I am long time watcher of your channel for many years. I enjoying watching you solve computer hardware issues. I have an old HP computer I use as linux machine to play around with Linux. I turned on last night, 10/5, and the computer exhibited the exact same symptoms. Since was a third hand computer, I decided was no big loss, and begin to think about taking the RAM, SSD and DVD drive for future use in other machines. However, your video suggested a solution and I thought why give it try. So, I removed all four DIMMs and restarted machine, and it responded with a beep code. I added the newest sticks of RAM first and the computer booted to Ubuntu with no problem. I added in one more stick o f RAM and it worked. I added in the final stick and computer booted. Thanks for the video.
The 4GB+2GB would run in dual channel flex mode on DDR3, so the 2GB of the 4GB would be dual channel with the 2GB stick and the remaining 2GB would run single channel - Intel did a good job with its controllers.
Win 7 was an excellent operating system and did everything I wanted to do without complaint. I updated to Win 10 only when I absolutely had to, but learned to love it, basically because it allowed me to work in much the same way as on Win 7. I shall be forced to udate to Win 11 in October 2025, which is a shame as it in turn will force me to change the way I interact with it - no more toolbars. At the age of 71, I have become set in my ways...
I did the same I only upgraded to 10 as my old custom Athlon 6400+ system that ran Windows 7 had died in 2015. I built a brand new system and had to use 10 then. Hopefully we'll hear more about Windows 12 before the end of 10 as I plan to hopefully skip 11 altogether. I upgraded for 3 days to 11 and hated it so rolled back to 10
@@scottwojcik2148 I felt the same way with Windows 10. Hated it so much i stayed on 7 for such a long time. then EOL came and I reluctantly upgraded. the only upside is it gave me an excuse to upgrade my hardware.
windows 10 enterprise ltsc gets support till january 2027, that edition is the base of tiny10(a very stripped out win10). So you get a faster / lighter Windows with longer support for the cost of some missing programs and a community dev findeling around in your windows install. It does require a little bit of setup till it works great, but less than most linux installs.(speaking form experience)
Had one of these (or similar 3rd gen running W10) and slapped a 1050ti sff, wifi-card, SSD and 16GB of ram and gave it to my sister. My nephew has been using it for some years now, and last month i serviced it so that my other nephew or niece can enjoy it for years to come.
When it comes to business PCs, be aware that there can be expensive - sometimes bespoke - software installed, the cost of which can be significant and which can be version-specific so the PC cannot be upgraded to later versions of Windows. Upgrading the RAM to 16 GB or 32 GB and the HDD to a SSD might have been a viable business proposition despite the cost.
I too am self employed working with the public. By a wide margin dealing with stubborn yet ill informed customers is as difficult as it gets. I used to try and demonstrate why my advice is sound but as the years roll by I just do what the customer asks then it's a 100% not my problem when things inevitably go wrong. I take no pleasure in it but at least I'm not being accused of doing the wrong thing and the long and short of it is, the responsibility is no longer mine. Another great video, thanks Graham.
Completely sympathetic to your approach - one tires of trying to educate the wilfully ignorant. But you can be absolutely certain that customer will bad-mouth you the world when it all inevitably ends in tears. Indeed, even before that he will have been accusing you of trying to upsell him, or worse. (Yes, I know, I have increasingly little faith in my fellow citizens)
Sometimes it is worth upgrading old kit. Did a 2nd gen i7 with W7 on it last week. The customer had Adobe CS5 and an old MS Office installed. Both those suites don't require expensive subscriptions and still work fine. Upgraded to SSD and W11. £5 for a new Windows 11 Pro licence. Works surprising well! I like these sort of jobs meself.
I like these old desktops, to give them a second life. I'm using a W7 64bit desktop in my garage for music and old BMW diagnostics and coding. And on 8GB of RAM and an SSD it's surprisingly fast. Thanks for sharing Graham, Regards Nico.
Hey Graham, your channel was featured on LTT (linus tech tips) "I took the #1 Tech Exam and it was BRUTAL" @ 13mins 25secs into their video from 2 days ago.
I actually got a load of these kind of Dells from work. All DOA. Every one was fixed simply by reseating the CPU. So each one was then removed and cleaned again just to be safe. For a basic use PC these older DDR3 based systems are still fine. I even use a few to run game servers for friends. All were 5th-6th gen intel based systems
Great video. Dispite your misgivings I think its nice to see these older systems not being tossed. Maybe the person just does basic internet browsing or something and doesn't need a newer system. That being said that system would easily support windows 10 and they could probably upgrade to it for free.
I remember a few years ago there was software to make W10 look like W7, must admit I too like W7, hated W10 for a while but got used to it, still not keen on W11. I once had an old PC and put 'piggy back' Ram in it and it ran great. 'Piggy Back' ram is ram sticks with a slot on the top that you can use laptop mudules slotted in, basicly addapers really but they work.
I test marginal RAM using any random version of Linux which has a memtest program on the boot menu. When I get a number of bad dimms I go through them and swap out the bad RAM chips to revive them. Old RAM is still useful for retro PCs or designated special PCs used for vending and kiosks or industrial applications.
