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I don’t do much on my Windows machine. I’ve got Win 10, and rig is about 5 years old. Other than Xara, and Affinity that’s all I do on Windows. Used to do a lot more.
I’m getting continual power loops at unexpected times, I leave the computer on all the time. In the power loops it takes a number of restarts, then it’s fine for another week. All scheduling is off. Drivers are updated etc. Must save material a lot. I’ve come to not trust the ole bird.
When does everyone think it’s time?
Bill, I would still use it but replace the current HD with an SSD.
You need to find your W10 licence key. There are guides on the web.
I would save off everything that is by you to a large USB.
I would then remove Xara licence by deactivating your XDA; you need to ensure you have your purchase email and the actual Serial Number recorded safely (use Shift+Ctrl+Alt+1).
Do similar with Affinity.
Again, read up on handling a fresh install of W10 onto a blank SSD that you've swapped in.
No real cost other than the replacement SSD.
If really tight, do the same with the current HD and W10 will string back to life.
If all fails, just replace the original HD and reactivate your XDA.
Acorn
Thanks @acorn, much appreciated. YOU the man!
I think that when things start to happen ya always gotta trouble shoot to be sure... Like if things are lagging, virus check, defrag, restart and check things out... if the computer started to act up over a recent time period, maybe toss a new cmos battery on the ole motherboard... fire things back up and check it out. I also think that if ya have to replace a drive, then maybe it's time to also replace the power supply, maybe the vcard, and away we go, the list amounts quickly to simply getting another machine for the cost's and hassle. lol... I like that you have included your basic uses for such, as that makes things easier to hone in on just what would do the job...
So... In our case, we just got a new middle of the road modern desktop, as we use pretty much the same apps we have always enjoyed using, so nothing new there sort of thing, we edit photo's, some video's, do some 2D and 3D art hobby work, and engage with the multi media world, and we are not much of a gamer type... So given the fact that our newly chosen 11th gen i5 11400 will support Win11 should the need ever be, that we have 12 gigs of ram, 256 gig ssd, etc etc, , we now only need to find a middle of the road vcard that will do the job with this unit... and wow... new everything, other than our old hard drive included...
I mean our old dual quad core was pretty much all the machine we required with the apps we use... or so we thought... this new little rig is so much quicker on certain things to be sure... we just got 3 times the machine, for literally half the cost of the old one... Our benchmark for our new machines has always been... wait for it... we load up Wings 3D, insert and select a primitive sphere, and start hitting the sub division key... We have done this since way back in our 266 Celeron days... and yup, this new, right in the middle of the pack, rig, was slow but stable at 7m poly's, hit the button again and the app crashed lol... That's 3 times the number our old i5 750 was capable of processing... The money saved from being tempted to buying a higher rated rig, provided things are somewhat forward supported, if, your simply your average hobbyist, or small graphics business, is probably better spent on some decent monitors, maybe a new drawing tablet, or what have ya?
For graphics design, most things are CPU reliant... how much you are actually throwing at it will ultimately determine how quick a rig ya need... More ram is also a good thing... Gaming and video editing are very much GPU reliant... For most user's simply uploading video's for youtube what have ya, our old rigs were more than capable already... Gaming is a different beast altogether. So unless you are playing the latest very power hungry games, or, are doing some extreme video editing, it really does come down to how CPU hungry are the tasks you are doing, and some forward compatibility thoughts?
When the ole gal is getting tired it lets you know, in more ways than sudden behavioral issues, in our experience... 5 years is our normal expectancy for getting good use out of our rigs... if it works it works sort of thing. Each time we got a new faster rig, we were more than satisfied. Holy smokes, 7m Poly's on Wings 3D... I remember when our old 266 started to fart with 30 thousand poly's... we cut our teeth on that rig... as we required more, we were happy that the processors etc, were advancing right along... When we got our 400 Celeron, our poly count doubled... our 667 Celeron on Win98 Rocked !!... the i5 750 with Win 7 handled more poly counts to be sure, but the overall feel of opening up an app, and simply doing, was no where near the experience of the 667 with Win98... Our current i5 11400 even on Win 10, does not have that bloated lag feel to it in such instances... More than we need, at half the price of the old i5 model, and a way less than half the price of the top models... What would I do with a race car? I love our Rav4 sort of thing, does everything we require. We had to retire our previous Rav4... the ole gal was just getting old and tired, and harder to fix and get parts for, ya know? HTH's :D
if your computer wakes up out of sleep/hibernation unexpectedly you may want to check this out:Quote:
Originally Posted by bwood
https://www.howtogeek.com/122954/how...-accidentally/
if it cycles whist you are doing something then hardware is the first suspect, but it could always be hardware anyway so if you don't want to do the DRIVE/RAM/MB and PERIPHERAL checks it may be time
have you checked the windows event viewer for any clues ?
Before buying any new hardware, you might want to confirm that your system's BIOS and BUS can handle the interface. If you primarily use Apple (just guessing) then you might want to investigate the newer Apples' Windows compatibility and consider using Xara and Affinity in a virtual Win computer within Apple. Keep us posted.
As suggested, we went looking for a middle of the road vcard, to put in the new box, and chose the GTX 1650... 4Gig DDR4... put us back about 350 bucks... So all in all, between the i5 11400 box, vcard, and 27" gaming monitor, it was about 1200 for our new rig... could have bought such, used, for half the price, lol, but hey, if the wife wants to get the ole guy a new machine, so be it... I couldn't be happier :D
Our oldest son put on some assetto corsa driving sim game, and it ran it flawlessly... The kid says the new rig kicked his series s XBox, in both performance, as well, graphics... I don't really know what he knows in all of these games, as I never play video games, but our son has the seat setup, with the wheel, and pedals and everything, and he say's the new box really rocks for the price of admission. So yes indeed, we are very happy with retiring the ole rig, and upgrading... :D
I’m using Affinity Photo for post production and it slogs through. No problem with Xara Pro. But for any decent photo software it has serious problems. The rig works but …..
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are you using it for photo editing, I get the impression you have another computer [mac ?] for that...
if so, then if xara is all that keeps you windows based you may be better off running it virtually on the mac