I’ve always been really lucky with computers. Specifically, with Windows, and it not crashing or getting any viruses/malware. The pc I built maybe 8 years ago is still going strong. And up until recently, my 4+ year old Sony laptop has still fine, but it was getting a bit slow. So I decided to swap out the stock 100GB 4200rpm hard drive for a 64GB solid state drive (SSD). The swap was way easier than I had expected, as it worked the first try. And for the most part, it works and sped things up a lot. But there was a catch that I found out later.
I’m not too familiar with SSDs, but I guess you can’t put that much stress on them, especially if they’re low on memory. Being the only drive on my laptop, with the OS and other programs installed, I only have about 15GBs free. When I download tv shows, I get the HD versions, ranging from 1-2 GBs, and I usually download 3-4 at at time. Apparently, this puts too much stress on the SSD, causing it to hiccup and freeze every 5 seconds or so. So now, I’m limited to only downloading 1 big file at a time, maybe 2 if I’m lucky. I guess that’s the price I pay for a faster boot time & file access.
And then there’s the PC I built just last year in August. Up until this week, it had been running smooth. The internet was kinda of slow, but I attributed that to the slow ass AT&T DSL connection at my apartment. But this week, it was way slower than usually. So I ran a connection speed test, and I was only getting a 0.34MBs connection, but only my laptop I was getting around 3.5MBs. So I initially thought I had fried my wifi card. My PC is a hackintosh, so to be sure it was a hardware issue, I booted up Mac OS and ran the same connection speed test. Surprisingly, I got a ~3.5MBs connection, the same as my laptop. So that leads me to believe that it’s a Windows software/driver issue, not a hardware issue.
For some reason, System Restore wasn’t setup, so I can’t do that. I tried downloading the latest Windows Updates, but that didn’t work. If this was a normal PC, I’d just re-install Windows and be done with it. But since it’s a hackintosh, the re-installation process is way more complicated. I don’t know if I want to go through that again, because setting up the dual boot is sort of a pain in the ass.
So I’m going to try to re-install the wifi card drivers. If that doesn’t work, I might try uninstalling stuff til it works again. Or I might just switch to Mac OS. I dunno, we’ll see. This is kind of new territory for me.
update:
So re-installing the drivers didn't work, but I still didn't want to do a re-install. Instead, I bought a new, simultaneous dual-band router, the Asus RT-N56U. It was kinda pricey, but it totally worked. My old router was a refurb, and I guess it just didn't like my one PC, since everything else could connect to it. Oh, well. I rather just spend the extra money rather than spend the time & headache of re-installing everything.
