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HP Recommended
HP Z220 minitower
Microsoft Windows 7 (64-bit)

Hello, I do hope I'm posting this in the correct section, apologies if not!

 

I have a HP Z220 workstation (apparently it's the 'mini tower' though it's far from mini, anyway...) it has a 1TB HD, 16GB of RAM (I upgraded it from 8GB when I bought it) and a Xeon processor (CPU - E3 1245 v2 @ 340GHz)

 

I've had it for about five years I think. It's got a fair bit on it, mainly photos etc, but not what I'd call an excessive amount. I wouldn't say I over tax it, probabaly the most challenging thing I do with it is to work on some image/ text documents in Photoshop with a few layers, nothing massive, whilst also flipping back and forth onto web pages to upload things to an online shop and looking at photos which I want to open in Photoshop etc, so that's about as multi tasking as it gets. My issue with it is that it seems to be very slow. After start up, it grinds away for a good few minutes and then when I ask it to open something like Firefox it has to think about it for a long time. The same with internet explorer etc, and even when it's got going it seems to be having to think about everything for longer than seems right before it opens things. Photoshop particularly is slow to open and very laggy at times and other programmes (internet browsers, Word etc) lag quite often too.

 

It has integrated graphics rather than a graphics card and I had wondered whether this impacted on Photoshop's performance but I'm disinclined to buy one as I'm not very confident about the concept of installing it and am not sure if the money would be better put towards a new PC at some point, given this issues I'm having with this one.

 

I've updated Photoshop, defragmented, run disk clean up, done virus scans including the Norton power eraser scan and have changed the display options so everything now looks like something from Windows 98. I've also done a few other things I picked up online relating to turning off indexing etc. I'd say it was a touch quicker now for some things but for others it still seems to struggle. In trying to update Photoshop/ Creative Cloud yesterday things seemed to get further confused with faffing with renaming files to try to uninstall things and I'm concenred this has compromised things further, I am far from an expert and am deeply uncomfortable with tweaking things manually even with guidance.

 

I was just wondering if anyone had any thoughts please? I know 5 years is quite old for a PC but it seems to match the specification of some consumer models that are around now and given the way I use it it doesn't seem right that it's this slow. I'd estimate I'm losing about 20 minutes in total of work time per day waiting for it to do things. I'm disappointed as I thought a workstation of this specification would work efficiently for a bit longer than this.

 

Many thanks for reading!

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions
HP Recommended

@Ruthieroo,

Your commentary and explanation/viewpoints are interesting.  If it's true your still with WIN 7, then you need to know that extended support for MS WIN 7 ends Jan 14, 2020. While (whilst) it will still function, no updates will be provided.  The actions you have taken ( defragmented, run disk clean up, done virus scans ) are worthy and I respect your endeavor(s).

 

If that drive is the original, it is on borrowed time. What is the exact manufacturer and model number?  What I am suggesting is a new 1TB hard drive. The original HD will be cloned, and then you can swap it out.

This system is feedback driven thru Solution and Kudo flags. It's the only means of knowing if you have been served. Please click Accept as Solution, if your problem is solved. To say THANK YOU, press the "thumbs up symbol" to render a KUDO. You can render both Solution and KUDO..

HP Envy 8 5010 Tablet
(2) HP DV7t i7 3160QM 2.3Ghz 8GB
Printer -- HP OfficeJet Pro 8620 Legal
Custom Asus Z97D, I7-4790k, 16GB RAM, WIN10 Pro 64bit, ZOTAC GTX1080 AMP Extreme 3 fan 8GB RAM, 500GB SSD, Asus PB287 4k monitor, Rosewill Blackhawk case and 750W OCZ PSU.

View solution in original post

2 REPLIES 2
HP Recommended

@Ruthieroo,

Your commentary and explanation/viewpoints are interesting.  If it's true your still with WIN 7, then you need to know that extended support for MS WIN 7 ends Jan 14, 2020. While (whilst) it will still function, no updates will be provided.  The actions you have taken ( defragmented, run disk clean up, done virus scans ) are worthy and I respect your endeavor(s).

 

If that drive is the original, it is on borrowed time. What is the exact manufacturer and model number?  What I am suggesting is a new 1TB hard drive. The original HD will be cloned, and then you can swap it out.

This system is feedback driven thru Solution and Kudo flags. It's the only means of knowing if you have been served. Please click Accept as Solution, if your problem is solved. To say THANK YOU, press the "thumbs up symbol" to render a KUDO. You can render both Solution and KUDO..

HP Envy 8 5010 Tablet
(2) HP DV7t i7 3160QM 2.3Ghz 8GB
Printer -- HP OfficeJet Pro 8620 Legal
Custom Asus Z97D, I7-4790k, 16GB RAM, WIN10 Pro 64bit, ZOTAC GTX1080 AMP Extreme 3 fan 8GB RAM, 500GB SSD, Asus PB287 4k monitor, Rosewill Blackhawk case and 750W OCZ PSU.
HP Recommended

Hi Wb2001, thank you so much for your reply! I'd never even thought about the HD (shows how much I know about computers, I thought HDs were only for storing files) so that's really good to know. Thinking about it I am sure my PC used to be quieter than it is now, there seems to be a fair bit of sort of, I can't think of how to explain it, humming crackly noise coming from it (that doesn't describe it very well, the noise it's making is what I'd call 'normal' computery noises but more than it used to if that makes sense) Could this be indicative of a HD problem too?

 

The one I have in it at the moment is a 1TB Seadisk Barracuda. I have no idea what I should be looking for to replace it apart form another 1TB one, would an SSD be a good idea? I am on a budget though really, looking to spend less than £100. I worry about spending too much as I am always torn between letting this one go and having an all in one, which would be easier in terms of desk space, or saving money and embracing the one I have and trying to sort it out. I don't know a lot but find it all very interesting and quite like having the possibility of swapping out a HD/ other components rather than just having to buy a new PC. I am presuming that the processor might be good for a while (touch wood, I've no idea how long they last but spec wise it seems decent enough) and I can swap/ replace RAM so I'm wondering if I bought a decent HD I might be able to get a few more years out of it. I know there are lots of other bits that can fail though like the motherboard and that's way outside of what my confidence in twiddling with PCs stretches to!

 

Re Windows 7, I've been hanging onto it as I like the user interface but thank you so much for reminding me about the support ending, I think it is time for me to upgrade 🙂

† The opinions expressed above are the personal opinions of the authors, not of HP. By using this site, you accept the <a href="https://www8.hp.com/us/en/terms-of-use.html" class="udrlinesmall">Terms of Use</a> and <a href="/t5/custom/page/page-id/hp.rulespage" class="udrlinesmall"> Rules of Participation</a>.