Any computer knowledgeable guys here?

[Tom]

I have a second hand computer my daughter gave me that belonged to her mother in law. She put a new hard drive in it with windows 10. I've had it about a year and it kind of died. I had to reinstall the OS from the hard drive. It worked for a couple days and now I have no interface. The keyboard doesn't do anything and the cursor disappeared. They're both connected to the same USB hub. I'm pretty sure they're actually connected as the light in the mouse is on. The keyboard is new as of 3 days ago.
I did the windows update this morning and it has worked since then. I tried control alt delete (probably no longer applies), control c, no response.

 

[Tom]

Well, I guess it's working now. I did a hard shutdown (I hate doing that) and when I started it up again it was back to normal.

 

[JWinAZ]

A call to IT invariably starts with "did you shut it down and turn it back on?". An article in the paper a few days ago gave examples. Including a passenger airliner that had a computer malfunction at the gate. They deplaned, shut it down and turned it back on. Might not give one a great feeling of confidence.

 

[Bazoo]

Glad you got it going. It's been a long time since I messed with one of them, I'm using a Mac currently.

 

[KeithB]

Is your USB hub powered or not? An older box with aged electronics may not be producing enough voltage/current. I use powered hubs after a bad experience.

 

[Tom]

Keith, it gets power from the tower. The not enough power thing sounds like it fits.
I know about restarts, but i hate to do the shutdown with the power button.

 

[JonB]

My desktop is about 7 yrs old. Win 10 with 4 Gb ram.
and... "control alt delete" still does it thing.
.
So, 4 Gb ram is about the minimum that Win 10 will run on. After Win 10 was updated a few times in the first couple years I had it, I noticed a slow down. If I do a restart, it runs fast enough again, but slows down after a couple days, Bloatware I'm told. I stream radio about 16 hours a day, I think that adds to the bloat...if the bloatware is monitoring my radio habits? ANyway, if I don't do a restart often enough, she'll lockup, and then "control alt delete" doesn't work, I have to do a hard shutdown. Runs fine after a hard shutdown. Sometimes I think a hard shutdown is good, especially with Win 10, I think that cuts off some of the bloatware and it has to re-establish itself....that's just my guess.
.
I suspect your computer is in the same boat as mine. BUT, mine is a "all-in-one" style where the computer is inside the monitor case. I'm told the Ram is soldered in, so it isn't simple to upgrade Ram, otherwise I would have a long time ago. Maybe you should investigate a Ram Upgrade? which should be easy with a Tower. And older styles of Ram are usually cheap.

 

[KeithB]

I had an older laptop with only one USB port, I had a mouse, keyboard, and a data stick plugged into a four way unpowered hub. It kept losing one or more devices at random. Got a powered hub and things worked great.

 

[Tom]

Jon, I haven't looked at what's in this tower, but it was a gaming computer (cyberpowerpc) that was over clocked, etc. I imagine it has way more than enough ram. I don't know how to use that kind of power and certainly don't need it. I wanted a desktop and asked my youngest about refurbished ones and she put the new hd in it and presented it to me.

 

[glassparman]

Ditch the USB hub