new member with computer question

S

savo1968

New Member
hello people

im not very knowledgeable so forgive me if i write the wrong thing but heres my situation.

we have a 6 or 7 year old dell (80 gig hard drive 512 ram)
it is old and corrupted (virus spyware who knows) its very slow
we have pictures and music we would like to save somehow and then have the whole thing set back to the day we got it and use it for the kids.
i would like a upgrade but not quite ready (money)

1) so what device would be good to save the pictures and music ? external hard drive i have heard, what kind is good ? do i run the risk of taking virus type problems when transferring what we want to save ?

2) how do i go about taking everything off the computer and starting over ?
re install xp i have heard . could we run a newer system (vista?)

i appreciate any feed back . as you can tell im new to computers .
thanks to all ...
 
ok you should learn to be a little patient...after all, you are asking for free advice

1. you can save your files to an external hard drive and it is probably the best way to back up your most important files, taking into consideration cost and efficiency. western digital is a great trusted name brand. i have a 750gb and 1tb and they work great. if all you are doing is backing up pictures and mp3s and text files (.doc or .rtf or .txt or many others), you don't have to worry about viruses copying over to your external hard drive. are you currently using an antivirus software? if not, i recommend you get one. i personally recommend nod32.

2. to reinstall windows, you need a windows cd. if your hardware specs are decent, vista can be just fine for you, although personally i don't like vista. although it's not the hardest thing in the world to install a new os, it's recommended that you look up instructions by searching on google (there should be detailed steps with pictures) to familiarize yourself beforehand.

post again if you have more questions
 
Depending on how many/what size of files you want to save, you can copy them to a flash drive (Again, this depends on how big these files are, flash drives aren't the biggest storage devices, and it depends on how big you flash drive is). If you have a CD burner, you can easily burn the files onto a CD and the CD will act like a flash drive and store all your data. Taking into consideration that your system is old, your best bet would be going for the external HDD, like previously recommended.

As for you running Vista, no, your specs do not meet the minimum requirements for running Vista. In my personal experience, you need at least a 1.5 - 2.0GHz processor with about 2GB of RAM in order for it to run smoothly. You won't get by with only 512Mb of RAM. It looks like you're stuck with XP for now.

If you do a full format/install, XP should run pretty decent on your system.
 
russb said:
And be a little patient...
Click to expand...

ok my question has been answered and again i thank you for the information . as you can see my first two postings were two days apart = "patient" .

my second post was not to offend but simply to provoke a response and it worked . within two hours (not days) i had 2 answers .

excuse my sarcasm but if i would have left my original post and waited for a reply i was fearful that all you computer gurus could never be bothered with such basic questions .

i do appreciate and thank you all for your help .

ps to be patient and (the flip side) being timely are both good qualities .
 
savo1968 said:
ok my question has been answered and again i thank you for the information . as you can see my first two postings were two days apart = "patient" .

my second post was not to offend but simply to provoke a response and it worked . within two hours (not days) i had 2 answers .

excuse my sarcasm but if i would have left my original post and waited for a reply i was fearful that all you computer gurus could never be bothered with such basic questions .

i do appreciate and thank you all for your help .

ps to be patient and (the flip side) being timely are both good qualities .
Click to expand...

You are welcome for the help.


We're sorry for the inconvenience of the lack of responses. Sometimes we have a lack of members, and sometimes these threads get over looked, so not everybody will see them. To make your post 'active' again, you simply just have to 'bump' it and the chances of your thread being viewed will go up.
('Bumping' meaning, post again on the same thread)

If you have anymore questions feel free to post!
 
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