with this PC. This PC is in the center or close to the center in our home, the kitchen in a corner. It feeds the internet to all of our other devices, now, 2 kindles, and a 2 macs, one of the macs is in my bedroom using an Ethernet connection, the other mac connects via wifi.

I had set up the gateway with an Ethernet port splitter which allows more than one Ethernet connection.

Now onto more of my question, the above was a bit rambling, but it is background info. I have learned that Microsoft is ending updates and support for windows XP, so realize this PC is probably way out of date in terms of updates etc. It will probably need hundreds of updates, with the first one being windows xp service pack 3.

I don't quite know whether to try and update this machine, it will probably be a bit of an ordeal, among other things, from the last attempt at installing service pack 3, I am afraid of bricking this pc altogether. It has the router connected to it, & I don't want to lose functionality of this machine or router, as family still use it from time to time, is has printer attached, for printing, and dad needs the bigger screen, it easier to read, overall though it is not used as much as we used to, because of using kindle tablets, and I use my mac in my room for school work, so internet access is crucial, I take online classes.

I have read here that some seem to think xp 2 is better, I would be fine leaving it to xp 2, but I am afraid that when I open up windows update, that it will not let me install anything else before I install service pack 3 on it.

I have discussed with family perhaps getting a newer PC instead of trying to update the machine we have now, one with what I have read is good, windows 7. We don not quite know as the xp pc we have now, still works even though it is about 10 years old now.

If I should update, how much hard drive space should I have? right now the pc has about 50GB of free space. I will be running an anti spyware, virus scans, and a disk defrag.

So should I try to update the machine? or just leave as it is? it works now, or get a newer PC?

Last edited by Sossity; 03-18-2014 at 03:29 AM.
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  #2  
03-18-2014, 08:58 AM
volksjager volksjager is offline
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what do you use this PC for? - you really shouldnt be using XP for browsing the internet anymore
XP SP2 is the best OS if you want to capture using an ATI AIW card
i have an XP SP2 box i use only for video capture
for general use get a Windows 7 box
you can build your own kick-ass windows 7 pc for under $500 - i just built myself a new one with an 8-core AMD for about that. if you only need a 2 or 4 core it would be well under that
XP SP2 is the best OS if you want to capture using an ATI AIW card
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03-18-2014, 08:17 PM
Sossity Sossity is offline
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The pc is US d for the internet mainly, and has the at and t router configured to it. So should I try to update it or get a windows 7 box?
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07-21-2014, 06:43 AM
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lordsmurf lordsmurf is online now
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I think you've answered the own question:
Quote:
I don't quite know whether to try and update this machine, it will probably be a bit of an ordeal, among other things,
get a windows 7 box
volksjager is right -- Windows XP is really not safe anymore for browsing the web.

Disclaimer: I'm using a Windows XP system right now, but I only go to regular sites that I trust, like this one. It's mostly a video system, and the only one also online. And even then, I use NoScript, and the computer has several safety programs enabled. With Windows 7, I'm not that fearful of getting computer-destroying junk. Plus newer computers are so much faster for everything, even web browsing. (This XP system is a quad-core from 2009, and ignores some of my RAM because of XP. It's easily faster than yours, but still long in the tooth for the web.)


This was an unanswered question or unresolved issue found during a site audit. It's hard to have an FAQ when the answers are missing, or final outcomes are unknown. At The Digital FAQ support forum, questions are never intentionally ignored, and may have been missed due to a forum glitch or human error. More details on the audit. (In some cases, threads have been edited/updated with newer information.)


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