Hello All,
I have an hp photosmart m7183c desktop at home (it's my brother's) and it's been running a lot slower than usual and the temps have been high (54C idle as of today) and it's driving me crazy!! Even two system recoveries in a row have not helped!! I was thinking of installing ram, etc. but it might not be the source of the problem. I do not know if it can support any more fans (it has two), or stronger fans (it is a very tight 15" tall mid tower case). Here are the specs just in case:

400 watt power supply
windows xp mce, used to run vista (but became too slow)
1GB 533mhz ram (2 512mb sticks)
250GB 7200rpm hard drive
Personal Media Drive bay
Ati radeon x600 with 511mb total video card ram
older pentium d 830 @ 3ghz dual core

a pc in desperate need for some repairs, just don't know what to do with it. Can someone please do research about this pc and try to help me here. Thank you

P.S. I am researching too, but i keep running into the same information.

Has this issue been recent, for example has it started to happened are addition of any hard ware or software. Like a video card, second hard drive,,,,what i am leaning to wards here is the PSU is not sufficient to handle those listed devices. as for software it would be something running a service/process in the back ground and burning up the HDD.....NOW if nothing was added try defraging the HDD. click start run type chkdsk /f you will get a message saying this will run when the pc reboot.....reboot let chkdsk run then when you are log on run the windows GUI version of chkdsk, ( right click on HDD choose properties then the tools tab and defrag.

This is a 2.5 year old pre configured pc, and the issue has been occuring withing the past three months. No hard ware has been added, chkdsk has been run, no errors, defrag was run, no problems, no special services, and pc stipped down in terms of services and programs. All devices are preconfigured, including the psu. hope that helps.

what capacity of the HDD is free.

212GB from the total formatted capacity of 232GB

you stated that this has been happening since the past 2.5 months. was the pc being used for regular stuff, what i am getting at is 3 month ago you obly turn the pc on for maybe checking a few email then power down but now you are running it longer doing other stuff,,,,,being hot is not a problem with the HDD that normal,,However, if it is hot to the point where it would burn to touch then it's a proble,,,,,,,,,,is that the type of heat you are talking about.

it is run about 12hours a day idle. it gets really hot (140 degrees fahrenheight idle, probably 180 with heavy load) that the pc slows down, restarts automatically, and causes other problems. All the fans are running at proper speeds (1600-2400rpm). I don't know what is wrong with it!)

HArd drive MUSt be dying, not accessing file efficiently,,,use diskeeper 2008 to defrag the drive.

i've defragged it, it is ok. tested it with the built in testing utility, and it says its fine. This is a tight case (didn't know that 2.5 years ago, i was only 11 years old then), and it looked great at sam's club, with its $2000 price tag, & i never expected any of this to ever occur!! I can't find the problem, though it may be the cpu.

what did you use to defrag...... chkdsk is not as effective as diskeeper, diskeeper actually move all file to the correct sector on the hard drive, frequently used file to the front of the HDD for faster access, and all program files in the same or close sectors.....while chkdsk basically check the cluster and sectors for error and move a file if it's in damage or so to be damage sector........it would not be a CPU issue CPU signs and symptom are frozen screens and mouse pointer......CPU would not make the HDD hot the CPU would be hot..