more memory and speed?

[dan2]

We would like to add memory and storage to our computer. (I include details below.)
1) Does upping memory from 512 MB to 1 GB improve performance?
2) Assuming I have a reliable/competitive vendor, do I simply ask them to upgrade the drive and memory? Guess I'm searching for the correct nomenclature.

Drives
75.05 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
40.40 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

Memory Modules
512 Megabytes Installed Memory
Slot 'DIMM 1' has 256 MB
Slot 'DIMM 2' has 256 MB

Processor
1.60 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4
8 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache

[mitch]

well think the answer is "maybe"

you are at a good point for general computer use on the memory !

now if you do hard core games, photo editing , video editing it would help !!!

but if you just surf the web and e-mail i don't think you will get much "bang for the buck"

you usually have just two slots and you have a 256 in each
so if you added say a 512 module then you would have to remove one of the 256 and then have 768 of memory

now a few simple questions before you think of $ ok?

in normal operation ( say surfing or whatever

give it a "bill gates salute"

ctl/alt/del

and one of the tabs will show a graph and it will say things like
how much free memory, how much page file usage, and cpu usage

can you do that and let me know

mitch


how often do you defrag? ran anti-spyware scans and such !
and what do you have in 40 gig? mp3's and music???

ya it seems like computers are like a new car, you get one and it is the fastest thing you have ever had, then 6 months later it seems to take forever to boot up hehehe

so don't know what you have on your computer, what you use it for, how often you do routine service and updates?
so i can't say "run out and get more memory and you still have 2/3rds of the drive free ;-D


so are you totally current on all microsift xp updates?

what i am trying to say is before you spend $ what do you have, how do you use it  , and what you want ;-D

[dan2]

Thanks for your prompt reply.

Assuming the computer can handle it, the plan is to add the Adobe Creative suite (Illustrator; Photoshop) and Macromedia suite (Flash; Fireworks; Dreamweaver.)

The 40 gigs is a combo of documents and some music.

We're current on MS XP updates. At least a couple of times a week, I defrag and scan for viruses and spyware. We use the computer for researching and writing, developing spreadsheets and project plans, and editing audio files.

I attach a print screen of the task manager graph. (I have Belarc Advisor installed and would send you a comprehensive profile, but can't figure out how to save a copy to the desktop.)

[attachment deleted by admin]

[GR@PH;<'S]

dan2,

We would like to add memory

If you are not sure how much memory your PC will hold then I recommend that you  have a look at
Crucial Memory scanner

Find out what is already installed in your computer with our Crucial System Scanner. You will also get recommended compatible upgrades that are guaranteed to work in your computer!

Then at least you will know how much you can upgrade to  :mitch:

GR@PH;<'S   :Hammys pint:

[mitch]

i can see you have a fair amount of running processes ;-D


ya i would pop in a 512 meg module and should help out a bunch
you show only 82 meg free and if you were doing photo stuff or anything heavy it is getting close ;-D


if you call around to computer shops, most will install for free or a very small charge !!!!!!

do you use any kind of backup software????
might think of burning some of the music and spreadsheats and such to cd's and then you could get them off the hard drive?

and would be good insurance for a hard drive crash too !!!
and a suggestion

might run a HJT and post it in that area on the forum and ask if there are any things that you might kill????
all the programs that start at bootup take away performance and if you don't use them all the time , it might be easier to just click and start some than have them pre-loaded

each running process sucks up memory ! and that affects cps and system performance

and another reason to get some of to dvd's or cd's or backup usb drive...remember the computer is having to keep track of al those files ;-D

i have my XP system lean and mean and with 512 meg it ran fine but just min running processes ( look at a aaw scan log and see how many yuou have running;-)  i was at 23 for a bit , and when i started to play with photo edit stuff i went to 1 gig and noticed just a sight improvement

[dan2]

Sounds like the 512 upgrade is a good idea.

I ran the product Crucial Memory Scanner. It suggests an upper limit of 2048 MB in maximum memory capacity. Besides expense, are there downsides to going to this limit?

I backup our essential docs to a CD-R once a week, but nothing beyond that. Can you recommend a backup software or better backup protocol?

I've submitted the HijackThis log for analysis.

We want to add storage, as well. (Currently, 75.05 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity; 40.40 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space) Do we simply add what we can afford or is there a way to appraise the system's safest upper limit?

Thanks.

[mitch]

ok you have 2 memory slots and if you get 1 gig memories 2 gig would be the max ;-)

now i don't know your buss speed and that affects performance. a newer system will have memory speed of 400+ mhz for a clock speed

a older system will have maybe as low as 200 mhz for clock speed/

so you spend about $200 for 2 each 1 gig memory modules and you find you didn't get the bang for the buck you are out the $

my theory and gamble. is you put in one 512 and take out 1 of the 256 for it to fit and you have 712 of memory
that should make it a bit better, or you could get 1 each 1 gig and try it.... and have a 1 .256 gig of memory which should be pleanty
and that should tell you if you got a bang for the buck, and if you wanted to push it then get a second 1 gig so you do have the 2 total !

your call !

now i am guessing you have a oem computer? (dell/gateway,hp,compaq)

do you have the windows XP disk or just a "restore disk"

there are several good back up programs
i use a version of norton ghost, some like acronios, and IF you have the winXP disk and a hard drive you could use a "hidden for xp pro" backup that is on the xp home version disk..
worse case you would use the restore disk and then install the backup software again then you could use the backup files ( free but ugly)
but you need a hard drive to back up to ;-(
you can get a external hard drive that uses the USB and they work pretty good and about $100, but do you have usb2 or usb1? if usb 1 the transfer rate is 1 meg/sec, usb 2 is about 40 meg a sec. i sure would not want to back up a drive of several gig at 1 meg a sec !!!!! would take several hours at least ! maybe days ! so do you have usb2 or 1? usb2 came out around 2001?

lets see what happens with the hjt log ok?
D

[Temmu]

i just bumped up my ram from 512mb to 1gb, programs load faster and some (admitedly minor) graphics manipulation seems quicker & crisper.

