Daily Trudge With Computer Getting Worse And Worse - Help!!
I am the most technologically illiterate person on the planet, and I have a computer which is driving me mad every day. It's running Windows 7, and the browser is Mozilla Firefox.
Can anybody give me a solution which will be quick and easy to understand? Basically I need to speed the thing up dramatically - or I'm eventually going to rip it out and chuck it through the back window!
It's an ex-internet cafe machine, which was given to me in 2013 by the owners of the shop where I used to sit most days for up to 12 hours, as a gift for being such a good customer. I was given no user manual. They had refurbished it so that all I had to do was connect it up to a BT hub and use it. For the first few years it was fine - but over the last two years it has gradually got slower and slower, to the point where even switching it off and restarting it, running a scan (anti-Malwarebytes) or defragging it is having no effect. It is driving me absolutely MAD!! I am wasting entire days just trying to open and respond to a few e-mails, and searching for things on Amazon and e-Bay.
Often, when it just grinds to a halt - especially on e-Bay - I eventually get a box open up on the screen, saying 'A script has stopped working on this page' and offering me three alternative options - stop script, debug script, or continue. I have no idea what to do, but hitting 'continue' seems to be the most effective - although the bloody thing often comes back after a short while.
It won't scroll without a huge battle, every mouse click brings a 'not responding' message, it keeps suddenly flipping to another window for no obvious reason, and most of the videos on YouTube come up as 'your computer does not recognise any of the video formats currently available' (and the comment button has disappeared, so I can only leave comments as replies to other peoples' comments). Going through my e-mails is a massive trudge - especially after the new and unwanted format Yahoo imposed upon me recently - which is absolutely awful.
People I know keep recommending that I get a laptop - which I could afford, although I have no idea what to buy, and I would not know how to connect it up, or whether it would work via the same connecting cables, and would be able to recover all my information - tabs and windows, e-mail, pictures saved to desktop, address list, etc - or would I lose everything, and have to start all over again?
If I took the thing to a local repair shop, would they be able to restore it to its original condition - i.e. factory setting?
If anybody can offer a quick solution to speeding it up, I would be extremely grateful. Or, if you think the thing is beyond its useful life, and can give me advice on how to proceed to the next stage, where I have a computer which is not going to send me into a rage at almost every moment of every day, please let me know. In simple terms - I do not understand what a download is, or how to use a USB stick - and - this is going to astonish you - I don't even have a mobile phone!
Anybody? Or am I just beyond help? (I am an Asperger's sufferer, and do not pick up on new things easily).
Thanks so much for any help.