My 10 year old pc running windowsxp has gone pop. Could just be the graphics card as the display froze, then went very pixelated and to a low colour setting, finally ending up with a black blank screen, sounds like the pc actually starts the hdd drive etc ok as I get the usual sounds and beeps.

So I’ve a few questions ….
Would I still be able to get a new graphics cards to work with this?
If it’s a bit more terminal and I need a new pc would I be able to plug in the old hdd as it has a lot of stuff on it I’d like to access?
Also, would my old software work on a new pc? I’ve got old versions of Photoshop, some old games I’d still like to run, I had some video editing software like Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere which were downloads?
My old pc was x32 and new ones are x64 so will this cause problems with the above?
I’ve seen some cheap pc’s/base units on ebay locally that are win7 win8, some new or referbs even have no hdd drive or os, would it be as simple as plugging in my hdd and it would work or is the x32 x64 thing going to cause problems.

Main use is internet, emails, bit of photo resizing adjusting. Don’t do much video stuff but if my old pc could cope with the stuff I did surely something newer would be ok. But I don’t want to have to spend loads updating software when the versions I have worked perfectly.

Any advice appreciated. What would be the best thing to do? Thanks

Could it be the monitor? Probably not but if you’ve got access to another might be worth a check.

It’s unlikely you’d be able to plug in your old hdd and the os work on a new PC , but you would be able to plug it in and access the files.

Same with the programs, you won’t be able to buy a Win7 PC and those programs just work off the old HDD, you’ll need to reinstall them

Do you know what the old graphics card is?

Hi kiksy, don’t think it’s the monitor as I get a windows logo when I start it, it just doesn’t go to the normal desktop image just a black screen.
As long as I can access the hdd with a new pc that’d be great, not sure of the graphics card, nvidia something but don’t know the specs unless it’s written on it, I’d have to have a look. I’ve only got a small independent pc shop locally, going to pop in today and hopefully get some more info.

don’t think it’s the monitor as I get a windows logo when I start it

If it was graphics card it’s unlikely you’d get this. If you have access to another computer I’d download a copy of Linux Mint or Ubuntu onto a usb stick (you’ll need to know if you old PC is 32 or 64bit) – you can then boot your old PC from that to see if it works.
If it does then it’s probably the HD.

I’m a hoarder – I can see 3 PCs from that era without trying too hard!

I may have something you could use. Take a pic of the card.

My 10 year old pc running windowsxp has gone pop.

Then it’s done you a favour.

Could just be the graphics card

Sounds like it to me.

Would I still be able to get a new graphics cards to work with this?

Probably, but I wouldn’t unless budget is tight.

If it’s a bit more terminal and I need a new pc would I be able to plug in the old hdd as it has a lot of stuff on it I’d like to access?

I don’t see why not. You could either add it as a second drive in a desktop, or get a USB caddy for it.

Also, [insert lecture about backups here]. What would you do if the drive had gone pop rather than the GPU?

Also, would my old software work on a new pc?

Probably, but it depends. In any case you’d need the installation files and licence keys for said old software, you can’t just copy a running installation.

My old pc was x32 and new ones are x64 so will this cause problems with the above?

Probably not, but again, it depends.

I’ve seen some cheap pc’s/base units on ebay locally that are win7 win8, some new or referbs even have no hdd drive or os, would it be as simple as plugging in my hdd and it would work or is the x32 x64 thing going to cause problems.

Well, it’s the OS which is 32-bit here, so if you transplant the drive it’ll still be 32-bit. The CPU architecture needs to be the same, you cannot go from Intel to AMD (or vice versa) as it will explode. Other than that you might get away with it, modern versions of Windows are a bit more robust with this sort of shenanigans, XP not so much.

But, you really want to get away from XP. It’s been out of support for over five years now, if your PC is “only” ten years old then XP was out of date when you bought it. Even if you could just transplant the drive, it’s a really bad idea.

Side note, you can (and should) upgrade those W7 / W8.1 machines to W10 for free.

You can have these if you want to try them, but I’d get something newer with Win10 if I was you…

Old versions of Photoshop and Premier won’t work on Windows 10.

I’m running Photoshop CS2 on Win 10. Plus a whole lot of other old XP era software. The backwards compatibility is really solid with Win 10.

