Do I need new graphics card and RAM?

K

KarlaAnne

My computer messed up and any games, opening pictures was slowing down, then my Task Scheduler wouldn't work, so I reformatted my cpu back to factory. Now it is worse than before??? It takes 5 minutes to open pictures, folders, etc., and any games take 10x longer to load, and are like a snail, (this was already a problem before formatting).
I'm not a computer guru, so I don't know what I need to do. I just need help plz.

I have an Acer Aspire X1430G Windows 7 Home premium
64 bit operating system
Graphics card AMD Radeon HD 6300 Series
4G Ram

What else do would you need to know to help me? I would really appreciate any help very much.
Thank you!
 
I presume you used the factory restore function to wipe the hard drive and return it to as new condition?

How old is the computer? Have you ever cleaned inside the case to remove dust build up? It sounds very much like the computer is thermally throttling due to overheating. Another possibility is that the hard drive is failing and causing the computer to grind to a halt. I'd be looking at the CPU overheating problem first and taking it from there if it doesn't resolve the problem.
 
Leeky said:
I presume you used the factory restore function to wipe the hard drive and return it to as new condition?

How old is the computer? Have you ever cleaned inside the case to remove dust build up? It sounds very much like the computer is thermally throttling due to overheating. Another possibility is that the hard drive is failing and causing the computer to grind to a halt. I'd be looking at the CPU overheating problem first and taking it from there if it doesn't resolve the problem.
Click to expand...


Yes, I restored it back to as new. I cleaned all dust and made sure it's getting plenty air circulation. It's 2 years old this month. Even after the wipe it's still slow as a snail, and freezes up when I'm doing anything online. So what now?
 
Assuming the PC has been at idle for a minute or so those temperatures are a little high. What processor are you using?

When a processor reaches critical temps it reduces power in order to cool itself, as less power equals less heat produced. It's a built-in fail safe aimed at preventing permanent damage should it overheat. When the power is throttled a user will notice Windows rapidly slows down and freezes as a result.

I suspect this is very likely the cause of your problem. It is possible something else is causing the issues your experiencing but we must first eliminate this before moving on, especially as you've recently cleaned inside the case yourself.

It might sound silly but could you explain how you cleaned the processor heatsink please? Did you remove the heatsink and then apply new thermal paste? How did you remove the built-up dust? Is the CPU fan still connected to the CPU_FAN header and spinning when the computer is powered up?
 
Leeky said:
Assuming the PC has been at idle for a minute or so those temperatures are a little high. What processor are you using?

When a processor reaches critical temps it reduces power in order to cool itself, as less power equals less heat produced. It's a built-in fail safe aimed at preventing permanent damage should it overheat. When the power is throttled a user will notice Windows rapidly slows down and freezes as a result.

I suspect this is very likely the cause of your problem. It is possible something else is causing the issues your experiencing but we must first eliminate this before moving on, especially as you've recently cleaned inside the case yourself.

It might sound silly but could you explain how you cleaned the processor heatsink please? Did you remove the heatsink and then apply new thermal paste? How did you remove the built-up dust? Is the CPU fan still connected to the CPU_FAN header and spinning when the computer is powered up?
Click to expand...

specs.png

Cleaning a processor heatsink is above my knowledge, I don't anything about the internals of a cpu. Sorry. When I said I cleaned it, I just meant I took the side off and blew all the dust out and cleaned the fans, and you could see clear through them, so nothing built up. And they are spinning away. The fans are hooked up and spinning. I had been on it prior for a few minutes prior to downloading the speedfan, then it froze up.

I really do appreciate your help, a lot. Finding tech support where I am is few and far between.
 
Are you finding it freezes when you try to do certain tasks, or is it just freezing randomly as far as you can tell? Are you getting any BSOD's (crashes with a bright blue screen)? If it was me I would purchase some thermal paste (let me know where you are in the world and I'll link you some examples) and remove your heatsink, clean it and then refit it. This is entirely achievable for someone with little to no knowledge of computers as long as they take their time.

The video below provides the step required to remove your processor, clean the heatsink and CPU then refit it.

 
I am late to this party but here goes.

I suspect a hard disk problem due to the slow application loading and image display times you indicate. Speedfan has a tab labelled 'SMART'. Click on it and select your drive. It will refresh and show a number of details. Take a screenshot of this and post it, please. I expect to see several as listed with either red or yellow warnings.

I checked the numbers for CPU/GPU on my similar AMD E-350 laptop. I agree the numbers posted by your screen shot are a bit high for the GPU but not excessively. I would update the video driver in any case, I have seen a nice improvement with the January update.

TIA

P.S. click on the 'perform an in-depth online analysis of this hard disk' for a more complete test andpost the link for it, please.
 
Here's the screen shot, it wouldn't let me make it any bigger to get the last few on the list, but they didn't have any warnings. I took this as soon as I turned it on. I'm wondering why my drive says 2G? I thought it to be 4.

Leeky~It's random freezing, no blue screens. It's when doing something with pictures, and any game play on the net, and so very slow. It was never slow before. I used to could click on a video and it would instantly play, now it sits and thinks a bit before loading and playing. I'm in Somerset, KY.

How do I know how to get the right drivers? I already installed some from here, I did 2 of them, and one gave me a file named MOM.exe that gave me an error every time I turned the computer on, so I just got rid of that file and it stopped. But some of the lettering at the top of tabs on browser are now a bit smeared looking. I didn't dowload the 1 in the middle, should I go ahead and do that? Here's where I got them http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonaiw_vista64.aspx

readings.png
 
I see you have a Seagate drive. You misread the size as it is actually 1000.2 GB. Hm. I don't see anything problematic. Good.

The video drivers are the top one, yes the big all in one suite thing.

I notice you are running McAfee(bottom right of your screen shot). I urge you to uninstall that ASAP and use another antivirus like Avira or AVG or Avast, the free ones are quite fine and don't bog down your system like Norton or McAfee.
 
Nothing you have posted would cause a total freeze. :S

Open up task manager, and take a screenshot of the performance and processes tabs.
 
I'd get the heatsink cleaned before exploring further options. Disk issues is another possibility I did bear in mind, but your comments didn't quite match up with how I'd expect a PC with a failing disk to behave. I remain pretty confident the problem is the processor overheating.

You certainly won't be doing any harm by removing the heatsink, cleaning it and replacing the thermal paste anyway so it's a worthwhile step to take before proceeding further.
 
I find that the AMD temps reported by various utilities to be suspect. My very similar E-350 can run all day long in my lap or on my stomach and never get very warm while Speedfan and Battery Care both report 48C+ temps. The usual case hot spot is near the left edge by the exhaust port and only feels slightly warm when gaming at full speed for a while. These little CPUs really don't heat up much.

I dig a bit deeper and see the PSU is 220W. Hmmm. Should be sufficient but then again 2 years of daily use and it may be failing. The case seems large enough there shouldn't be heating issues but adding a fan to it is cheap. I still go with the McAfee removal.
 
They could well be, but overheating causes the issues you're experiencing. It could also be the power supply or even a disk issue. It's basically a case of process of elimination now. The cheapest first step is to clean and re-apply thermal paste. If that doesn't solve the problem you're left with replacing the power supply and/or changing the hard disk.

If you think it could be the PSU you could fit another one temporarily and use that to test how it functions. If another PSU stops the problems from happening you've found your culprit. I'd check your hard disk last, you'd usually get BSOD's and it would fail much faster if it was terminal.
 
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