I still have a pc 386 with win 3.1 that gets used weekly... best part is i have soldred cables onto the board and use it for diagnostics and testing of a variety of hardware etc most of the cards i use are ones ive made. I also have a spare, though thats about 6 hours of soldering away from being ready for use.
I know a local guy selling these old HP PC's for like 20 quid a pop, with i3 3220, 4GB of ram and a 500GB HDD. Repair is not worth the hassle financially since you can always transplant your CPU, SSD and RAM and such.
@@cjs95 You´re right. It´s just almost the same case and the cooler with the tunnel for the cpu has a similar design. I had an 6005 and they had these Athlon and Phenom CPUs of course. The CPUs had a B in the name ( business line ) and mine would only take 2 GB Sticks at 1333 Mhz. I don´t have an explanation for the RAM Incompatibility. Do you know why it was limited to low speed and low ammounts ?
I have an old laptop with an Intel Core i5 2450M, it runs Windows 11 Pro. this is my main computer. I am looking to see if I can buy an eighth generation Intel core. But with only 1 salary, it is not that easy to get enough money to buy a decent computer. So not everyone is able to buy a decent computer.
I can only speak for UK residents, as that's my perspective, but on ebay UK you can pick up a Dell Optiplex 3060 with an 8th gen i5, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB NVMe drive for £99. If it needs to be a laptop, you can get a laptop equivalent for less than £150. And like, I charged £60, which is quite reasonable for a repair shop, to fix this HP. I get that old computers can still run, and I don't expect people to drop hundreds on a new computer just for the sake of it - but much much much newer stuff than this HP just isn't expensive unless your budget is literally zero. As I mentioned though, this is UK pricing. I get that other countries are a very different picture, if that's the case for you.
@@Adamant_IT Indeed, for me it has to be a laptop. I don't have a desk to place my computer on. I can easily use a laptop on my lap in the sofa. I am indeed looking at a younger laptop like this. I have a Lenovo ThinkPad in mind. But as long as my old Samsung NP300E7A still works, my wife won't let me replace it.
my wife i was using windows 7 but i upgraded to windows 10 she dosent notice any diffrence at all nice job i always know windows 7 wont boot and video out when the memory is up the creek like what you had there good job to
Here I am still using XP, with absolutely no complaints.🤣 It does everything I need it to. No internet, no wifi, no hdmi. It works just fine to view and print out pages from my CD workshop manuals, which is all I ever need to use a PC for.🤣👍
True, but you should probably convert those workshop manuals to PDF and drop them onto a modern computer, if only for backup. Otherwise you'll be the next person bringing in an ancient computer saying "I can't do my job without this 20 year old computer, which could've died at any moment, but I didn't think it would..." I think this HP had some old music libraries or something on it, but I've done similar repairs on old PCs that were _the only copy of a business' accounts_ and the PC had gone down two days before the VAT return was due. And old PC is either a retro toy, or it's a liability.
@@Adamant_IT You're probably right for someone relying on an old machine for business or storing important info. For my use case, it will never be a problem even if it suddenly dies. I probably only use it once or twice a year, and pretty much all of the CD manuals I view on it I can purchase as direct pdf download to my android tablet or phone at any time for $5-$20. So, trying to justify the cost of a new machine, plus the time and (I guess additional software) involved to convert only approx 10 CD manuals to pdf is pretty difficult. I also prefer to print most things out on paper to work from (wiring diagrams generally) and most things I need are already printed out filed away for future use. It would be good to print out every manual, although some are 2000 plus pages, so that's also pretty hard to justify and a big job, let alone time consuming and a waste of paper😁. It would be rare that I would ever need more than a few pages at a time, at most maybe one specific section of manual perhaps 10-20 pages, as I said, that might only be a couple of times a year at most. I really have no need for a PC or Laptop etc for any other reason.
Quick question bro I have a 2019 macbook pro i bought used i produce music so one day i went to turn it on and i couldnt get in there telling me its company lock was wondering if theres anyway i could get my files from it?
I'm kinda torn about your opinion on old hardware there. Especially seeing it only being a minor fault I totally think one should try to repair systems like that and not throw them into the e-waste prematurely. At the same time I'm crying innerly because 1) pre-builds with their proprietary connectors are a pain 2) one should not boot from an old hard drive even when using old hardware 3) the customer should get rid of Windows 7 and replace it with a light version of Linux asap. Correctly configured this system can live for another 5 years easily in my opinion. It even has 4 RAM slots for a dirt cheap upgrade to 16 GB.
Going back a while I had a friend of a friend who always bugged me when he had PC issues. He had a Pentium 2 or something and wouldn't let me upgrade him, I eventually bought him an old office box Pentium 4 machine (life changing upgrade) for like £30 and said this is your pc now. And confiscated his old system.
I built all of my computers from scratch.The latest one runs ddr5 and windows 11. I have 3 others running windows 10 on ddr3 and 1 media computer running windows 7 and 1 old athlon on ddr2 with XP which isn't used. Also 3 laptops with windows 10. They all have their individual uses and work perfectly well. Anything that fails I could replace anyway so there is still a place for ddr3 memory in my world. Why do you not have an analyser card that you can plug into an ISA slot? It would save you time with post faults.
