Computer Help Wanted

[Goldseeker]

I am having trouble with my computer as I like to play on line poker machines before retiring.

Tonight, I have tried to load the poker machines but some don't load and others load to 99% and stop.

I have de bugged ther computer and also re booted threee times so far to no avail.

Anyone else experiecing this and if so, how did you fix it?

Thanks an advance.

[humpybong]

Have you tried to defragment the drives?

What version of Windows are you running?

[Unicorn]

If you have made no changes to your computer lately (ie: no system or browser updates since you last played the games), then it's not likely to be your computer if a reboot isn't working. If you use a router, try to power your router & modem off and on. (Leave them off for 30 seconds at least). Hope that works for you.

[Basilstate]

If you have made no changes to your computer lately (ie: no system or browser updates since you last played the games), then it's not likely to be your computer if a reboot isn't working. If you use a router, try to power your router & modem off and on. (Leave them off for 30 seconds at least). Hope that works for you.

Yes,could be Modem or Firewall blocking download. Lot of gambling sites are blocked by Windows because of perceived malicious SW.

[interest]

clear your CACHE often helps

[Basilstate]

Yes,clear cache,also my Brother reminded me it could be at your ISP end,something in the download triggering their auto. malware response.

[Goldseeker]

Thanks for your responses one and all.

Computer and poker machines now working fine and I did nothing to fix it.

How does one clear ones CACHE?

[JeffH]

Exact procedure depends on your browser. I mostly use Firefox and that is History>Clear recent history and gives a window with a selection of items to clear.
Just do a search for "clear cookies and cache {name of browser}" and you will get plenty of results. Or would be in the Help section of your browser.

[Goldseeker]

A slight red herring if I might.

My desk top computer sh*t itself three days ago as the SATA boot up drive was giving me a message that said "imminent failure etc etc etc".   I persevered for two days and gave up as I had all sorts of problems get the booted up.

It is now in for repair under guarantee and I am currently on my laptop, which is a darn sight slower than a dead snail at this stage.   Taking ages to boot up and programs running slow.   At least I am still on line even though it takes ages.

Anyone else have the same thing happen to them in the past and how did you rectify the situation?

[fred lever]

Hi Goldie, after you get the desk top back and it has settled down, send the laptop in for a service.
Get the shop to reset the system to to default and hoik the existing hard drive out and replace it with a new faster one.

Make sure you download any work files or saved documents onto a storage back up system, which i guess you do anyway, so you dont lose any precious work or files.
The shop should load back any applications you had installed, word, spreadsheets, video shops and all that.

Then the laptop will be a blank, fast, new born baby that will boot to windows in seconds, not be confused with all the rubbish that accumulates and you can put your working files back in.
Then when you go to do something you dont have to go and make a cup of tea while you wait for the computor to figure out what the hell it was doing!
And when windows has updates you dont have to go and do the shopping while it grinds away getting to 100%.

I speak from experiance as my laptop got as slow as a wet weekend as described above, now has a SS HD and works in seconds not minutes.
Fred.

[Basilstate]

Win 11 due to be released later this year,even faster boot according to the WP gurus.

I had a few HDD failures in the 1990's with Windows & later with Win 95 & 98. Mechanical HDD are much more reliable the last 20 years or so but i have 2 in each of desktop machines,every 3 Months or so i clone the current one to the spare and swap them over so i always have a near complete copy available.
Laptop hardly gets used the last 10 years,if i'm away(pre Covid) i just use my Phone.

[ausproofs]

Hey There,
It all depends on what you will be using your laptop for. As an example, if the only use is to browse the internet, do your banking etc etc, you do not need a win laptop. You can spend a few hundred dollars and you get a chromebook. It is super fast and does the job. At times replacing the HD would cost more than buying an entry level Chromebook. Personally I only use Apple computers now for work and personal use. They never slowdown (never say never but my 5 + apple work as fast as when it was new).

https://www.google.com/intl/en_au/chromebook/

[Goldseeker]

The laptop I am using at present is a Acer, AMD Quad Core processor AB-7100 with Turbo CORE Technology up to 3.0 Ghz, AMD Radeon R7 M265 with 2GB dedicated RAM, 4GB DDR3 L Memory and 1000GB HDD.

Now with all that what used to take 10-12 minutes on my now defunct desktop now takes 54 minutes on this laptop.

This laptop is painfully slow.

Even booting up takes around eight minutes just to get to my desktop.

I have several slot machines to go through each night and morning and they are taking the time.

The reels on these machines turn very jaggedly and I wonder why I still persist in playing them.

Any help to speed it up would be appreciated.

[fred lever]

Goldie!
"Painfully slow"? My Good Lord!

My new box PC  takes about 10 seconds to get to desktop from button push.
It has the latest motherboard that they serve up with a $1200 machine, no idea what speed or memory just whatever they fit, and the hard drive is a solid state umpty Tb size.
Windows updates just go from 0% to 100% in a blink and then reboot in seconds.

The old desk top took minutes to boot to desktop with the hard drive rattling all the way and used to faint at windows updates.
My laptop, 10 year old old Toshiba thing,  used to take minutes with the old rattling hard drive and file system full of crap.
Now reset to default,  windows 10 re-installed and a 2TB SS hard drive, it boots in around 20 seconds and does updates in a minute or so.

The only way to speed yours up is to wipe all the junk files out by resetting to default, re-install and dice the old spinning discs, (oh no here come the flat earthers to defend last millenium tech!) and stick in a good fast HDD. In the olden days it was called "Format C" but you dont even do that. Keep the old tech hard drive intact as it is,  and you can stick that in a external drive box and search it for that elusive file when you forget to back that file up on your back up drive box. Forget the "cloud" thats for hackers and the herd, keep your own back ups.

Just hand the PC to the tech shop and get them to re-install windows on a new HDD and give you the old HDD back intact.
Or buy a new box and start off with new everything.
Thats what I did and I am now smiling.
Fred.

[JeffH]

I bought cheaply a faster computer recently sans hard disk -owner bought it for gaming and, after a week, decided he wanted something faster. Swapped the boot drive from my old computer over to get going and ordered a solid state disk. SSD only 220GB but read on to see why that is plenty for me.

While waiting a few days for the new disk to arrive I backed everything up to my 1.4TB external drive, removed a lot of junk too, formatted the old disk and reloaded Windows from scratch; then restored all my programs but no data.

When the new disk arrived I cloned the old disk to it and up and running very quickly. Then I formatted the old disk and restored my files from the backup. The SSD only has essential operating system and program files on it.
Worked for me.


Also the new computer had a WiFi cad not needed because my router already has that. So that went into my old computer, now in another room, and I was able to ditch a network cable the cat had chewed -no need to repair again or replace. The old one is mostly used by the grandchildren when they visit but would be an emergency replacement if the new one breaks down.