Do what @Cougar said and get a new pc altogether (win10). If it were me id get a laptop (which can still be used with monitor, etc.) for the flexibility of use. Anything >£300 should do what you want but minimum 4gb ram or 8 if you can. Yes you will be spending a bit but from the sounds of it you have got your moneys worth from the old one as it probably didn’t cost much at the start.

To add to the XP comments: it is way out of date and actually dangerous to use on the internet (thinking about it, maybe not so much now as hackers wont be targeting it due to its age). You leave yourself open to all sorts. I wouldn’t touch one with a set of bombers unless it was a technical control setup that has never seen the light of day.

Side note, you can (and should) upgrade those W7 / W8.1 machines to W10 for free.

I tried doing this earlier in the year and it seemed Microsoft are now charging for the upgrade, I think the free upgrade was for a limited time only.

I’m sort of wondering about all this as well because my XP machine is the one me and my son use for building awesumz doom levels for our amusement and I’m not sure how well a win95 program will work on win10…

I tried doing this earlier in the year and it seemed Microsoft are now charging for the upgrade, I think the free upgrade was for a limited time only.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

Note that the free upgrade is for Windows 7 / 8.1 only, if you’re running XP you’re out of luck. Though you can pick up grey / OEM licence keys off ebay for a couple of quid.

I’m not sure how well a win95 program will work on win10…

LMGTFY:

https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/How_to_play_Doom_on_modern_Windows

To add to the XP comments: it is way out of date and actually dangerous to use on the internet (thinking about it, maybe not so much now as hackers wont be targeting it due to its age). You leave yourself open to all sorts. I wouldn’t touch one with a set of bombers unless it was a technical control setup that has never seen the light of day.

Oh, it’s still being targeted alright, even if it’s indirectly – if a vulnerability exists in modern Windows it may well also exist in older versions. Windows XP is basically a time bomb now, the question you need to be considering is not whether you’re going to get infected / hacked but rather when.

If I absolutely had to use XP today I would either make sure it’s isolated from the Internet, virtualise it, or ideally both.

Thanks for all the replies.

It may well be more than 10 years old?

On start up I get the windows sound, so it does seem like the hd is ok, I get the start up thing and I can go to bios settings/screens but that’s it, no desktop stuff. But thinking maybe time to update to a new one but budget is a bit tight this time of year. I’ve got my documents, photos, music etc saved on a portable hd so that should all be ok. Suppose my main concern is running the old software and games, I have all the discs keys etc for them, although not sure about the premiere and vegas stuff as that was downloaded.

Googling some numbers on the graphics card comes up with GeForce 8400 256mb, but there also seems to be many versions of this. Going to see if my local shop has anything I could replace it with but if it’s too expensive I won’t bother.

Thanks for offers of old graphics cards, I’ll see what the shop has and go from there, and I’ll try to get a photo of mine up if I can work out how you do it on here.

To add to what Cougar has said, if you buy a new machine with plenty of memory (I’d go with 16GB) and disk space and if your hard drive on the old machine is ok you can look at using disk2vhd to create a virtual image of the old machine and then use VirtualBox to run that image.

Sounds like a software problem. ie Windows messing up. Maybe corrupt video drivers. Try starting it in safe mode.

Sounds like a software problem. ie Windows messing up. Maybe corrupt video drivers. Try starting it in safe mode.

I’d respectfully disagree.

I’d have thought it unlikely for the video drivers to spontaneously explode (and if they did this could well be indicative of other problems, faulty RAM or a dying HDD perhaps). On a modern system I’d potentially suspect a stealth update causing gremlins, but that’s not going to have happened on a 17-year old operating system.

From the symptoms I’d be pointing the finger at video memory. It’s fine at lower resolutions but as soon as it has to do anything higher it goes sideways. I’d expect it to work in Safe Mode too.

Random thought, OP: I’d hazard that there is almost certainly a GPU built into the motherboard. In which case you can just take out the old card and plug a VGA cable into that. That should get you back up and running again (whilst you save up to replace it 😃).

… and if you do that, uninstalling the Nvidia software would be prudent.

Suppose my main concern is running the old software and games, I have all the discs keys etc for them, although not sure about the premiere and vegas stuff as that was downloaded.

