Is it time to replace my 6 year old desktop PC?

(a) Find and Remove Spyware and Malware using Microsoft Security Essentials:

1. Go to Microsoft.com and download Microsoft Security Essentials:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/security_%E2%80%A6

2. Run to clean computer and protect it. (This may require disabling or removing other protection programs.)

(b) Clean the Registry :

1. Go to PCTools.com by clicking the link and running 'try a free scan":

http://www.pctools.com/registry-mechanic%E2%80%A6

2. This will download Registry Mechanic and repair some of your registry, but not all.

This program is extremely good and worth having to make sure the registry is clean.

There are other registry cleaners out there too if you prefer, but this is a start.

(c) Defragment your Hard Disk:

1. Click Start | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Disk Defragmenter.

2. Select the drives that you wish to defragment.

3. Click “Defragment Disks” button to proceed.

This is Recommended, but make sure that you do not have anything in the trash can that you want to save !!

(d) Deleting Temporary Files:

1. Click Start | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Disk CleanUp.

2. Select a drive and click OK.

(e) Reboot and Rerun all progams (a,b,c,d) again until they complete error free or have reached optimized levels.

Looking through that I can see a few things that need sorting if you want to be trouble free as far as using your computer easily goes. Fist off, your processor is 2.2Ghz single core, which these days is pretty weak. An upgrade to a 2.5 GHz dual core would make it average, but if you want brand spanking new games then one a bit fast than that is recommended, dual core 3ghz or above really. Unfortunately that would need a new motherboard, older (when I say older I mean about 3 years, computers move on fast) motherboards are built with either single or dual core in mind, so putting a dual core in your single core wont work. You'd have to get a super high spec single core, which is hard to find and more fuss than needed really. Your HDD seems pretty small by today standards, even if it is new. 500GB is about right and will allow space for a decent backup. Also, I don't think your graphics card has a HDMI connection, which depending on the monitor your using could be improved, the Nvidia 8800 series might be a good bet. All that extra stuff will need a power supply too, so a new one of those would be needed. And there's a chance not all of it will even fit in your computers case so you'd need another of those. My advice is to buy yourself a mid range PC, with 3-4GB of RAM, at 2.5GHz or above dual core processor, a 500GB HDD, and a 512MB graphics card .(probably need buying separately). Upgrading something as old as what you have isn't really a viable long term solution. If you do want to buy and build your own computer pick yourself a processor first, then find a motherboard to fit that, and a case to fit that in. Then think about everything else, picking your power supply last when you know how much power everything's gonna need. When buying it's best to buy with the future in mind and get the best you can possibly afford, that way you'll maybe need the occasional part, as oppose to a new PC in a few years time again. The setup outlined above would be good for 2-3 years, then need a few parts. It could probably reach 10 years at a stretch.

I believe that the motherboard in the first link is the same as yours and it says you cannot use more than 2 GB of ram, and the only faster cpu you could use is the 3700+ which not much of an upgrade.

I hope the second link will help you to burn the ubuntu iso.

I would be concerned about your hard drives if they are not seen every time your computer boots up. The click of death for a hard drive is called that for only one reason. You can run a free hard drive diagnostic fro seatool. Seatools for windows can be run from within windows and seatolls for DOS must be burn to a bootable cd and run from that.

Every hard drive manufacturer has a 1 to 3 year warranty on their drives depending on the maker. They all have free diagnostic utilities and if your hard drive fails that they should replace the hard drive for free.

If you computer can not perform the functions that you want it is time to replace it.

No, not too old, I suggest you get a better cpu, to begin with and then get some more ram. I say this because you have an older motherboard and the cpu for the socket has gone down in price. Such as,http://www.amazon.com/Processor-Athlon-Energy-Effi... . And for the ram, 2gb of ram is the minimum for windows 7 so if you get 4 gb you should be good and you should see a difference because it is not always capped at 2gb. Lastly, you should either get a new hard drive or clean out the old ones you have because you should have 15% of it free so it can have space to move files around, so uninstall any programs you don't use and any file you don't need.

Don't buy a computer directly from Dell, you will pay way too much for it. You can get a prebuilt laptop with a dual-core processor that will run that just as good as any 7 year old PC.

Even relatively new hard drives can go bad. You might want to run hard drive diagnostics on it.

Also get an ubuntu cd and see if you can boot into live cd mode. That will tell you if its a motherboard problem. If you can boot fine into live cd mode chances are you are having a problem with the hard drive.

time for an upgrade. you don't even know what you're missing. Pentium 4 to a Sandy bridge processor would be huge. I thought Pentium 4 to core 2 duo was big.

If your computer uses too much memory and hard drive space, yes.