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

Samuria said:

The specs for your old pc show its only sata 2so the speed of an ssd wont all be used as they need sata 3 it will speed it up but not a lot Consider the new mini pcs amazing value and go like a rocket and come with windows I bout ryzan 7 with 16 cores and it was so good I bought 2 Best Mini PC | Mini Desktop PC of 2024

Ahhh I did wonder if the age of the PC might cause a problem. Thanks for the head's up...it seems my upgrade is going to hit me slightly harder in the pocket than I'd anticipated!

Not heard of those mini PCs...will take a look.

On the contrary, an ssd will be very noticeably quicker, even using sata2 connection.

If you dont want to invest in an entirely new system just yet. When you do get around to buying a new system in years to come, the ssd is not wasted, it can be used on the new system.

dalchina said:

Swapping the disk and clean installing Windows should not affect activation.

The difficulty comes when making more significant hardware changes, as now activating after such a change based on a license acquired from a free upgrade may not be possible.

Provided everything on the other disks is pure data (not relocated Documents, Pictures, Videos etc, or programs partially installed on those disks) or fully portable programs you should be ok.

Thanks for the info...

The main thing I'd want to keep that's currently on the C: drive (1TB HDD) is my Google drive folder. There are probably a few bits 'n bobs under My Documents, My Pictures, etc that I'd keep as well, but other than that, the bulk of my stuff (pics, music, etc) is on the D: drive.

So after I've installed an SSD, I would probably wipe most of what's currently on the C: drive.

From what you've said, it sounds like that shouldn't cause any licensing issues?