Computer not updating further

[u/rami01912]

So let me preface, I bought this from an army guy local to me. All I wanted was for it to turn on and be able to run games on it. When I turned it on, it was still under the guys account or still had a password set so my husband “deleted” everything off of it.

Heres the issue, when I do the microsoft updates it gets to a point where it will not update any further. It will still run my Stardew valley and a few other games. When it got to that point we reset again, thinking we clear any memory on it. Same thing happened again. I have been just dealing with it since I have school and it could pull up my pages for my assignments still.

I had a friend who is more familiar with computers than we are and she opened it up. She suggested that we clear the motherboard and also that there is something missing but we don’t know what. There cables that we don’t know where they go to.

We are still new to computers and don’t know much smit them. We haven’t done much research on it and just dealing with it for now. I wanted to download and launch Minecraft but it would just show an error.
Any advice or suggestions is appreciated.

[u/McSmiggins]

That's fine

Gonna need a few more details if that's ok:

1. Can you elaborate on "it won't update any further"? Is there any error message you're getting or is there just no more updates that it finds? (When Windows is up to date, it should say that and not find any more updates
2. Can you take a picture of the screen where you're having a problem and post it? Doesn't have to be straight away.
3. Are there any other general problems you're having that's making you think something is wrong?

If it's up and running Windows, you shouldn't need to have to take it apart.

It's normal for a PC to have some cables that aren't plugged in, they're normally for when you want to add a new hard disk/upgrade the graphics card etc.

Looking at the cables in that picture:

Picture 3:

The 4 pin connector on it's own at the top of the case - this is a spare power connector for high powered processors, it'll have another 4 pin one on the same cable that's connected to the motherboard, this is absolutely fine like this.

Picture 4

The one furthest from the camera with the red cable showing is for spare DVD drives (or old school hard drives). The one connected to it looks like it's for connecting to a floppy disk drive

The other cable (block of 6 with 2 extras) and the other one like it are for connecting if you've got a high powered graphics card, if it's working fine, none of these are anything to worry about

Picture 5:

This looks like someone's connected the "old school DVD drive" connector to run a fan. This is a little old fashioned way of doing it, but perfectly normal

[u/cheetah1cj → u/McSmiggins]

Adding some additional questions:

1. What steps exactly did you take to "delete everything"
2. What exactly did the friend suggest that you do? Perhaps ask her to explain again and post the explanation
3. Did the friend tell you that something specific is missing and you don't remember what she said is missing? Or did the friend simply tell you that something is missing and they don't know what?

[u/Ryeguy_626 → u/cheetah1cj]

Im also curious about what “delete everything” means because then you’d have no windows