System Advice (possible upgrade)

[BullBoyShoes]

Hi All, my uncle in cyprus runs a bar and uses an aging desktop to run all his music and karaoke through. He`s having issues where after a few hours of running, gaps of silence appear in the music until eventually it just stops. A reboot sorts it out but the problem always returns. Obviously this is not good for a business!

The only info on the spec of the system I have is thats its ~5yr old & runs winXP. He stores all the music on an external USB2 HDD that he had to install an expansion card in to get the USB2 ports. The pc is not connected to the internet.

Now, any ideas what could be causing this? run out or RAM possibly? corrupted HDD? If I cant fix it I may be looking for a new desktop / laptop to send to him

 

[joey2cool]

if its only used to play music and it is all stored off the main drive, how about a reinstall of windows, could be some software bug creeping in :S seems excessive to jump straight to new hardware if its only for playing music, cause its not hardware intensive!

 

[BullBoyShoes]

I see what your saying, but the problem is the PC is in cyprus and he has no knowledge of computers to be able to do a fresh install. I doubt he even has the driver disc for the motherboard!

 

[laffs83]

What do you mean by 'gaps'? Does the whole PC freeze up? Just his audio player? Does it look like sound should be playing but nothing coming out of speakers?

 

[BullBoyShoes]

I know, not much information to go on! Thats all he`s told me so far although will speak to him again soon

I would get him some extra RAM as a starting point but have no idea what his MB is and neither does he!