Need Help for Upgrading Old PC

Hey my uncle is having issues with his computer. It is very slow and I am keen on receiving your advice on how I can increase the performance of his machine. I need to know what would be the best hardware to buy to make this computer run smoothly (nothing amazing like gaming). He has thought to upgrade his RAM by either 1GB or 2GB but I was thinking that 1GB and a newer processor would be more ideal than just sticking 2 gigs of RAM in the PC. I am certain that you guys will be able to help me out by suggesting the best course of action in this decision. I just want to know which configuration would be best, but if you have completely different ideas as to how to resolve this issue please feel free. His PC is a Dell Dimension DIM3000 with the specs:

CPU: Pentium 4 2.80GHz
RAM: 256MB
HDD: 40GB 7200 RPM
OS: Windows XP SP2

If you need any more specs or have any questions regarding my question, don't hesitate to ask as I will more than likely be awake til 5am watching episodes of Burn Notice. Thanks in advance.

upgrade the ram to 2GB, i think that would be about it, and see how that goes.

Ahh 1gb should do for XP.

2GB is better

stick 1G ram in an buy a intel cellaron E1200

going from 256mbram to 1.256gb ram if u leave the 256mb ram in it is good but 2gb ram is better my mums computer got 2x 1gb rams put in today it gose heaps better now

my cosins old computer has 1.256gb of ram so if its not possible thats wat he keeps telling me it has he is trying to sell it to me

Thank you very much. All of your feedback is very much appreciated. I will recommend the 2 x 1GB of RAM to my uncle. I was thinking about doing 1GB and a newer processor but they dont have many good processors that are worth upgrading to on the 478 socket. If there are any more suggestions I am still open to hearing them.

def upgrade memory,

512mb mim
1gigi recommended
2gig high spec

well, who says it's a hardware problem? Perhaps he has too many things running at once or he has alot of spyware/adware in the background. I say do a Spyware scan after updating the definition file of the scanning software. take a look at the taskbar on the machine and see how many Icons you see there. if there are 7+ icons, perhaps it would be wise to disable some of those programs on startup.

Click Start
Click Run
Type MSCONFIG in the box
In the System Configuration menu, click the Startup tab.
Listed here is everything that starts when windows starts up. None of this is essential for windows to function properly i assure you. The way i usually attack this is i'll click the disable all button at the bottom of the screen first and then go back and recheck everything that i do want to run at startup. Now, by unchecking these items, you aren't deleting any programs at all. you are simply saying that you don't want the program to start when you start windows. you can always start the program later if you need it. This will keep memory free for other things and will prompt less paging by the Hard Drive.

another approach you can take in the mean time is to increase the size of your pagefile. this causes the computer to use more of your Hard Drive space for memory operations.

I noticed that the Hard Drive is only 40GB. How full is it? If it's too full, that would impact performance. You could get an external or another internal hard drive and move some of that data. I do suggest you upgrade the Hard Drive, but that isn't really high on the list.

Yet another thing you can try is Defragmenting the hard drive. As a hard drive gets full, there's less contiguous space left for storage, so the computer writes to any available space. when it needs to retrieve that information, there's some here and some there, it takes longer to get it. It's kinda like trying to find something specific in a cluttered, unorganized closet and trying to find the same thing in one that is well organized. It makes a difference in time doesn't it?

CCleaner+RegCleaner will do wonders

Can you tell as what CPU socket your computer has/what type of RAM it takes?

I agree with what AMD Fanboy and Hackapelite have said. Many computers are loaded down with garbage software. I also think he should add a 512 megabyte module of RAM upgrade his total to at least 768 megabytes.

hackapelite said:

CCleaner+RegCleaner will do wonders

Can you tell as what CPU socket your computer has/what type of RAM it takes?

Click to expand...

I have ran CCleaner and it has helped but my Uncles computer was mostly clean anyways. I also removed some software and a few games which freed up some space, and as I stated in my previous post the CPU socket is 478. The RAM it takes is DDR SDRAM 184pin PC3200.

2048Megabytes said:

I agree with what AMD Fanboy and Hackapelite have said. Many computers are loaded down with garbage software. I also think he should add a 512 megabyte module of RAM upgrade his total to at least 768 megabytes.

Click to expand...

I have followed AMD Fanboy's advice and increased the pagefile of the harddrive and disabled many startup programs through msconfig. While this has helped significantly, I still think that the PC needs at least 1GB of RAM added on.

along with my desktop I have a laptop with the same amount of RAM as your pc and the program that really slows it down is my Bitdefender AV, and I don't think there's anyway to turn your AV off with out being hacked unless you don't use the internet. With my AV off I've been infected with the adware 2008 Vista virus, and i have XP!! So i would suggest that you buy more RAM, because it's more affordable nowadays and it helps tremendously.