The Glade 4.0

On a very limited budget right now. The upcoming end of support for XP (which my old machine uses) has me worried somewhat.

I figure a new PC (budget) would still run me around $600 bucks at least. If I buy a win7 or 8 copy, it'll likely be $100 or a bit more. Is it worth just spending the money and getting the new OS? My machine still runs okay (core duo)

I'd love to upgrade the whole system, but money is tight right now and for the foreseeable future. (doing a lot of stuff on my land that is eating my wallet and then some)(Just dropped about $6k on having some land cleared and still have a lot left to do)

I still want to play WoW some, and all I am doing other than that is browsing and watching YT vids. I just don't want safety issues cropping up once they quit supporting xp.

So tl;dr find a way to buy new pc (very hard to find money), buy new OS (7 or 8?), or some other option?

Appreciate any input.

Have you considered Linux?

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The only linux OS I have heard of is ubuntu, but I am a bit wary of using something other than a windows OS (the only thing I have ever used) for fear that I will be lost/screw up/can't do something/I'm a wuss. I saw a video where a guy was using ubuntu from a stick drive, and then eventually installed it permanently.

I would need to do a lot more research on it I guess. What browsers work. Will WoW work on it. Etc. Remember, I am not tech savvy like most of you here.

thanks for the suggestion.

If the games you play still run okay, I think upgrading the OS is a good idea. Also, add a solid state drive. Both of those together will make a huge difference and you'll think you got a new computer. SSD prices have dropped like crazy, you can get a nice 120GB one for around $80. And both the SSD and new OS will easily carry over to a new computer later down the road when you have the money to upgrade the rest of your system.

Older hardware will likely not support an SSD.

If it does, that's great, and it will help performance.

If his computer has SATA ports, it will support an SSD.

Man, I am still ignorant. I'll try to tell you guys what I have. This machine is getting long in the tooth. I bought it like 5 or 6 years ago from cyberpowerpc. I have this mobo. It says it has SATA. I have this cpu. I have 3x1gig ram sticks, because I am running 32bit xp, so it wouldn't recognize anymore than that. I upgraded my psu to a corsair modular 600w I believe. I stuck a hd 4770 in for graphics. Last I played WoW it was showing 60+fps on medium, dropped to around 20fps in a heavy 25-man raid. Not sure the make right now, but the hard drive is just an old 500mb/7200rpm.

I saw an SSD on amazon for as low as $65ish for 128gb? I've no idea how to add that to my pc. Would that be my main hard drive, and then use the old hard drive as secondary for storage? I'm clueless guys. Sorry.

Sam, don't worry, it's a very simple upgrade to do. The SSD would become your main hard drive, and you would put Windows on it and all the basic programs you use frequently (unless they are really huge). I'd try to put WoW on there too but I'm not sure how big the WoW install is these days. Your old hard drive would become extra storage. I would use it for things like photographs, music, videos, etc. You can still install programs on it too if you don't have enough room on the SSD.

For adding it to your PC, it's really just opening up your PC and plugging it in. Unless the SSD comes with one, you will need a 3.5" adapter to fit it into the hard drive bay. Like this.

Watch this video to see how to install it. They're overly cautious and make it sound a little more intimidating than it is, but it's really just plugging in two cables and securing it onto your case somewhere so it doesn't bounce around. I wouldn't bother upgrading your BIOS like they suggest, unless it's something you're comfortable with.



In theory you could clone your existing Windows install onto the SSD and begin using it like that right away, but I think you should upgrade Windows at the same time. It just makes more sense to do them both at once, and your computer will be faster with a fresh Windows install. The good news is you don't even have to worry about backing up all your old files, because they'll still be accessible from your old HD. You will have to reinstall your programs though.

Get Windows 8 unless 7 is substantially cheaper for some reason, and just budget in $3 to get Startisback to keep the interface and start menu familiar. I personally have this drive which has served me well and it's pretty well reviewed. If you're looking at the absolute cheapest drives on Amazon, just peak at the reviews to make sure it's not a really old model or has weird issues.

Anyway, I don't think your computer is that slow overall. For less than $200 your computer will seem lightning fast for everything but newer games, and you can probably hold off on upgrading the rest for another few years if you want.

Edit: If can spend an extra $40-50, you should think about getting a 240GB drive. It'll be less headaches down the road as far as managing hard drive space, but you can still get by on 120GB just fine.

Thanks. I was planning to upgrade the whole PC and my wife was saving the cash towards it, but we've had a major bump in the road that has eaten all my extra money. $ 6k to cut down 4 trees. $ 6k to remove old house and clear brush. Probably $3k to level the land and a bit more for dirt/sand/gravel. And I will need to remove some more trees in a few years. Need to plant grass also. Plain river sand is $100 for a small truck load. Uncovered an old water well that was dug about 70 years ago that I need to fill ASAP. About 1.5ft wide and 40ft deep as far as I can tell. I be broke for a while it looks like.

If your PC can run Windows XP reasonably it will run Windows 7 fine if you can find a copy.

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Buy the Full version, and not OEM, right? If I plan to replace my mobo and processor at some point?

8.1 Full Version at Amazon for $103.42 shipping included, shipped from Amazon.

Appears Crucial M500 120GB SATA is going to be my choice for SSD. $74.99 from Amazon

That's around $180 for both. Thoughts? Better shopping sources? Edit and add: I just went thru the specs on my mobo, and it appears this old mobo will only support 3GB/sec which is SATA II. I understand that SATA III is backwards compatible. Any thoughts?


