Need advice on restoring a very old PC to former glory!

[kiniki]

We're giving one of our old PC's to a friend of the family who is in their late 60's and wants to learn how to use a computer.

We're giving her our old one to keep until she knows whether she wants something a bit more powerful.

What I need to know is, whats the best way to get it back to almost "as new" state without re-installing windows? We don't have the install disk or and recovery disks as we bought it years ago. I think its a P450 or something like that with Windows 200. Really old.. but its all she needs.

Is there any software that can restore it to roughly the same state as it was when new.. As in, just windows. Or is my best bet just to go through it with a decent uninstaller program that removes registry entries?

It runs really slow, probably due to all the junk its had in it over the years, so I am hoping by uninstalling and deleting everything other than Windows, we might get it running much better. I realise its gonna be fairly slow anyway. But any improvement I can make would be good.

Do any of you have some advice on a good way of doing this other than what I have mentioned?

 

[MrQ]

Kiniki the the best way to clean up an old drive like that is to format the drive and reinstall windows. Your next best bet is to clean up the drive, defragment, check for adware, spyware, and viruses, then take it from there.

 

[trykael]

right..what was stated above.

since it doesn't sound like you have the original install disks for that windows, your best bet is to do as follows:

1. Go to add/remove programs and remove any programs your friend will not need.

2. Open up Internet Explorer (or Firefox if that's what you use), go to the internet options and have it delete all of your temporary internet files, cookies, history, etc.

3. Delete and personal files you may still have on the machine.

4. Head over to download.com and grab ccleaner, ad aware and spybot.

5. Run those programs IN THAT ORDER (ccleaner, ad aware, then spybot). CCleaner also had a registry cleaner included that does a pretty good job, so after it scans and removes all of your junk files, run that as well.

6. head to auslogics and grab their disk defragger ([link=hyperlink url]http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag[/link]). It does a much better job than windows' built in defagger, and should be a lot quicker, too.

Well, without formatting and reinstalling everything, that should give you a pretty good start. Let us know how it goes!

 

[subtle_turtle]

I've found that an old computer will really pop if you ditch windows entirely and install Ubuntu linux. My old laptop that I use for school was miserable when I was running XP, but it really flies with Ubuntu.

 

[RedFlag]

Isn't there a command or something in Windows that restores it to factory defaults? Because that should wipe everything and make it just like it was new.

 

[trykael]

no - there isn't a command that i know of to restore it to "factory default." you would need the system restore disks (if it came from gateway or dell or HP) and restore it THAT way, or a windows CD to format and reinstall, but windows itself doesn't have anything like that. There is a command you can run to have it check for changes in the original install files, but that won't fix things back to "factory default" in the way that you're thinking. The problem is you're working with more programs then just windows.

Subtle_Turtle has a great suggestion - Ubuntu is pretty easy to learn and much less of a system hog than windows, BUT...it's not quite as user friendly as windows, so giving it to someone as a first operating system might be rough - especially if you don't know the OS enough to teach them how to use it.

 

[Flippy the Squirrel]

You'll also get better performance if you turn off XP themes, delete all old user accounts and set up a new one for your friend, delete any fonts you're not using (they get loaded in memory), delete old system restore points, make sure all drivers are up-to-date.

Make sure to run cleanmgr.exe and clean all that stuff out, but don't do the "compress files" option unless you're running out of disk space.

Forget the "install Ubuntu" suggestions, as a new computer user will want to eventually get AOL and stuff like that, which will (a) mean getting a new computer and (b) not using Linux. He'll have better luck getting a feel for windows, then trying out an Ubuntu LiveCD if he wants to explore that realm.

Honestly, however, you'll get the best performance boost by formatting and reloading the machine. It's not the best option for you here, but it's the best performance boost.

 

[kiniki]

Thanks for the ideas guys...

As I said, I don't think we have the windows disk... but I am gonna go on a search for it anyway as there is always a chance we do and I lost it....

I'll let you know how I get on!