Old XP system problems

**pjaj** · March 12th, 2012, 05:05 PM

Our local village shop has a small 3-4 year old HP PC. It is a charity run by volunteers, so there is very little budget for new hardware or software.

About 2 weeks ago Outlook Express stopped receiving emails. You could still send them (albeit slowly) and Outlook downloads a list of available emails from the server, but then times out when trying to get the new ones. The emails are still accessible via the ISP's webmail, but this is inconvenient.

All the software on the PC is ancient. Outlook Express V6 is part of Office 97, XP is at SP2 and so on. The only new software was McAfee and Firefox 10.
Trying to run windows update just hangs (this is IE6) other downloads range from very slow to impossible, although a Broadband speed tester claimed we were getting 800kb download and 500kb upload - not very good but adequate for their needs. The exchange is in the next village and betimes the speed can drop to zero during the afternoon. I've scheduled a Windows Update for 3AM and left the PC running over night - we shall see.

Another part of the problem is that there is proprietary software on the system that talks to one of their suppliers - we do not have the disks. I have temporarily tried disabling McAfee and the Windows firewall in case there was some problem there, but to no avail. A repair install of XP achieved nothing. I have cleaned off old software as far as possible including the startup stuff.

I would dearly like to either reformat and reinstall XP or do a clean install of windows 7, but neither of these is an option due to the proprietary software and only 500Mb of RAM.

Can anyone suggest why the email system should fail after so long? The in box is not full. The POP server is provided by the same ISP who host the village web site and appears to be OK.

**Whir** · March 12th, 2012, 05:34 PM

Did this start after installing McAfee?

**pjaj** · March 12th, 2012, 06:43 PM

No, as far as I am aware they have had a subscription to McAfee for some time. Another reason why I disabled McAfee was that it too couldn't update itself, and I initially thought that it might not allow emails to be downloaded whilst it was in the process of updating. It would sit there for hours showing that it was attempting to update. This started at about the same time email failed.

It's strange, some things are very slow or impossible to download (AVG and Zone Alarm installers) whilst others are normal, such as Google's main page, search term hints and search results.

Nobody who uses the system can recall anything new being done or installed recently.

Later

The over night Windows Update did nothing.
This morning I downloaded SP3,IE8 and IE8 update on my own PC and installed them off of a USB memory stick. So at least it's updated that far.
But nothing else has changed. Outlook Express is still timing out with minimal network activity according to task manager.
I've left Windows Update running on IE8, but again there is little network traffic and I don't hold out much hope.

Later still

Windows Update timed out.
Installed Thunderbird, but it has the same problem as Outlook.

Why should some things download reasonably quickly and others very slow or not at all? It isn't the browser (IE6 IE8 FF all have the same problem), it isn't the email client, ancient Outlook and latest Thunderbird have the problem. Could it be the ADSL modem? I'll see if anyone has a spare one we could borrow.

**bigBonehead** · March 14th, 2012, 04:08 PM

If you can address the modem, possibly a change of channel would help...

**pjaj** · March 14th, 2012, 04:18 PM

Originally Posted by bigBonehead

If you can address the modem, possibly a change of channel would help...

Thanks, I'll look into it the next time I'm over there, although it's a hard wired 100Mb ethernet connection, nothing uses WiFi.

**tony_j15** · March 14th, 2012, 05:38 PM

Originally Posted by pjaj

I would dearly like to either reformat and reinstall XP or do a clean install of windows 7, but neither of these is an option due to the proprietary software and only 500Kb of RAM.

I hope you meant to say 500 hundred megabytes.

With all this grief being network related, is there another NIC you could try just to rule out a hardware issue?

**pjaj** · March 14th, 2012, 08:57 PM

Originally Posted by tony_j15

I hope you meant to say 500 hundred megabytes.

With all this grief being network related, is there another NIC you could try just to rule out a hardware issue?

Yes, my typo, it's 500Mb, now corrected

Another thing to look at the next time I'm at the shop, I'll see if the PC has another ethernet port. I think the PC only has ethernet port(s) on the motherboard, and I could swap to one of the other 4 ports on the modem as well to see if that helps.

**Big_Daddy** · March 15th, 2012, 10:47 AM

How much RAM is available when it is running? How much disk space is available on the drive?

The ethernet could be dying. One way to find out is to add an ethernet card and see if it improves. They are usually easy to borrow.

**tony_j15** · March 15th, 2012, 11:04 AM

Just make sure you bring drivers with you on a flash drive. ;-)

**pjaj** · March 15th, 2012, 05:29 PM

Gentlemen, thank you all very much for your suggestions. I will most certainly look into them the next time I call into the shop. The system has been running quite satisfactorily for the best part of 4 years and has only recently developed this problem, so there may well be a hardware fault in the network connection, as you say.

**electric** · March 15th, 2012, 11:31 PM

i found some times just unplugging the power to the modem,wait a minute or two
than plug back in works. if you hadn't already did so may be give that a try

turn the computer on after the modem resets itself

**pjaj** · March 29th, 2012, 08:11 PM

It turned out to be the one piece of the system for which I didn't have a spare - the ADSL Router. When that was replaced the system worked better than it ever had!