My GF's laptop lost it's internal power supply after only 2 years, so it's gone.......

I went to my parents for Easter and they were literally "kicking" around a desktop in the hallway. My sister kicked it out of her room cause she got a laptop, and my mom was kicking it back in my sisters room cause she didnt want it in the hall. lmao.gif

Anyways, I said what the hell and took the poor thing home. I'm desperate and need a computer at home. The problem is that I haven't put together a computer in over 6 years. So my knowledge is a little outdated.
It has a 5GB hard drive, and only 64mb of SDRAM, so that should tell you how old it is. The only problem is that I don't know how to tell it's exact specs. It was running slow as hell with the 64mb ram, so I threw in another 64 from my old desktop. It's running a lot better but still eating up the memory. It has Win 2000, but I want to install XP, and I know that's not gonna happen until it's up to par.

So now I'm shopping for at least a 512 chip. But I know there's PC100, 133, and God knows what else. I'm lost on what model it needs. What does that all mean? 02.gif

What do I need and where's the best place to get it?

 

What kind of computer (specifically the mobo if its not a dell or gateway type machine) is it? Having a 5 GB hard drive makes me think that you are not going to be able to use sticks larger than 256MB per channel. Which brings me to my next question, how many memory slots total? Just the two that you are using? Once we know what kind of mobo/system it is, then we can see if it uses PC66, 100, or 133 SDRAM and what the max allowable amount of memory is (both per slot and total for the system).


On a side note, www.pricewatch.com seems to be the best website to find deals on all sorts of computer hardware. However, since you are looking for old memory, it might be worth finding some second hand (I think I have some old SDRAM lying around) because old obsolete stuff tends to be expensive (not so much from the web, but definately in stores like big blue and super circuit).

 

It almost looks like it was a custom. There's no label on it. 02.gif It's a plain white case, but fortunately the motherboard has 2 USB's on the back. None in front.

There's 3 slots and it came with 1 64mb. I added another 64mb chip in another slot and it ran a little better.

 

any idea what brand and model number the mobo is? It's usually etched on the board....or a picture moght help. Also what kind of processor is it, I could make a good duess at memory speed if I knew what kind of processor it was.

 

Hmmmmm, I'll try to get a better idea on it when I get home. I just don't remember seeing anything marked clearly on it. But I wasn't checking very hard. sad.gif

 

Based on the limited info, I think you're gonna find yourself assed out on XP or close enough for it to not be worth it. Try to access the bios on your next boot (probably F8 or F7) during start up. You should be able to get all the info you need to see whether upgrading makes sense or not (system bus speed/processor/hard drive/ect..). I'd say if you need to put more than $100 into it then it's not worth it. $300 gets you an emachines at Best Buy!

 

Put there 256 MB and you should be fine.

Some old mobos do not support over 512 MB (total) memory.

What processor do you have?

 

This is really just a temporary fix until I can afford a new mobo.
But until then, it needs to run Office, which isnt a problem so far. But I would like it to run Autocad. That's the problem right now. It needs 512 minimum. And even then I'm not sure how it's gonna perform on the 3d rendering part of the program. 02.gif

 

Your best bet is to take a picture of the RAM. If you post the picture here, I could tell you what type of RAM you need. The difference between PC100 and PC133 is clock speed. The good thing is that they are interchangeable. A PC133 put into a PC100 slot will run at 100 Mhz. Also, I work with computers all day at my job and have my own IT business on the side. I have several RAM chips that are sitting around collecting dust that I could give to you. I could probably send you 3 sticks at 128MB each, giving you a total of 384MB of RAM. I would only charge a very small fee for shipping and testing the RAM. At 384MB of RAM, you should still see a huge improvement. Windows 2000 runs very well on 256MB or more. T1bbyMonk3y is right in that you probably will not be able to use any sticks above 256MB, if you could even use that. For starters, in Windows, click start -> run -> dxdiag. Click "save all information" and post up the dxdiag.txt file for us to see. Using this information, we can at least see your processor, speed, ram, and your devices (onboard or seperate). Usually you can figure out the motherboard/processor type from this information (or at least enough to figure out the type of RAM you need). Also, watch the information on boot up or try to get into the BIOS when it first turns on. Usually hitting DEL or F2 gets you into the BIOS. Sometimes serial numbers or vital information for identification can be found there. Remember, there were alot less types of RAM for personal computers 6 years ago as compared to today. A wide range of RAM will probably work on your machine. Sorry for the long post. Let me know what you can, and I will help out as much as a possible.

EDIT: Good luck running any type of CAD on that machine. That's alot of data processing for an old system. The RAM will help, but not really sure how much.

 

Thanks! I didn't know about that dxdiag thing. fing02.gif
I'll definately post it up here in a few hours.