Hi guys/girls im thinking of doing a cheap revive for my parents oudated advent pc becuase its painfully, painfully sloooooooowwww. its current spec is pentium 4 3.06ghz 512mb ram and the rest i have no idea. i havent had the chance to open it up yet (pls dont shout at me). I know the mobo has onboard graphics and all my parents use the pc for is web browsing. so i figure i should just remove the 512 mb ram whack 2 gb of cheap ram in there (if there is cheap ram these days ) and stick in a new cheap hardrive and gift them a new os. i know i prob havent given u a lot to go on but do you think that would be enought to breath some life into their machine?? thanks.
First thing is definitely to add some ram... 2Gb minimum. I'm assuming its running XP, so a reinstall might be a good idea, especially if its still the original install. win7 would be nice, but you'd probably need a new gfx card for it, and you'd need to buy the OS... so sticking with XP is probably best. Unless your parents would give Ubuntu a try. Very fast, very free A new HDD would also help, but judging by the specs, i'm guessing it takes IDE hard drives, and as all the new hdds are SATA, i doubt you'll find an IDE one that will give a decent speed boost.
Hi Dreamcometru, RAM looks like a definite upgrade First the assumptions (as you've dared not to open the box! ): DDR RAM (not DDR2 or [defo] DDR3) Windows XP - that you're going to kindly upgrade to W7 hopefully Low requirements, including web, photos, email, office, etc. Single Core P4 If you're going W7, then 2GB is a minimum with the other resource restrictions you have. DDR RAM is still available, but it's actually more expensive than the more recent variants (in Oz anyway). Alternatively, if you (or your parents) are willing to pay a more then I'd definitely recommend an upgrade. Nothing major, but something that will at least bring it above 2005+ Cheers, SouperAndy
thnaks for ur replies. yes it will prob be xp ill install i had considered the ide thing and yes it probably will be an ide drive i wont actually know till i open it up. not sure about the ram. but yes thanks a lot guys
It will almost definitely be DDR ram. Last time i looked it was about £30 per Gb, but this will be by far the most significant upgrade. After adding the ram, its very likely that the current install will become perfectly usable. I'd say that any more upgrading would be a little pointless if all the machine is used for is internet and word
yes i agree i just looked about an the ide drives and ancient ddr ram are expensive. so im just gonna get them 2gb of ddr and reinstall windows. Thanks very much every1
Always comes down to how much you want to spend. If your budget is £30, then yes up its memory. And i would check what bus slot it has nd pick up a cheap graphic card off ebay, these oldies go for dirt. Otherwise, spending anymore, i would not spend anything on it, and just bin it, build a new system, based on your budget.
Budget is tight, bung in one of these 1GB RAM along with the existing RAM, reinstall windows and call it quits.
Consider Ubuntu as an OS for them. It's quick and easy to use, plus very low maintainance for the tech-savvy person who installed it because it dodges the usual bullets that cripple the windows installations of parents worldwide. It's free too.
First, pull out the current memory modules. Note the type (most probably DDR), speed, number of slots used/free. Then check your motherboard manual for what's the biggest module it supports. I'm thinking 1GB modules should be ok. Get a couple of those. Install them so they work in dual-channel mode. Test them with memtest86+ (yes, I know they're going to be brand new, but you never know) Get DDR-400 unless you find a very good deal for a couple of slower, used modules. Oh, forgot to say: before you do anything, dust off the machine thoroughly. You don't want to take the blame for it's death after having run for a few years under a blanket of dust, do you? Also, check the motherboard, you may be lucky and find a couple of sata ports. A faster (bigger) HDD will speed it up quite a bit, as that one is probably 1x0 GB or smaller. Even without sata available, you can still find 500GB IDE drives, which will probably be about twice as fast as the current HDD. Reinstall Windows and disable the pagefile completely. With 2GB of RAM you don't need it if all you're doing is office work and browsing.
I'd disagree with this, while it is very unlikely that your parents will ever use 2Gb, if tehy like lots of tabs, it may happen... and parents get freaked out by that "not enough system memory - please close 'xyz' " messages and +1 to ubuntu, for basic use, its very straight forward, and (dare i say it) doesn't get messed up easily as long as your parents don't go prodding its sensitive parts.