A modern x64 Windows OS will (well, should) run 32-bit applications quite happily. However, it’s hard to be sure without knowing exactly how old your apps are but you might find that even though the app itself is 32-bit it uses a 16-bit installer. In which case you’re screwed (or at best, things get Complicated).

The downloaded stuff presumably involves you logging in to their respective websites, so you should still be able to do that and see your entitlements assuming they’re still available.

With Premiere there’s a free version (Premiere Elements) depending what functionality you need, from your OP it doesn’t sound like you’re particularly a power user. I’d guess this will be a better option than getting a decade-old piece of software working.

A quick google suggests that the latest version of Vegas is £500 (ouch) or it can be had on a subscription model for £13/month. Not really my field of expertise but I wouldn’t be surprised if there aren’t modern free tools which have the same or better capabilities than a 10 year old copy of Vegas, it’s not one I’d even heard of until you mentioned it.

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/ seems well regarded. Or:

https://alternativeto.net/software/sony-vegas/?license=opensource

https://www.techspot.com/downloads/5279-sony-vegas-pro/similar/

XP can manage to screw things up all by itself, even without any updates.
Seems unlikely for a video card to spontaneously fail. Unless the fan has died, and it has overheated. Though yes, could be other hardware problems. Maybe motherboard or disk drive or power supply.

For Vegas, I got a deal on Humble Bundle last year. About £20 for the full version I think. Maybe not the latest, but last year’s version anyway. Worth keeping an eye on that.

XP can manage to screw things up all by itself, even without any updates.

True, but highly unlikely unless there are other factors. Eg, if the OP had said “we had a power cut and then…” or gave some hints about a potential malware infection I would totally agree with you.

Seems unlikely for a video card to spontaneously fail. Unless the fan has died, and it has overheated.

shrug Hardware dies, things break. For it to just go mad halfway through a session due to a software problem (driver corruption in memory) AND for the issue to persist through a reboot (driver corruption on disk)… well, one or the other sure, both together would be implausible at best IMHO.

If as you say the fan has indeed quietly expired because it’s full of a decade’s worth of fluff sucked into a minitower sat on the carpet I wouldn’t think that’s an overly unlikely scenario at all.

We may be getting closer to what has caused the issue. As the computer boots and digs into the operating files to get the video card up to speed it will draw increasing amounts of power. a failing power supply could mean the pc boots but cant maintain the power required to run the video car. Although that would probably cause the system to shut down. In a similar vain, if the ram was failing then it would struggle to maintain the throughput required keep a system running. This may then not show as the system shutting down, but not going any further with the boot process.

My money is on failing ram.

As we’re on possible replacement motherboards and it may help the OP as well as me, if you go the motherboard replacement route and have some legit windows media (in my case a copy of Win 7 on DVD that has never been installed – but could be a purchased copy on a USB) would you be able to write that OS onto the existing HDD and would you lose all your files in trying?

I’ve got an old XP/Vista box too and found a box of abandoned upgrade components (including a motherboard with 4GB RAM that’s not total pauper spec) when clearing out a cupboard so I’m hoping I can cheaply turn it into a budget Linux or Win 7 or Win 10 box for basic browsing and running the odd Steam game.

Changing the motherboard isn’t going to affect the hard disk, though older OSes might suffer stability issues. See my comments earlier in this thread.

If you have a W7 key you can use it to install W10. I don’t believe there’s a direct upgrade path from XP/Vista, and in any case you wouldn’t really want to. It’d be a wipe and reinstall job, but that doesn’t matter because all your files are backed up, right?

If you’ve got the winXP CD handy, try booting from it and select the repair option, worth a bash.

i’d also try cleaning the inside of the PC, carefully hoover out however many inches of dust it has. then take out the gfx card and put it back in, assuming it has one.

Unlikely I’ll have the CD handy. There was quite a bit of dust in the machine as it’s been a while since I last cleaned it out, but I’ve decided it’s not worth trying to get it going, I’ve removed the hdd and have a caddy on it’s way so I can use it as an external drive when I get a new machine. There’s mixed opinions on getting some of the software I have running on newer machines, googling has some answers ideas and successes so I’ll just hope it’ll all work in the end … now where to get a new PC from?