Upgrading Dell Inspiron 3471 desktop

Dell Inspiron Small Desktop (3471) - Review 2020 - PCMag UK
- says it has a boot SSD and a 1TB drive.... but the one in question may differ.

What's in it currently?
Collecting System Specifications in Windows

If it already has a smallish SSD and a HDD that should be quite enough for basic needs. The major benefit of a SSD for basic usage is boot time - so does that really matter?

It's currently got a standard 1tb hard drive, no SSD

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I've attached a speccy file and a file from Crucial, I was thinking 8gb RAM , guess I'll have to take the 4gb out that is in ther at the momment as it won't match speed. either a 240gb SSD or 480 / 500< i think 240 might be a bit tight, although he doesn't save anything

8Gb RAM is a good idea.

Why are Webroot and Kaspersky Cloud installed?

And have you noted Defender updates are failing?

I would start by checking that
a. about 3 mins after logging in, task manager shows minimal resource usage.

- if not, resolve the issue.

b. in what ways is this reported or seen as being slow?

c. check boot time- expect up to 3.5 mins to lock screen with a HDD.

Do routine checks e.g.
- check the disk (3rd party program e.g. Hard Disk Sentinel, excellent; Crystal Diskinfo (free)
- run
chkdsk c: /scan
from an admin command prompt
- similarly run
SFC /SCANNOW

Check these pass- do not continue if one fails.

Then decide if an SSD is actually likely to be a benefit.
(The 1Tb drive could be put in a caddy and used as a backup drive e.g. for regular image files).

The main thing is that the HDD is always clonking along, grabbing 100% resouces see attached PNG.

Ahh.. now THAT's the problem you need to resolve- and when resolved- you'll get far better performance.

** Note how RAM is almost full. I'm guessing the machine is continually paging things in and out of RAM.

First: try to get control.
How much free space doesn it have on C: ?
Then- are page file settings as default?

Then perform a clean boot (Google or see tutorial if unsure how). Less should be loaded on startup- so maybe RAM usage will be less.
Then see what the disk usage is.

Then note how much RAM is being used. Then which processes are responsible for that disk usage.

Go from there.


And of course, 8Gb of RAM should help!

Uninstall 3rd party security- research as necessary.

I.e. minimise what's running, uninstalling unneeded items as necessary and as indicated by the task manager as using a lot of RAM or a lot of disk I/O so you reach a point where resource usage is minimal after logging in.

I would just install another 4 G, Same brand and same code. He will never use the 8G unless he play games or use graphics programs (Autocad, Photoshop etc)
To find the current memory specs, use HWinfo


A SSD is the best improvement you can do for a computer.
As it already have a HDD that you can use for data, you can use small (128G) SSD for windows and programs.
Have used a Leven JS-600. So far so good


As already mentioned, remove all other security leaving on only Defender

Thanks everyone.
dalchina
HDD, Free space 839gb, 75gb used.
Couldn't find out how the page file was, default or otherwise, just couldn't find out how to check, it used to be easy, does the attached DESKTOP-6NJFMMP-may2022 tell use anything?
Tried a clean boot following
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...a-a97a1807f3dd

Now on reboot it says there is no Pin set, if I try to set one, it tries to open the Microsoft store, even though I'm not logged in, and loops around, if I do forgotten password, ten same thing, so at the moment I can't log in. How do I fix that.
I guess one option would be new SSD and OEM win 10 Install, I'm sure I've got an ISO somewhere, just hope he knows all his passwords, but he doesn't do that much, and more RAM whilst were at it

Password issue: Unsure what's happening here.

Photos of what you see might suggest something to someone.

In general - from the sarchable Tutorial section:
Reset Password of User Account in Windows 10

- but I'm not sure that will help here.
(Do you know the password?)

Page file (FWIW):

Couldn't find out how the page file was, default or otherwise, just couldn't find out how to check

- which won't help you now of course..

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I hope you're keeping your neighbour informed and please discuss steps with your neighbour so you agree the way forward- and risks/significance.

Clean install:

** if you are clean installing to a new disk, fine.

If not, as it's someone else's PC, then so you can rescue anything off it as you will otherwise be deleting all the partitions on the system disk fo rthe clean install- first create a disk image of at least C: and any data partition- boot the PC from the disk imaging program's bootable disk- external disk for image file needed. E.g. Macrium Reflect (free).

To consider: license codes for any installed programs need to be known or rescued.
Data: emails etc (if on PC); browser favourites; site login passwords; personal data...

I guess one option would be new SSD and OEM win 10 Install, I'm sure I've got an ISO somewhere,

Create a bootable flash to install Win 10 - don't use an out of date iso file from which you'd have to (correctly) create a bootable disk.

Tutorials:
- like the clean boot tutorial are available from the searchable Tutorial section...
Clean Install Windows 10

Create Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 10
(referenced from the above).