This is a common fault with these old trash cans. I had a case where you'd reseat the RAM sticks it would work fine, then after it's been off for a while it would have the same issue and you'd have to reseat the RAM again. Tried changing the RAM and the CPU, updating the BIOS but the issue remained. Just kept the components and trashed it.
some of my personal no posts where down to dead memory or graphics card 1 hdd failure 1 bad dvd player , and one with blown caps, that I replaced and it live 6 more years until I built a new pc.
i think Hewlett Packard was implying that HP means Horrible Product i have 2 i know why one is slow but my new one screwed up windows while it was updating and i had to reinstall it
honestly i5 2500 is not that bad, for some reason i thought its something of lga 775 series, which for almost all intents and purposes is completely obsolete platform. With this cpu, proper dual channel 16gb 1600mt/s, something like rx 6400 you should play all games from 2018 or older quite decently
YES! A desktop repair. No offense intended to laptop repair videos, but I find those to be boring and usually don't watch them. On another note I have heard quite a few comments about Dell computers booting on application of AC power. I currently own five Dell computers of both the desktop and laptop variety with one of them being new in 2011 and none of them have ever booted upon application of AC power. Interesting stuff.
That repair probably cost him more than that old beaters worth. Graham you tried to explain to the customer, but “You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink”
You misunderstand WORTH. What it would sell for is irrelevant to the person who uses it. What is COSTS TO REPLACE is the measure of its value to them.❤
Just curious about how one would charge the customer for a repair like this. Yes, the diagnostic and actual repair time would be billable, but would you charge just some kind of nominal amount for the DDR3 module or just give the module for free and say, "pay what you owe for my time and don't come back"?
I respectfully disagree about Win7. It looks beautiful and it runs fine. Windows 8 was a _huge_ misstep on Microsoft's part -- to be fair, it was really more a case of, they were looking into the wrong crystal ball, kind of like how the Pentium 4 microarchitecture wound up being the awful beastie _it_ was -- and Win10 was basically Microsoft's "There I Fixed It" edition of 8, with a huff and a harrumph, because they couldn't bring themselves to pull a John McCain and go on national TV and admit to the world that they, erm, buggered the big one ;3 with Win8. A pity -- Win10 would've been _decent_ if it'd been Win7 Part Two. Instead we got Win8 You Got What You Wanted, So There, and it sucked eggs. As for Windows 11, everything I heard about the beta basically screamed, "Hey, remember when Microsoft got sued by the US government back in the 1990s? That was fun, let's do it again!", and everything I've heard about it since has been canned cricket noises. My mother runs Win7 on her computer. It's fine. I'm building a gaming desktop and it honestly ticks me off no end that Steam is invariably going to insist on a Win10 install. At least I know how to make it look as much like Win7 as is reasonably possible. The whole Settings App thing, and really Apps in general -- instead of, you know, good old-fashioned _programs_ -- kind of ruins it for me, every bit as much as the Flat Design look. It really hurts usability, the level of obfuscation there -- and that's not something Microsoft products have _ever_ needed more of, is obfuscation. Also, someone at some point did a comparison between the interface AOL used in the mid-1990s, and the Metro Interface aka Flat Design in Win8 and Win10, and the fact that the two are nearly _identical_ says everything it possibly could. Flat Design is crap.
My PC is about 7 or 8 years old, still works perfectly (upgraded ram and graphics) for me it's just a tool, I rarely play games... don't be a snob about old machines! 😁
My people! My laptop is from 2008, bulky as hell, running Endeavour OS on it. Works perfectly fine. Video playback, web browsing, running different tools on it is great. It really comes down to what you do with the machine.
He's not being a snob . His point? It's cost more to fix tgat dell that what it's worth. Do you think I would bother getting my i7 2600 pc fixed? No. Beacuse I could buy new parts for that costs . It's an i5 from 2011. Chip 3 pound , that board 20 pound , and the heat sink screws into the board, the psu useless it's 290w 9.99 the case about ten pound so round about 50 pound . To fix around about 40 at least then more for parts . That's his point ..
I disagree with the idea of scraping a pc "if" the user doesnt need anything more powerful, There are many tons of E-waste due to Microsoft not allowing updates on their older OS's. Also some cannot afford new hardware, so they bandaid there stuff as much as posable.
@@scottwojcik2148 I liked 11 until they shoved first One Drive, then copilot AI down our throats. I fear by win 12 we wont even have the option of disabling it.
@@Playingwith3D There was a time in the dim and distant past when I would sneer at the conspiracy theorists regarding privacy intrusion and potential surveillance. Not any more.
@@joeds3775 i know what you mean. But dont forget that nowadays distros like Linux Mint just work and offer anything you need for 90% of users. I spent a whole lot of my time troubleshooting windows computers, so you need also a windows guru to be attached to a windows computer😂
That Intel Core-i5-2500 needs to be retired. My oldest happens to be an HP All-In-One Intel Core-i5-4570T, upgraded to 16GB RAM, SATA SSD & Wifi 5 card. It works better than expected on Windows 11. The internal speakers have very good sound quality. Display is 1920x1080.
