New to the computer world and there are so many problems

R

reedo94

New Member
hey everyone

no im not some old man that dosnt get any of this...

but pretty much i bought a pc off a mate and there are some things i want to fix/change about it

the first and probably the easiest is that it is running both vista and some version of linux. i want the linux gone. how do i do this?

second is that there is supposedly 4gb of ram installed but the vista system only reads 1gb of it making it slow as a turtle. the model of the ram is khx8500d2k2/2gn and it is ddr2. how do i get the vista system to recognise all 4gb?

ive gone into msconfig and checked that the max ram was unchecked but that is as far as i know.

cheers.
 
Does linux detect the 1gb? If not, then it seems you have either bad memory or bad memory slots. Does the bios detect all 4gb of memory?
 
First of all,open the case and check that there is 4Gb RAM in there,

Secondly, get rid of Linux and Vista. Vista is RAM hungry so if you can get your hands on windows 7 the go for that. If not then strip down the features in vista. Or just leave it as it is. It's up to you. Just my advice that's all.

Do you know the rest of the spec.
 
lukesow said:
Secondly, get rid of Linux and Vista.
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Ignoring the Vista bashing, Do not remove the Linux. If you remove it your bootloader will cease functioning. Also, windows 7 can not hold a candle to most linux distros in ram usage. CB only uses 54MB with only Chrome open. Windows 7 uses 2129MB for the same program.


I agree though. OPen it up and make sure what is supposed to be there is actually there. Also reseat the RAM DIMMs, and go into the BIOS and make sure it all reads there. There is no reason that Windows should be eating 3/4 of your RAM at all.
 
Wiping the hard drive clean and then reinstalling Vista would be the easiest way.

If you're not willing to do that, getting rid of the Linux installation is going to be tricky. You'll have to conjure up some fixmbr/fixboot magic (can't even remember the exact procedure on Vista) to make sure the Linux bootloader never enters the boot process, after which you can safely just eradicate all your linux partitions. If it's got a separate boot partition, you can also safely get rid of all the others and just edit the boot loader files to always load Windows (the exact method depends on the boot loader... you'd better find out what distro you have installed first). If not, however, don't just delete the Linux partitions (like wolfe said, you'll end up getting rid of the bot loader and are then left with a system that won't start up).
 
so my best bet would be wait till i have money to buy windows 8 (no hating) and just wipe the entire computer from top to bottom and do a fresh instal?

and ive pulled the ram out and it has 2gb of installed ram. i have no idea how to do any of what you guys are suggesting but is there a way to check if the motherboard is faulty or not?
 
If 2GB is installed, then its entirely possible that you will only see 1GB of it. There is a load of RAM set aside by the computer for device memory, for things like HDD cache memory (generally around 20MB), iGPU vRam (128MB-1GB depending on the chip version), instruction cache, and other estrainous system needs.

Personally, I would not bother upgrading the OS. Put more RAM in the computer and you will have a very good system. Vista works fine, assuming you have a recent CPU to power it (Pentium D+, Athlon 64 x2+) and 4GB of RAM.
 
so my best bet would be wait till i have money to buy windows 8 (no hating) and just wipe the entire computer from top to bottom and do a fresh instal?
Click to expand...
If that's the one you want, yes, but since you already have Vista I would recommend you stick with it (unless you dislike it just that much).

If 2GB is installed, then its entirely possible that you will only see 1GB of it. There is a load of RAM set aside by the computer for device memory, for things like HDD cache memory (generally around 20MB), iGPU vRam (128MB-1GB depending on the chip version), instruction cache, and other estrainous system needs.
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Windows should still report the actual installed amount rather than the amunt accessible by applications.

Did you get into BIOS setup to check how much RAM it sees?
 
I did not think about that. :/ Maybe he has remapping or the like turned on.

Also might be that his board only supports 1GB DIMMs. I know one of my IBM laptops had DDR2 and it would accept 2GB DIMMs, but would only show the supported 1GB of it. 4GB installed 2GB usable. Maybe his board does something similar.
 
im running 7 on my laptop so i want either that or 8, and as 8 is cheaper and newer it seems like the better option (im not very fussy bout the whole tile start menu)

the motherboard is a ASUS P5KPL-CM, this is my ram KHX8500D2K2/2GN. i have two 3.5" hdd. one for windows and one for linux. ive also put a wireless car in it (easy as all shit) and im unsure on the power supply.

how do i check what the ram says in the bios. i honestly have no idea how to do anyhting other than use programs once its fired up.
 
go into the BIOS and it should be under system information. I'm not sure on the old Asus BIOS, but the new P55/P67 UEFI BIOS its the first screen in the BIOS. SHould have CPU and RAM amount/speed listed.
 
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