Blatant n00b question, don't judge me.

based on the processor, i'm betting that it's ddr, not ddr2. if that's the case, upgrading the ram might be an expensive proposition. i've got a couple systems running xp on 256mb, 1gb or ram is hardly necessary if it's just a general use system. you just have to pare out all the processes that you don't need. itunes, norton, all that crap that builds up needs to go. it is possible to do this without a reformat, but it takes a bit of work.

of course if i'm wrong and it is ddr2 is the machine, just spend $10 on another stick of 512 and forget about it.

 

Yeah. You don't even have to tell your parents if they're that paranoid--just pop it in there when they're not home. RAM installation is pretty painless, they'll never have to know.

 

The prospects of trying to get in the damn thing without breaking it in half scare me , the last time I tried to get the slider thing off the back to clean the intake fan I nearly snapped it. Poor design, then again its not made to be opened I guess. Thanks for the ideas, I only managed to run a ram test (came out fine) before I had to go back to uni. Will get on the case (no pun intended) next time Im back home.

...wish it was a tower

 

Very true.

My question: is the swap file still enabled? Is XP managing its size?

 

Sorry for taking forever, Im back home now as my router at uni has died and Sky wont supply another.

Nexxo: Probably and more than likely, I shall look into things tomorrow, one question though. Why do you ask about the swapfile? (havnt used windows much in the past 5 years and kind of lost touch with the finer side of operating systems)

 

One of the most common slowdowns for Windows is too little RAM combined with a too small swap file. It first has to shuffle things to the swap file that it has no space in RAM for, and then it has to shuffle things in a cramped swap file. XP is pretty good at managing its own swap file size, but over time it can become fragmented, especially if it is stuck with 9Gb to work in (the swap file can be allocated anywhere but per default will always be in C:\Windows\Temp) and the Windows defragmenter won't fix fragmented swap files.