I hated Windows 7. Even over Windows XP. Windows 7 is why I switched my main driver over to Linux. Endless problems with 7, especially when it decided it didn't like your network for some reason or another. Couldn't get Windows 10 on computers fast enough. Had someone bring in a Windows 8 tablet for me to 'upgrade' the other day. Oh how we laughed.
In hindsight I have to agree. I used Windows 7 on my main machine for almost 10 years and it suffered from intermittent crashes and freezes like once every 6-9 months over its whole lifespan. I switched to Linux 3 years ago and no more hiccups since then. Same hardware altogether. (And yes, it's getting close to 14 years old right now.)
I know what you are saying about they should upgrade to a new computer but its probably owned by an older person who doesn't like change and its like an old pair of slippers to them.
owned by an older person who doesn't like change.... probs one of them that voted for brexshit because 'nothing would change.' according to fartrage and co.
@@garysmith1206 But then it wouldn't be 'their' computer anymore, would it? Eventually, you get tired of what, on the surface, appears to be needless change, and you are just comfortable with 'the old pair of slippers. It will come to you in time too.
You have obviously never had any sort of emotional attachment to something which causes you to measure it any other way but for its scrap value. Thats a pity. Of course we don't know whether this particular customer has such an attachment, but to just disregard the possibility out of hand and treat everything by its monetary value is a sad reflection of the type of people we have become. With my customers, I find out FIRST if they have any special reason why they want the thing repaired/restored, and if they do, then I have no right to judge them as some sort of moron with the brains of a peanut. They may actually be a better person that myself. If they DONT have a special reason, THEN I start to explain the cost of repair over the cost of replacement. I do not TELL my customers what to do. I do not piss all over them for their possibly poor judgement borne out of possible ignorance. I ADVISE my customers of the facts, and then ASK them what they want to do. Customers are precious. They pay our wages.
Is the customer a cave man? 🙂 Djeez Windows 7 so old... Trash it already lol I can understand they have no money to buy something new but even second hand you can find something more modern than this for a low price. Cool fix
I am long time watcher of your channel for many years. I enjoying watching you solve computer hardware issues.
I have an old HP computer I use as linux machine to play around with Linux. I turned on last night, 10/5, and the computer exhibited the exact same symptoms. Since was a third hand computer, I decided was no big loss, and begin to think about taking the RAM, SSD and DVD drive for future use in other machines. However, your video suggested a solution and I thought why give it try. So, I removed all four DIMMs and restarted machine, and it responded with a beep code. I added the newest sticks of RAM first and the computer booted to Ubuntu with no problem. I added in one more stick o f RAM and it worked. I added in the final stick and computer booted. Thanks for the video.
The 4GB+2GB would run in dual channel flex mode on DDR3, so the 2GB of the 4GB would be dual channel with the 2GB stick and the remaining 2GB would run single channel - Intel did a good job with its controllers.
Impressive knowledge, but you must be a real nerd in real life lol
@@darattaqwa What's wrong with nerds? I'd be more than happy to date a chubby nerdy girl 🥰 lol
@@darattaqwa You say that like it's a bad thing!
"I don't want all of the dust to go into my coffee so I'm going to quickly just take this out back and shoot it." 😛🤣 Fair. 😂
Win 7 was an excellent operating system and did everything I wanted to do without complaint. I updated to Win 10 only when I absolutely had to, but learned to love it, basically because it allowed me to work in much the same way as on Win 7.
I shall be forced to udate to Win 11 in October 2025, which is a shame as it in turn will force me to change the way I interact with it - no more toolbars. At the age of 71, I have become set in my ways...
I did the same I only upgraded to 10 as my old custom Athlon 6400+ system that ran Windows 7 had died in 2015. I built a brand new system and had to use 10 then. Hopefully we'll hear more about Windows 12 before the end of 10 as I plan to hopefully skip 11 altogether. I upgraded for 3 days to 11 and hated it so rolled back to 10
@@scottwojcik2148 I felt the same way with Windows 10. Hated it so much i stayed on 7 for such a long time. then EOL came and I reluctantly upgraded. the only upside is it gave me an excuse to upgrade my hardware.
You dont have to switch to 11 when support end you can still use it like some people use win 7
I went to linux and haven't looked back. Windows is really far behind the game in terms of operating system freedom.
windows 10 enterprise ltsc gets support till january 2027, that edition is the base of tiny10(a very stripped out win10). So you get a faster / lighter Windows with longer support for the cost of some missing programs and a community dev findeling around in your windows install. It does require a little bit of setup till it works great, but less than most linux installs.(speaking form experience)
Had one of these (or similar 3rd gen running W10) and slapped a 1050ti sff, wifi-card, SSD and 16GB of ram and gave it to my sister. My nephew has been using it for some years now, and last month i serviced it so that my other nephew or niece can enjoy it for years to come.
When it comes to business PCs, be aware that there can be expensive - sometimes bespoke - software installed, the cost of which can be significant and which can be version-specific so the PC cannot be upgraded to later versions of Windows. Upgrading the RAM to 16 GB or 32 GB and the HDD to a SSD might have been a viable business proposition despite the cost.
Simple video but it made my day better. I needed this.
I too am self employed working with the public. By a wide margin dealing with stubborn yet ill informed customers is as difficult as it gets. I used to try and demonstrate why my advice is sound but as the years roll by I just do what the customer asks then it's a 100% not my problem when things inevitably go wrong.
