The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Hey guys, and welcome to my official blog! My name is Dan and I'm here to guide you on my journey of life, programming, life-hacks, things I find interesting, and things which interest me. I want to thank notice.studio for creating such as easy product. I had managed my own blogging software so have it all managed is really a sweat...making writing fun.
I want to start by talking about some of things I'm currently working on. I just worked on some pcs for some friends. I am really into computer building and repair at the moment. From the programming side, I've been trying to expand my horizons and learn new skills and tools. My main focus over the next several weeks are to study some tools and ways they can improve my productivity and ease of delivery.
Here is the PC, I worked on:
Specs: Gigabyte GA-H61M-DS2 LGA 1155 Pentium G2020 Dual Core 2.9 Ghz 4GB DDR3 500GB Western Digital HDD
It was really slow when my client turned it on. The Windows logo took a long time to load. Which lead me to believe it had a memory issue or something in the background processes.
It didnt take me long to find some issues with an unknown application running in the background. After a simple Google search, I was able to determine that some sort of malware application was installed on the pc. The scan took a long time to load so I offered my client the ability to work on his PC from my home, he obliged. I got home opened up and found this:
It was really dusty inside, cables looked fine, nothing looked over-heated, hdd was properly secured. Nothing looked too bad. He said his son used it for browsing and light gaming. I told him, I will do my best to fix it up. One of the first things I did was run up to Altex(Romanian BestBuy) and bought some compressed air and thermal paste. I figured by at least cleaning the interior this will help tremendously with air flow, and heat dissipation. Once I took the heat sink off, the paste was basted onto the processor and there was filth in the cooling coil. I had some work to do.
I cleaned the coil and interior with a full can of compressed air. It seems that over several years especially this being a third generation Intel processor tons of sitting really took a toll on its interior. Next, I took a sharp blade and scrapped all the excess paste from the cooling agent and the processor - leaving a clean surface. I took a cloth to both, making sure that everything was especially clean to be able to apply the paste properly.
I did some research on what upgrades he can make and came up with the following:
Part/Repair
Compressed air
Memory (2x8GB), 1600Mhz, CL10, 1.5V
PCi 3.0 x16 video card
Thermal paste
This was the bare minimum I recommend to get the system, in a better state. No bogging down, While, the owner was considering the changes. I went into and start to do a little cleaning on the interior. Disk cleanup and system defrag. I noticed an instant difference once I did these. I can actually move the mouse without it delaying so acting very slow.
One other thing, I did from another personal machine I worked for my self years ago was to turn off the performance and extra features of Windows. This is especially true with Windows 10 and 11 since it is bogged down with a lot of features which will drag especially in a performance-inferior system. I used the following article to help me out: https://www.windowscentral.com/tips-tricks-increase-pc-performance-windows-10
Wow, that helped a bunch!
I loved PC repair and building. Its something I actually just took up recently as a hobby. I will do another write up on my PC at home and another PC build I will do. I think they are fun, educational, and you learn alot during the whole process. It not only shows you how PC have changed over time but it allows you to learn new trends and what you can do in your own personal builds. Thanks for stop by! :)