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Old Dell Win7 Graphics Problem

10 years ago

We have an old Dell Vostro Desktop computer with win7 mainly used for internet surfing. Internet response sometimes or often slows down and a reboot will speed it up again. Recently, a graphics issue has often or always shown up. Dear Wife is often plowing around clothing sales sites showing multiple (6-12) pictures per page with many more upon scrolling. I played around with this while pages were loading rapidly this morning. The first page always loads well and immediately, but upon two to 5 scrolls down, the lower portion of usually all of the pictures in a row (sometimes only one) will show the lowest line (midway down the pic) of picsels dragged down for a few inches. Further scrolling will bring new good pics and scrolling up will often re-show the bad section. Refresh will sometimes show same bad pic and sometimes other good or bad areas.

I presume that this is some graphics issue. Are there any common or obvious things I could or should look at to see if something could be reset or replaced?

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Comments (3)

aputernut
10 years ago
If the PC would have accepted W10 when it was Free you should have taken advantage of that, an older PC will become more unstable as time goes on, maybe time for a new one?
Elmer J Fudd
10 years ago
It could be a memory limitation problem, it could be the graphics hardware is dying, it could be something else hard to say. It also could be that the browser cache is full.

First and easiest thing to do is to delete all history and cache contents of the browser. And try using a different browser. Does that help?

Windows machines accumulate gunk over time. A special problem is loading too many things at start up. I'll wait to hear back from you before going further.

The version of the OS has little effect on problems like this.
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chas045
Original Author
10 years ago
last modified: 10 years ago
Thanks for the quick responses. Well, yes it is probably time for a new computer, but it is really for basic use and I hope to limp along. However, it does have a bigger issue that recently, microsoft detected that the win7 was not legit and I wouldn't have been able to get win10. (I got it from a guy who I suppose worked at a big company. It was initially a Millennium Edition that someone upgraded to win7 Ultimate.In any case, probably way too small for win10. It is ~150gig HD with 2mb mem.

Anyway, thanks for the tips snidely; I'm not sure I was able to clear the cache. I used to recall that there was a windows direct way but I went thru the 'create shortcut' way and can't tell if something actually got done. At first I didn't want to wipe the history. I guess I will check that in a minute and get back.

However: YES, it appears to be a browser issue. Wife and I have both been using Firefox. I tried Chrome and one of the Explorers and they didn't give the problem. I will see if a cleared history will make it work.

Update: Using CC Cleaner I got rid of more than 10gig of some very old and not so old cached stuff. However, the problem remained. While in Firefox/options, I found four settings about scrolling, and randomly removed settings for 'use smooth scrolling' and 'use hardware acceleration when available'. One or both of those settings appear to have caused the graphics failures because Firefox now works normally.

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