Pc Health check

[MattDLEA]

Hi,

 

So one of my summer jobs is to look at the client PC's that are running slow ?!? these are 4 years old now I have had 2 that have slowed down I think due to failing hardware.

 

But does anyone have and open source software or any tips on easily going round and as the dept head says 'speeding up the computers' ?

[achedgy]

ccleaner

auslogics disk defrag

 

and if budget allows.. small ssd, I've been putting 120Gb ones in left right and centre, makes old pc's go faster than new ones!!!

[ITGURU]

Sometimes I find that users get used to the newer PCs with SSDs, then when they go back to using one with a SATA drive, they complain its slow!

[unixman_again]

In addition to the two bits of software than achedgy suggested, malwearbytes.

[Domino]

rebuild them?

[corieltauvi]

I'd check a few to see if they need an internal clean with a couple of squirts from a can of air. That can make a big difference, especially in the dustier areas like art and DT.

[Oaktech]

give them an internal valet: Remove the ram, clean the slots; clean the heatsinks; blow the psu through; remove and reseat sata connectors.

 

Run a chkdsk C: /f /r and then Defrag the hard drives then run an SFC /scannow.

 

Replace HDD if there are errors on chkdsk, rebuild if there are errors at SFC.

 

If budget allows stick some more ram and an SSD in them!

[pantscat]

Running msconfig can be useful to see what's running at startup and disabling the rubbish that's not required.

[6Foot2]

We saw slow performance on some of our stations. We addressed this by:

 

Adding RAM, re-building and editing the BIOS.

 

Changes made in the BIOS:

 

1. Change SATA Operation from Legacy to AHCI
   
2. Enable Multi-Core Support
   
3. Enable Intel SpeedStep [For Intel based machines obviously ]
   
4. Disable CPUID Limit
   
5. Change HDD Acoustic Mode from Bypass to Performance [Possibly noiser but we haven't found this to be the case]
   

The old settings were used on our station before we moved over from XP to Windows 7. The changes have helped impove the performance on thess stations.

 

HTH.

[MattDLEA]

Thanks for all the tips. If I get remove all the unnecessary stuff of one and do a defrag ect then capture that as an image.

If I then go to another computer and install that image. Would I also have to defrag that HDD to or is that taken care of if its a disk to disk copy?

[witch]

give them an internal valet: Remove the ram, clean the slots; clean the heatsinks; blow the psu through; remove and reseat sata connectors.

 

Run a chkdsk C: /f /r and then Defrag the hard drives then run an SFC /scannow.

 

Replace HDD if there are errors on chkdsk, rebuild if there are errors at SFC.

 

If budget allows stick some more ram and an SSD in them!

 

This - only I would reimage first and also do ccleaner, malwarebytes and combofix. Probably not bother with an SSD

[ITGURU]

Thanks for all the tips. If I get remove all the unnecessary stuff of one and do a defrag ect then capture that as an image.

If I then go to another computer and install that image. Would I also have to defrag that HDD to or is that taken care of if its a disk to disk copy?

 

You could just ensure all the computers are switched on then run a remote quiet defrag against all PCs using PSEXEC.