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#1
Questions on refreshing Windows and adding SSD to hideously slow PC
I have a Dell XPS 8100 which I've had for a good number of years and which has served me pretty well. Of late, though, it's become hideously slow, particularly when booting up, and it seems to be disk related; today when I started it up the disk utilisation (in Task Manager) was showing as 100% for well over an hour...with performance to match! After 20 minutes I tried opening Chrome and it took just over 55 seconds to open.
What I'd like to do is pop an SSD in and use that as the primary boot device whilst keeping the existing HDDs (2 x 1TB) for storage. I'd also like to do a fresh, clean install of Windows onto this new SSD if that's possible as that could/should help speed things up a bit too.
Whilst I've used PCs for many years, I'm by no means an expert when it comes to this sort of thing, so I have a couple of questions. As the PC is about 12-13 years old, is it sensible to put a brand new SSD into it? And if so, any recommendations on a reasonable SSD to go for? The PC has internal SATA connectors (and one external eSATA) so I believe it should fine to plug one in...
Also, the PC originally came with Windows Pro 7 and I upgraded to Windows 10 Pro for free whilst it was possible to do so (currently on v22H2 build 19045.3930). I've read on Microsoft's website:
"If you upgraded to Windows 10 for free from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, you should have a digital license instead of a product key"
Their use of the word "should" makes me a bit nervous! Is there any way I can confirm this is the case before doing anything?
Thanks