[dan2]

If I'm reading the Belarc Advisor profile correctly, our Bus Clock is 100 mhz.  So, if jump to 1.256 gig altogether, how will the clock speed effect any improvement?

We have an HP Pavilion 750n. Not sure how to answer your question re: " do you have the windows XP disk or just a "restore disk"?

In terms of more storage and back-up, it sounds like an external hard drive is the way to go. However, we have USB 1. Is it a simple matter to ask our vendor to upgrade to USB 2?

On the hjt log, I used WinPatrol to reduce the number of startup programs. Also, I eliminated a number of downloaded program file entries. And, as per usual, I use CCleaner to purge temp files. There has been a marginal improvement in speed.

[Paddy]

At this point  after removing so much stuff I would defragment the hard drive ..
Doing this should make an improvement on how fast programes open /close / and  make them   runfaster ..


How to Defragment your Hard Drive (Windows XP)
http://helpdesk.its.uiowa.edu/windows/instructions/defrag.htm

numbnuts.. :breakkie:

[mitch]

ok things that happen in a computer heheh


when you run low on memory space the computer uses part of the hard drive as a temp memory module ( the PF you see on that performance chart) and it works, but is a slot slower than having memory ! the disk heads move in miliseconds and the memory works at 100 mhz so that it gets data in microseconds so the memory is a lot faster with ram.

there are two "buss speeds" one for memory and one for hardware and the hardware is the 100 mhz. and the memory is usually a bit faster than that.. i would expect your memory speed to probably be at least 133 mhz?

they made a faster memory and motherboards to use it in about 2001. it was called ddr and operated at twice the buss speed. my box is close to yours and my motherboard supported it so i have 266 mhz buss speed for the memory .

so that means it can get the data in and out a lot faster than the 100 mhz... so the processor can work on it faster, so photo edit is faster.
i had a photo edit program and when i worked on a big image on my old computer i could see a progress bar slowly move along the bottom of the edit window. but with this bar it moves like zip. and most of that is the memory  speed !

so first of all if you got the memory increase it would not go to the PF (hard drive as memory module) as often and that =speed.
but how much is unknown. so try either a 512 or 1 gig memory and see what happens !

now a lot of OEM computers used a "on board video card"  ( the circuits for the video board are on the motherboard) and to save a bit of $ they will use part of the memory you have ! it is called shared memory .
there is nothing bad with it as mine has it that way, but it can rob say 32 meg of your memory!

in normal operation do you get the "mouse turning into a hourglass" often?

it would be called a upgrade as a card would have to be installed to get usb2 on the system !
i have some info on settings for xp on my site

http://members.accessbee.com/mitch/XPsettings.html

do you use the "eyecandy windows or the classic" the classic is a bit faster
and turning off indexing helps too

and even the disk cleanup in windows will get some things

i used norton, but after 2003 gave up as it was what i call "bloatware" big, inflated and a resorce hogg !

have you ever "cleaned up your registry"
that can help too. see windows keeps track of everything it does, and pics and docs even have entried. so after a long time the registry has several useless entries in it . i don't know of a safe free program but i do know of one but it cost about $20 and several friends use it and like it

going to usb2 would cost the install but you would have usb2 for any future things, and you could get a external drive. but external's cost more
os if you wanted to add a usb you could just say the heck with it and have a INternal drive added and would probably be less than the usb2 upgrade and external drive cost


M

[dan2]

Meanwhile...

Thanks y'all for help in upgrading my computer. It's back and seems to be working well after a cleaning, boost to 1 GB of memory, and the addition of an external hard drive onto which I've loaded music files, etc.

New questions:

1). Along the way, I thought I read about partitioning hard drives. I'm in over my head: is this the prudent thing to do (if so, how?) when connecting  an external hard drive?

2). The external hard drive is SATA compatible. How do I determine if my computer can take advantage of this?

3). The vendor upgraded four of my six USB ports to 2.0, but failed to upgrade the two ports on the front of the tower. Is there an adapter I can purchase that upgrades these ports to 2.0?

4). We added a DVD burner. The vendor gave us a copy of Nero. With Nero installed, is there any reason to hold on to other applications (i.e. Record Now) that perform the same function?

5). I downloaded Irfanview for playing music files. Are there proprietary formats used by Windows Media Player and Real Player that justify keeping these apps? (Otherwise, I'd delete them.)

[mitch]

1. on partitioning...gotta be a empty drive to do it as can't easly or guarentee data will be good if doing it after data is on.
and don't know the size of external, but do you need to partition it? you can just have a few folders ( say music,photos/documents/video) and do the same thing kinda)

2. if you are using it on a usb2 doesn't matter what the drive is, it is usb as far as the system is concerned ;-D

3.did you ask him about the front ports? and did he just install a new card in the back for 4 usb 2 ports?
the front ports are usually on a small wire harness and can plug into a 4 pin usb connector ( not like what you see ) so could just be a case of plugging them in from a usb1 socket to a usb 2 socket?
BUT they do make a "extension cord" for usb plugs... i have one in my computer. i have no ports in the front and it is a real pain to crawl behind the computer to plug in my card reader so i just put a 6 ft extension on one of the ports and have the cable in the front ! think it was about 6 or 8 $ for it

4. yep wmp and realplayer have pripority formats so i would keep them