Windows7 seems hard to find, outside of OEM version. And it appears the same price as Win8.1 from what I can tell. Full version is hard to find, and if found seems extremely expensive. I'd like to think my machine can run Win8, given their recommended spec list.

I'm pretty sure you can still transfer the OEM version to a new system later, it just doesn't come with support and the product manuals. So that's an option if it's cheaper.

What you picked out looks good. Just remember to get a 2.5" to 3.5" hard drive bay converter like I linked above.

Edit: And don't worry about only having SATA II, it will be fine.

Yeah, I've searched high and low on the licensing. From what I could find, it appears that Win7 OEM was tied to your mobo, and couldn't be used with a different mobo later. Win8 had some sorta loophole, in that they allowed OEMs to used on personal builds and you could move it with a different mobo. Win8.1 went back to the previous license of Win7, and you aren't supposed to use OEM for personal build and it is tied to the mobo again. Very confusing, and I never really felt I got a straight answer.

The full version of 8.1 appears not much more than the OEM everyone is selling, so I'll just do that and be safe. I would try Win7, but all I can find is the OEM versions. The only ones stating full retail, are from questionable sites, and cost as much or more than Win8.1 from Amazon.

You've been a lot of help. Thanks a ton!

Don't be scared by the 8.1 interface. It's different, but nothing is harder to do.

Yeah, so this is sucking.
Got the 240gb ssd and Win 8.1. Tried as suggested, and W8.1 doesn't want to load on the new ssd. It has gotten to the loading part twice out of several tries of rebooting from black screen saying floppy disk failed to boot, and after it did try to load, it gives me a pop up saying "A media driver your computer needs is missing". And then no go from there. I tried to pull raid drivers for Win 7, which is the latest I can find at ASUS, and load them, but still no go. Not sure where to go from here.

I spent all day and night looking for info that would help, but not finding anything at all. Gonna look and see if I can get an old HHD and use it as a test to load W8.1 on, if it will take. Other than that, I think I am SOL on this project atm.

If that doesn't work, I will just have to shelf the new ssd and Win8 until I can get a new mobo and processor in the future.

This sucks.

Egads! What are you trying to install it from, a DVD? Is it a retail disc or one you burned?

It's a retail disk I bought from Amazon.

I've searched for hours to try and find out what is wrong, but nothing really seems to have helped. The dvd player spins and it doesn't load 9 outta 10 times, so I have to keep rebooting. When it does finally start loading, I get to the point it gives me the pop-up screen saying my computer is missing a driver needed to continue the install. I read someone posted about this problem, and stated I need to load the raid drivers for my computer, but that hasn't helped so far. ASUS doesn't have drivers past win7, and that didn't seem to do the trick.

Not sure if it's just my the win8 won't load on my pc, or if it's the new ssd, or a combo of that is causing the problem. And I can't afford to try and write it to my existing HDD for fear of losing the ability to get back online at all. heh

I'll keep digging and trying to find the problem. If I can test on an old HDD I will.

Make sure you have the latest BIOS. Sounds like a motherboard issue to me. Word on the web is, make sure you're connecting via sata 0. I see varied results for the mobo and ssd listed.

^this

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In time, this too shall pass.

I'm anything but an expert on this subject, but I seem to recall something about controller ports needing to be set to AHCI mode to support SSDs.

AHCI mode offers a small performance benefit but is unnecessary and I doubt it's the issue here.

To me it sounds like an issue with your DVD drive... If I were you I would try installing Windows 8 from a USB drive. Here's a random guide I found on how to do this. Microsoft has their own utility that will create the bootable USB drive for you. Making sure your motherboard has the latest BIOS is another good idea.

I doubt it's an issue with the SSD. You should be able to unplug all the hard drives in your computer and still boot from the Windows 8 DVD and get into the setup. Unless it's failing after you select which hard drive to install it on?

I'll have to go buy a stick before I can give that a go.

As for BIOS, ick. Last resort. I've read a guide on updating my BIOS, and it's an incredible amount of crap......and I really don't want to fubar this PC, since it's my only access to the interwebs atm.

It's not failing after I select a hard drive........I'm not getting that far. It's failing to load most of the times, at all......get a black screen with a message "floppy disk fail" or something like that. If I keep rebooting, I can get it to eventually start loading the disk........and it loads a bit and pops up the box saying "A missing media driver your computer needs is missing. This could be a DVD, USB or Hard disk driver."

Yeah, that makes me think it's an issue with either the DVD or the DVD drive. The USB stick is probably the easiest option for getting around that. You could also try burning a new DVD (download the ISO from Microsoft), or using a different DVD drive if you have access to one. Another option is to create a bootable Windows 8 recovery partition on your SSD and install Windows from that... but that's getting a little more complicated.

It's hard to imagine someone not having a USB stick these days... but hey, they're really cheap at least! And it's a useful thing to have anyway.

New problem. Ordered a new dvd drive (sata) and installed it. Boot up, and log in, and shortly after it reboots. It starts to load windows, I see my desktop for maybe 10 seconds, and then reboots and I am back to the splash screen to log in again.

My old drive is an IDE. I tried removing it and just using the new SATA dvd. No work. I tried leaving the IDE in, along side the new dvd. No work. I went into BIOS and set up boot config to select HDD first, cd drive second. No work. New drive is recognized in bios. New drive is powered, and opens/closes the tray. Just can't get into windows XP with it hooked up.

Any ideas? I have searched and cannot find any help on this kind of issue. Is it some driver problem? Should I try to start up in safe mode?

Unplug them both; does the computer boot normally?

Boots normally with old IDE dvd plugged in. Boots normally with no dvd plugged in. Reboots with new SATA dvd plugged in with or without old IDE present.