I take no pleasure in it but at least I'm not being accused of doing the wrong thing and
the long and short of it is, the responsibility is no longer mine.
Another great video, thanks Graham.
Completely sympathetic to your approach - one tires of trying to educate the wilfully ignorant. But you can be absolutely certain that customer will bad-mouth you the world when it all inevitably ends in tears. Indeed, even before that he will have been accusing you of trying to upsell him, or worse. (Yes, I know, I have increasingly little faith in my fellow citizens)
Sometimes it is worth upgrading old kit. Did a 2nd gen i7 with W7 on it last week. The customer had Adobe CS5 and an old MS Office installed. Both those suites don't require expensive subscriptions and still work fine. Upgraded to SSD and W11. £5 for a new Windows 11 Pro licence. Works surprising well! I like these sort of jobs meself.
I like these old desktops, to give them a second life. I'm using a W7 64bit desktop in my garage for music and old BMW diagnostics and coding. And on 8GB of RAM and an SSD it's surprisingly fast. Thanks for sharing Graham, Regards Nico.
Yeah, I got given an old HP Pavilion, Athlon 64, 2 Gig Ram. Had XP installed, using it for an emulation system, Amiga, C64 etc.
ha ha, the title drew me in. I really wanted it to be a PC that didn't post on Sundays. That would be a real head scratcher for trouble shooting.
HP 8000 Series Pc good repairing content
Hey Graham, your channel was featured on LTT (linus tech tips) "I took the #1 Tech Exam and it was BRUTAL" @ 13mins 25secs into their video from 2 days ago.
I actually got a load of these kind of Dells from work. All DOA. Every one was fixed simply by reseating the CPU. So each one was then removed and cleaned again just to be safe. For a basic use PC these older DDR3 based systems are still fine. I even use a few to run game servers for friends. All were 5th-6th gen intel based systems
Nice methodical troubleshooting technique.
Seven(7) is the best windows ever. More respect for vintage computing would suit you way better!
Great video. Dispite your misgivings I think its nice to see these older systems not being tossed. Maybe the person just does basic internet browsing or something and doesn't need a newer system. That being said that system would easily support windows 10 and they could probably upgrade to it for free.
I miss the dust blow outs, but I can see that being a PITA to shoot. ;)
I remember a few years ago there was software to make W10 look like W7, must admit I too like W7, hated W10 for a while but got used to it, still not keen on W11.
I once had an old PC and put 'piggy back' Ram in it and it ran great. 'Piggy Back' ram is ram sticks with a slot on the top that you can use laptop mudules slotted in, basicly addapers really but they work.
"I'm going to quickly just take this out back and shoot it." is so real
old is gold sir
I test marginal RAM using any random version of Linux which has a memtest program on the boot menu. When I get a number of bad dimms I go through them and swap out the bad RAM chips to revive them. Old RAM is still useful for retro PCs or designated special PCs used for vending and kiosks or industrial applications.
love your video's, man! 😎
Holy shit, I've got this PC and this exact same problem!
Leave your money on the fridge for Graham then 😬
I still have a pc 386 with win 3.1 that gets used weekly... best part is i have soldred cables onto the board and use it for diagnostics and testing of a variety of hardware etc
most of the cards i use are ones ive made.
I also have a spare, though thats about 6 hours of soldering away from being ready for use.
I know a local guy selling these old HP PC's for like 20 quid a pop, with i3 3220, 4GB of ram and a 500GB HDD. Repair is not worth the hassle financially since you can always transplant your CPU, SSD and RAM and such.
I love a good ol' no post sunday, even if it was posted on a sunday.
Looks like a corporate HP, maybe an 8300 SFF? I liked those, durable and easy to work on.
hp compaq pro 6005 sff maybe
@@kuckuck777 Unlikely. The Pro 6005 is AMD-based and the one in the video had a 2nd-gen i5.
@@cjs95 You´re right. It´s just almost the same case and the cooler with the tunnel for the cpu has a similar design. I had an 6005 and they had these Athlon and Phenom CPUs of course. The CPUs had a B in the name ( business line ) and mine would only take 2 GB Sticks at 1333 Mhz. I don´t have an explanation for the RAM Incompatibility. Do you know why it was limited to low speed and low ammounts ?
Windows 7 is fine as long as it's OFFLINE !
Great auto generated subtitles today - LED labelled Orcs! :)
That's an old hard disk (12 years). Surprised that's still running.
The ones they used for music archival in the 90s are just starting to fail en masse now. Seems some HDDs can last a surprisingly long time
Used to refurbish these old elitedesks, bulletproof hardware and just enough performance for daily tasks
I have an old laptop with an Intel Core i5 2450M, it runs Windows 11 Pro. this is my main computer. I am looking to see if I can buy an eighth generation Intel core. But with only 1 salary, it is not that easy to get enough money to buy a decent computer. So not everyone is able to buy a decent computer.
I can only speak for UK residents, as that's my perspective, but on ebay UK you can pick up a Dell Optiplex 3060 with an 8th gen i5, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB NVMe drive for £99. If it needs to be a laptop, you can get a laptop equivalent for less than £150. And like, I charged £60, which is quite reasonable for a repair shop, to fix this HP.
