I Haven't Looked For New Computers In 13 Years--Please Help Me

The time is approaching when I will need to get a new computer. This one can’t handle streaming sites like Hulu and such because of a faulty nvidia driver that keeps briefly crashing when stressed by such sites. I tested it, and confirmed that the issue was there after I used GPU-Z. This computer is so old that they no longer make the sort it would need.

What year did I get my current one? 2004. Yes, this one is 13 years old, and has lived through Windows XP, and the upgrade to Windows 7 about 4 years ago. Based on the sticker, it had a brief period before it was sold to us when it was Windows Vista, too. There’s only a dual processor in this one, and Dad’s laptop has a quadruple one, and is able to handle streaming.

Mine will be a desktop, not a laptop, I should point out.

While I can easily recommend HP Compaq from 2004, I have absolutely no idea without further research what brands are good these days. Does HP still do well? Is Lenovo dependable? Does anyone have a particular brand they wish to declare their love for? It needs to work well with streaming. I don’t care about gaming, as I don’t play any games.

I'm doing all the searching I can long before blue screens of death. Just the black screen on occasion (although, that had been a couple times in a short span, hence the getting a move on searching) if the poor thing is stressed by nvidia.

Does anyone know of a program that would just switch over preferred settings? If not, I’ll be jotting it down by hand.

Whatever I get, it must be compatible with Windows 7, as I love that. It will not be refurbished, since I spotted a lot of issues with those as I searched a couple sites. Going that route seems like it might end badly. I still have an OEM build of Windows 7 Home Premium, so I should be able to deactivate this build and then activate it in the new one without a problem.

If it turns out I don’t need the OEM, and whatever I purchased is good enough with the 7, that’s fine and I’ll just have a back-up. I also still have the links from the last time (still valid, and still in stock) we purchased Windows 7 Home Premium OEM, should a purchase of any sort become necessary.

When the time comes, I’ve already put all of my installers for all the programs I use (but not PrintKey yet; I’ll hopefully find something just as good, but that’s not from 1998*) on a large external hard drive. Almost everything I need to keep has been put there, just in case. I’ll grab my licenses for Emsisoft and Malwarebytes shortly.

Before everything is actually done, whenever that is, I’ll do one last screenshot of the desktop, so I’ll know how I preferred it all.

*My version of Office was procured back in the year 2000, when I was in college. It’s the one I prefer, but I might migrate over to LibreOffice after any change since .doc is compatible with it, and the portable version of LibreOffice works nicely for me.