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Older Dell 530 running extremely slow...help with options please
My wife's older Dell Inspiron 530 is running very slow. McAfee virus SW finds no issues with viruses. At this point, I'd like to reformat the HDD and reinstall the OS. It is running MS Vista Home Premium but I'm not sure where the original discs are that came with the PC. I have 2 other Dell PCs. One is another 530 which I reinstalled a few years ago with Windows 7. I have my original discs with drivers and Windows Vista reinstall disc. I also have an XPS 8700 which I reinstalled with Windows 7 Pro over the Windows 8 it shipped with. I suppose I might also be able to use the Win 8 discs. My wife's PC only has 2 GB of RAM so I'm thinking Win 8 isn't a good option. I'd appreciate any knowledgable recommendations please?
I also have not been able to locate the procedures to perform the manual reinstall on my Dell PC. Where is Dell hiding them these days?
Any and all help would be much appreciated on getting my wife's PC back up and running somewhat as well as it used to.
RoHe
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June 28th, 2015 16:00
If the Vista disk you do have is also Vista Home Premium, it's perfectly legal to use that disk to reinstall Vista on the wife's PC. Installing any other version of Windows isn't legal unless you purchase a valid Product Key from Microsoft.
Have you run the hardware diagnostics on that PC? Reboot and press F12 before Window starts to load. Go to Utilities partition to find the diagnostics.
You can find reliable Windows reinstallation guides here.
RoHe
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June 28th, 2015 16:00
BTW: If the hard drive hasn't previously been reformatted or replaced, you should have the Dell Vista factory image on the drive. It will reinstall Vista on the HDD exactly the way it came from the factory. You will have to reinstall all the Microsoft updates and any software you added, so make sure you have all your software disks. And you need to back up your personal files first because everything will be lost.
To access the factory image, reboot and press F8 before Windows starts to load. Look for the factory restore option. It might be on an advanced options screen.
rdunnill
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June 28th, 2015 19:00
The Win 8 key is in the BIOS, so presumably it can't be used for a different machine. New Win8 Pro upgrades can be purchased for under $100 on Amazon and eBay, however.
As for the slowness, it could be due to a conflict between the anti-malware and another process, ie the iTunes sync service, that causes excessive machine cycles to be consumed.
txlonghorn1989
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June 29th, 2015 17:00
Thanks for the quick response! I was able to perform the Factory Restore option. I'm wondering if I need to reapply 'Drivers and Utilities' beyond all the Windows updates. Any thoughts/recommendations?
RoHe
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June 29th, 2015 18:00
Chances are there are newer drivers than the ones installed by the factory restore. So go to the support page for this model and download and install them.
Be good idea to install them one at a time and reboot after each one. That way if something goes amiss, you'll know which driver caused the problem. But hopefully the updates will go smoothly.