I get that old computers can still run, and I don't expect people to drop hundreds on a new computer just for the sake of it - but much much much newer stuff than this HP just isn't expensive unless your budget is literally zero.
As I mentioned though, this is UK pricing. I get that other countries are a very different picture, if that's the case for you.
@@Adamant_IT Indeed, for me it has to be a laptop. I don't have a desk to place my computer on. I can easily use a laptop on my lap in the sofa.
I am indeed looking at a younger laptop like this. I have a Lenovo ThinkPad in mind.
But as long as my old Samsung NP300E7A still works, my wife won't let me replace it.
@@chrisverhulst5476 Time to get rid of the wife!
14:50 We have finally found the mythical PC 2!
Gets hammer, sees hp, hp gone ..
Step one: coffee! Good call! Must apologize as I have been watching quite a few of these lately, and completely forgot to "like".
my wife i was using windows 7 but i upgraded to windows 10 she dosent notice any diffrence at all nice job i always know windows 7 wont boot and video out when the memory is up the creek like what you had there good job to
Here I am still using XP, with absolutely no complaints.🤣
It does everything I need it to.
No internet, no wifi, no hdmi.
It works just fine to view and print out pages from my CD workshop manuals, which is all I ever need to use a PC for.🤣👍
True, but you should probably convert those workshop manuals to PDF and drop them onto a modern computer, if only for backup.
Otherwise you'll be the next person bringing in an ancient computer saying "I can't do my job without this 20 year old computer, which could've died at any moment, but I didn't think it would..."
I think this HP had some old music libraries or something on it, but I've done similar repairs on old PCs that were _the only copy of a business' accounts_ and the PC had gone down two days before the VAT return was due. And old PC is either a retro toy, or it's a liability.
@@Adamant_IT You're probably right for someone relying on an old machine for business or storing important info.
For my use case, it will never be a problem even if it suddenly dies.
I probably only use it once or twice a year, and pretty much all of the CD manuals I view on it I can purchase as direct pdf download to my android tablet or phone at any time for $5-$20.
So, trying to justify the cost of a new machine, plus the time and (I guess additional software) involved to convert only approx 10 CD manuals to pdf is pretty difficult.
I also prefer to print most things out on paper to work from (wiring diagrams generally) and most things I need are already printed out filed away for future use.
It would be good to print out every manual, although some are 2000 plus pages, so that's also pretty hard to justify and a big job, let alone time consuming and a waste of paper😁.
It would be rare that I would ever need more than a few pages at a time, at most maybe one specific section of manual perhaps 10-20 pages, as I said, that might only be a couple of times a year at most.
I really have no need for a PC or Laptop etc for any other reason.
Quick question bro I have a 2019 macbook pro i bought used i produce music so one day i went to turn it on and i couldnt get in there telling me its company lock was wondering if theres anyway i could get my files from it?
I would like to see a quick check on RAM with multi-meter or power-supply, if you could find some quick faults.
Surprisingly I have a similar old HP that exhibits this exact symptom, I'll try swapping the RAM to see if that might help!
The power button light will blink and tell you what's wrong with old Dell computers.
I'm kinda torn about your opinion on old hardware there. Especially seeing it only being a minor fault I totally think one should try to repair systems like that and not throw them into the e-waste prematurely.
At the same time I'm crying innerly because 1) pre-builds with their proprietary connectors are a pain 2) one should not boot from an old hard drive even when using old hardware 3) the customer should get rid of Windows 7 and replace it with a light version of Linux asap. Correctly configured this system can live for another 5 years easily in my opinion. It even has 4 RAM slots for a dirt cheap upgrade to 16 GB.
that old kodak battery... the question is, does it run linux Mint :D
Going back a while I had a friend of a friend who always bugged me when he had PC issues. He had a Pentium 2 or something and wouldn't let me upgrade him, I eventually bought him an old office box Pentium 4 machine (life changing upgrade) for like £30 and said this is your pc now. And confiscated his old system.
I built all of my computers from scratch.The latest one runs ddr5 and windows 11. I have 3 others running windows 10 on ddr3 and 1 media computer running windows 7 and 1 old athlon on ddr2 with XP which isn't used. Also 3 laptops with windows 10. They all have their individual uses and work perfectly well. Anything that fails I could replace anyway so there is still a place for ddr3 memory in my world. Why do you not have an analyser card that you can plug into an ISA slot? It would save you time with post faults.
This is a common fault with these old trash cans. I had a case where you'd reseat the RAM sticks it would work fine, then after it's been off for a while it would have the same issue and you'd have to reseat the RAM again. Tried changing the RAM and the CPU, updating the BIOS but the issue remained. Just kept the components and trashed it.
some of my personal no posts where down to dead memory or graphics card 1 hdd failure 1 bad dvd player , and one with blown caps, that I replaced and it live 6 more years until I built a new pc.
I'm still on win7 here. I don't download software or games I use this PC for my engineering work.... if it ain't broke don't fix it....
i think Hewlett Packard was implying that HP means Horrible Product i have 2 i know why one is slow but my new one screwed up windows while it was updating and i had to reinstall it
at 8:50, is the smok out at the UPS?
