Wolverines

My wife has a Gateway ( no laughing now ) 3 yrs old now. 2.2 pent duel core. 2 gig ram (max) graphics card of the day and so on and so for.  She is having issues with it freezing up when she trys to run corel photoshop and just in genral.  whats better to do?  Upgrade Vista to windows 7 or just get a new one. Not rich (she accally lost her job) to get better peformance.  she does mostly facebook games and alot of photo stuff.

thanks

I am going to assume it's currently running xp? With 2gb of ram that's not bad for xp. It depends on how much other stuff is running. Hit start, run, and type "msconfig" and hit enter. Should open a window, click on the startup tab and uncheck anything that isn't a virus scan utility, reboot. Try and run the software. A lot of times when you install new software it sets itself to run at startup, this can really bog down a machine. Good luck.

Worst case you can replace the machine, you can get a decent laptop or desktop for pretty cheap these days.

no not xp its vista

ahh, well try the same thing. same principle. windows 7 is better in the sense that it is better with self regulating memory usage. so you might get better performance. I'd try to backup/save anything you want first and then just wipe everything and start fresh before buying a new machine.

Hey It not funny. I got a gateway with XP, and it never crashes.

but gateways are generic , we knew this getting it. but we were straped for cash then

Vista is crap.  XP or 7 will run much better. 

For a generic computer this sure has kicked ass. Granted I upgraded the video card, but beyond that I got some hella milage out of it.

XP runs on 2 gigs of ram like a dream. Vista not so much. If you bought that computer with Vista already installed it should at least run similar to how it was when you got it. (If it came with XP I recommend putting that back on it as the hardware might not be "compatible/recommended for vista")

Open it up, blow out any dust. And hope some part of the hardware isn't failing. Sadly a computer just freezing up is really hard to diagnose. If a specific problem is causing it, it is a software issue, with the program or the OS (uninstall the program and reinstall it maybe). If it is happening randomly, just too many things it could be.

Here's another vote for a clean install of Windows 7 (format the drive during Windows 7 install instead of upgrade).  2GB should be fine for basic web surfing (FB, etc), but for Photoshop more RAM would help.

Dude, honestly if it is freezing up it may not be a bad idea to unplug the thing then open it up and give it a good spray out with canned air.  Your fans may just be clogged and it is over heating.  That's non uncommon for a computer that's been around for a couple of years.  'Specially if either of you smoke or have pets.

I vote for both Thrun's cleaning plan and a clean install of Win7

I'm thinking McCain/Palin.

It's the ticket with the two mavericks.

When my computer freezes up i usually fix it by chopping my hands off.

Buy another 2gig stick of ram. Clean install of 7 and you'll get another three years surfing the net on it for sure.