It's tough to diagnose your problem remotely, but I doubt that buying a MAC or replacing the whole unit is your best option. HP does make decent machines. No it's not outdated, the average user is running on 3+ year old technology and doing just fine. I'm guessing you have software and/or driver conflicts.
Please go to Device Manager - do you have any red or yellow symbols beside any of those devices? If yes, can you list them?
Couple more questions:
- What is your OS?
- Are you logged in as an admin?
- Have you worked with HP support to resolve this?
- Did the machine ever work properly and at some point in time became unreliable?
- What AV are you using?
- Do you run regular AV and anti-spyware scans?
- Is your "fleet" still under warranty?
At this point, lets be systematic:
0) Back-up all your important data to an external CD / DVD / Drive
1) Reformat your C: drive and restore the OS from the back-up partition or the CD that came with the system. Call HP or a friendly computer geek to help if you don't know how to do this.
2) Without adding ANY OTHER software, I'd check # 1-4 above and see if the problems cleared. Don't unnecessarily cruise the Net yet as you don't have AV protection.
3) If no, make note of the details and proceed with steps below. I'm hoping all the browser problems are cleared as a minimum.
4) Perform all Windows updates including hardware/driver updates. If HP has an update site, use it to update your hardware drivers.
5) Check # 1-4 above and see if the problems cleared. If not, you likely have defective hardware. Call HP for support and possible RMA.
6) Create a system restore point using a unique name.
7) If everything is now working, add your AV and Flash and nothing else and try #1-4. AV programs can absolutely be a source of problems
8) Restore your data
Systematically:
9) Add your critical apps one at a time and check that everything is stable before adding the next. Perform application updates.
10) Continue to set unique system restore points.
11) If the system becomes unstable, uninstall or restore as needed, ignore that app and continue with the next app. Post which app caused the problem.
Please let us know how things progress.
There are allot of very bright PC gurus on TERB, I'm hoping they can improve on my suggestions above and we can get you up and running without further drama.
for HP to send a cord to future shop. How could they not carry these cords? Does anyone know where I can pick one up...and is there such a thing as a universal cord? Would a universal power adapter even work with it?