I'm still on XP with a Q6600.
Oh and without any firewall or antivirus for the past 15 years.
I still run XP on one of my laptops as I have software that won't work on anything else
how are you enjoying the viruses lol
@@si4632 Last time I had one was back in the DOS days.
XP was best version for audio editing and sound before they messed with the API's in 7.
Could make an Audigy Platinum dance and sing in XP
12:19 ooh I thought maybe you'd pop the RAM under the microscope! But I guess it wouldn't be worth it. Just a failed nand chip or something.
Windows 7 is still my favourite version. Obviously can't use it now properly.
Windws 7!, and Microsoft think people are going to upgrade to windows 11.
Ahh a classic.
honestly i5 2500 is not that bad, for some reason i thought its something of lga 775 series, which for almost all intents and purposes is completely obsolete platform. With this cpu, proper dual channel 16gb 1600mt/s, something like rx 6400 you should play all games from 2018 or older quite decently
YES! A desktop repair. No offense intended to laptop repair videos, but I find those to be boring and usually don't watch them. On another note I have heard quite a few comments about Dell computers booting on application of AC power. I currently own five Dell computers of both the desktop and laptop variety with one of them being new in 2011 and none of them have ever booted upon application of AC power. Interesting stuff.
I blame Royal Mail for No POST Sunday's Grrrrr
That repair probably cost him more than that old beaters worth. Graham you tried to explain to the customer, but “You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink”
well, MP version of that one (mp5810) is still worth some bit those computers sometimes run very specific and crucial sw...
Baby boomers never learn til they waste so much . Same as my currpted father
You misunderstand WORTH. What it would sell for is irrelevant to the person who uses it. What is COSTS TO REPLACE is the measure of its value to them.❤
@@adamtajhassam9188 mr, im in my mid 20s, I work with this hw, this hw is more reliable and stable than many of the hw on the market now
@@adamtajhassam9188 I spy with my little eye ... someone with daddy issues!
windows 7 is beautiful.
Being honest i'd take windows 98 Se anyday over most of the Windows operating systems since
I still think Win7 looks 100x better than Windows 8+. The world really isn't flat, you know...😊
It's not recommended to toutch those sensetive gold plated connecters.
I've always liked 4th gen
Just curious about how one would charge the customer for a repair like this. Yes, the diagnostic and actual repair time would be billable, but would you charge just some kind of nominal amount for the DDR3 module or just give the module for free and say, "pay what you owe for my time and don't come back"?
I'm still thoroughly surprised to see people still putting windoze on older machines...or any machine for that matter.
They probably put it on the machine 10 years ago to be fair :D
I value good reputation from fixing old stuff than saying buy new pc.
I respectfully disagree about Win7. It looks beautiful and it runs fine. Windows 8 was a _huge_ misstep on Microsoft's part -- to be fair, it was really more a case of, they were looking into the wrong crystal ball, kind of like how the Pentium 4 microarchitecture wound up being the awful beastie _it_ was -- and Win10 was basically Microsoft's "There I Fixed It" edition of 8, with a huff and a harrumph, because they couldn't bring themselves to pull a John McCain and go on national TV and admit to the world that they, erm, buggered the big one ;3 with Win8. A pity -- Win10 would've been _decent_ if it'd been Win7 Part Two. Instead we got Win8 You Got What You Wanted, So There, and it sucked eggs.
As for Windows 11, everything I heard about the beta basically screamed, "Hey, remember when Microsoft got sued by the US government back in the 1990s? That was fun, let's do it again!", and everything I've heard about it since has been canned cricket noises.
My mother runs Win7 on her computer. It's fine. I'm building a gaming desktop and it honestly ticks me off no end that Steam is invariably going to insist on a Win10 install. At least I know how to make it look as much like Win7 as is reasonably possible. The whole Settings App thing, and really Apps in general -- instead of, you know, good old-fashioned _programs_ -- kind of ruins it for me, every bit as much as the Flat Design look. It really hurts usability, the level of obfuscation there -- and that's not something Microsoft products have _ever_ needed more of, is obfuscation. Also, someone at some point did a comparison between the interface AOL used in the mid-1990s, and the Metro Interface aka Flat Design in Win8 and Win10, and the fact that the two are nearly _identical_ says everything it possibly could. Flat Design is crap.
My PC is about 7 or 8 years old, still works perfectly (upgraded ram and graphics) for me it's just a tool, I rarely play games... don't be a snob about old machines! 😁
I use a 4th gen i5, 16gb, 9800gtx+, evo 870. Handles everything dx10 just fine. Considered getting an rx580 but I'd have to upgrade from 7 to benefit.
My people! My laptop is from 2008, bulky as hell, running Endeavour OS on it. Works perfectly fine. Video playback, web browsing, running different tools on it is great. It really comes down to what you do with the machine.
When you reinstall windows 7 with updates onto a HHD and it take 24 hours you may wish to spend £100 ish on something newer.
He's not being a snob . His point? It's cost more to fix tgat dell that what it's worth. Do you think I would bother getting my i7 2600 pc fixed? No. Beacuse I could buy new parts for that costs . It's an i5 from 2011. Chip 3 pound , that board 20 pound , and the heat sink screws into the board, the psu useless it's 290w 9.99 the case about ten pound so round about 50 pound . To fix around about 40 at least then more for parts . That's his point ..
@@Run187
How is paying a grand for a new computer cheaper than a few hundred to fix this one?
I would put a SSD in there though.
I preferred Windows 7 to 10. Not interested in companies trying to force customers into AI with operating systems.
I disagree with the idea of scraping a pc "if" the user doesnt need anything more powerful, There are many tons of E-waste due to Microsoft not allowing updates on their older OS's. Also some cannot afford new hardware, so they bandaid there stuff as much as posable.
kudos to you actually telling customers it’s not worth it
no its no post monday now
seems odd to work on such an old computer, when in 1 year it will be obsolete, no Win' 11 support.
To be fair windows 7 is probably still better than 11 🤣
Completely agree I tried 11 for 3 days and hated it so rolled back too 10.
@@scottwojcik2148 I liked 11 until they shoved first One Drive, then copilot AI down our throats. I fear by win 12 we wont even have the option of disabling it.
@@Playingwith3D There was a time in the dim and distant past when I would sneer at the conspiracy theorists regarding privacy intrusion and potential surveillance. Not any more.
Cheap sata ssd, linux, and its usable again. But a person running Win7 from HDD, they wont use linux, would they?!😄
Not really true, unless you install some rudimentary linux that looks like win98.
nobody should use linux without an actual guru attached to the computer.
@@joeds3775 i know what you mean. But dont forget that nowadays distros like Linux Mint just work and offer anything you need for 90% of users. I spent a whole lot of my time troubleshooting windows computers, so you need also a windows guru to be attached to a windows computer😂
Im wondering why ppl pay 50 to repair something that old wich most likely will fail soon again.
That Intel Core-i5-2500 needs to be retired. My oldest happens to be an HP All-In-One Intel Core-i5-4570T, upgraded to 16GB RAM, SATA SSD & Wifi 5 card. It works better than expected on Windows 11. The internal speakers have very good sound quality. Display is 1920x1080.
demage ESD POWER SULPY
You must be joking . That all belongs in the trash
I hated Windows 7. Even over Windows XP. Windows 7 is why I switched my main driver over to Linux. Endless problems with 7, especially when it decided it didn't like your network for some reason or another. Couldn't get Windows 10 on computers fast enough.
Had someone bring in a Windows 8 tablet for me to 'upgrade' the other day. Oh how we laughed.
In hindsight I have to agree. I used Windows 7 on my main machine for almost 10 years and it suffered from intermittent crashes and freezes like once every 6-9 months over its whole lifespan. I switched to Linux 3 years ago and no more hiccups since then. Same hardware altogether.
(And yes, it's getting close to 14 years old right now.)
I know what you are saying about they should upgrade to a new computer but its probably owned by an older person who doesn't like change and its like an old pair of slippers to them.
yea probably, but staying on old operative systems is a terrible idea if the PC is connected to internet
@@128p6 Yes of course it is. Just saying why they didn't want a new pc. That PC could easily run wins 10.
owned by an older person who doesn't like change.... probs one of them that voted for brexshit because 'nothing would change.' according to fartrage and co.
@@garysmith1206 But then it wouldn't be 'their' computer anymore, would it? Eventually, you get tired of what, on the surface, appears to be needless change, and you are just comfortable with 'the old pair of slippers. It will come to you in time too.
@@DraftySatyr Yes I don't like changing to a new OS. The problem is Microsoft keep forcing people into. I'd still be on XP if it was my choice.
I hate flat design. W7 still looks great. But only a fool would use it today attached to the internet.
🤣🤣🤣
i will fix it with my right boot...why wasting time when the whole thing costs no more than a 40 usd🤷
You have obviously never had any sort of emotional attachment to something which causes you to measure it any other way but for its scrap value. Thats a pity.
Of course we don't know whether this particular customer has such an attachment, but to just disregard the possibility out of hand and treat everything by its monetary value is a sad reflection of the type of people we have become.
With my customers, I find out FIRST if they have any special reason why they want the thing repaired/restored, and if they do, then I have no right to judge them as some sort of moron with the brains of a peanut. They may actually be a better person that myself.
If they DONT have a special reason, THEN I start to explain the cost of repair over the cost of replacement.
I do not TELL my customers what to do. I do not piss all over them for their possibly poor judgement borne out of possible ignorance. I ADVISE my customers of the facts, and then ASK them what they want to do.
Customers are precious. They pay our wages.
Maybe because the environment will be happy with one PC less on the e-waste pile.
Is the customer a cave man? 🙂 Djeez Windows 7 so old... Trash it already lol I can understand they have no money to buy something new but even second hand you can find something more modern than this for a low price. Cool fix
th-cam.com/video/qCyb-D0XTXI/w-d-xo.htmlsi=bhbnmcNznMvZHMSi&t=806 your channel was in an LTT video, if only briefly
Renaming my channel to Adamant "As Featured On Linus Tech Tips" IT 😎
3:43 bruh hdd i will gave the 2 sticks of ram a pass but why the hdd there i mean you could put a 200 gigs of ssd