Upgrading RAM

J

Jeronkey

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Hey,

My uncle in the process is sorting out the computers at his office. I had a brief look at them today, and while they are running a little slowly... they don't seem to terrible machines, if not a little outdated. I'm in the process of deleting and clearing out any sort of trash and viruses that has made their way onto the machines (Bing Bar... grr)

However.. I think a hardware upgrade might do some good, too. I'm not able to give all the specs, but they are running XP along with somewhere between 2.4 to 3ghz processors. The one downside I can definitely see is the level of RAM. One of them running at 512 and the other at 896. (Odd number?) They also only seem to have support for IDE.. (I'm mentioning this solely to point out that they are definitely not the lastest technology. ^_^)

I'm busy looking at www.prophecy.co.za for some decent upgrades. Any recommendations RAM wise?
I'm unsure of brands.. Corsair sounds pretty reasonable. (Such as this one)

Would you recommend something else?

I can understand the possible suggestion of just getting a new PC... but as they only really use them for office work, and not gaming I'm pretty sure the RAM should solve the problem.. unless you guys honestly think they are better off with a complete upgrade. :P
 
You don't need to upgrade hey, what you need to do is load them fresh. Xp gets slower and slower and slower over time. Add in more ram for sure but it won't make that much difference on an old xp install.

Reloading them fresh will make them feel like you have upgraded :D.
 
100 percent agree with killadoob, as a technician who is still learning (waves hands) you also learn this the hard way :p. First do the fresh install then if you still find it is running slow, consider the upgrade path but chances are you will be fine :).
 
+1 for the above comments.

Also check the motherboard carefully to establish the RAM type that's required - if it's the older DDR1 type (or older) then you'll end up shelling out a small fortune to upgrade, as older RAM is rather expensive these days - maybe a few donators out there who can assist you...
 
At the risk of saying something different to the very knowledgeable techs here... I have to say that 512MB RAM is dreadful. I saw a machine the other day that only had 1GB RAM (some of which was shared with graphics, so it actually only had just over 700MB). It battled to load into windows properly. Threw in another GB and it flew.

As for which RAM... the cheapest will do to get a very good performance gain. No need to worry about the best RAM.
 
See if you can't get hold of like 512MB RAM 2nd-hand. I'm pretty sure there has to be quite a few people who wants to get rid of their old PC's/components and 512MB was quite common, unlike 1GB DDR400 modules.

When I had Windows XP a couple of years ago, I used to have 2GB of DDR400 with my AMD 2600+.

512MB for Windows XP is too little in my opinion, but it can work if you're still using old applications (like Office 2000 & Internet Explorer 6) and when you haven't installed too much applications that run in the background.
 
Thanks for all the replies!

I can definitely look into giving the computers a fresh install as I'm pretty certain they have the original XP discs lying around at the office. I'll speak to them and see what they think, though. I don't how hard it'll be to backup their data as I'm honestly not sure how well they have sorted their files... :)

Any advice on a decent way to backup the data to streamline things?

The poor PC that the secretary has to use would love a reformat.. :P - it's been the poor PC that a few of the other staff just installs their junk on.. poor thing.. I can kinda see what you guys are meaning with this PC as an example. It runs slow and already has 2gbs of memory. :(

howardb said:
Also check the motherboard carefully to establish the RAM type that's required
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure it is DDR2 compatible, thankfully.

shogun said:
At the risk of saying something different to the very knowledgeable techs here... I have to say that 512MB RAM is dreadful.
Click to expand...

I would still agree with this, though.. with my cousin's computer running all sorts of little things in the background like Skype, etc... I'm pretty sure a small upgrade would do wonders to assist. I am not meaning to just disregard any advice, however.. so do you guys really think just a reformat will do the trick?

Yuu said:
as a technician who is still learning (waves hands) you also learn this the hard way
Click to expand...
We'll learn.. even if it is slowly.. I still felt so happy when I successfully changed my first PSU a while back. :)
 
I format as last resort. If you want my advice without a reformat, just ask :)
 
killadoob said:
So how do you fix a slow windows xp install that has been running for 3-6 years? How do you get that fresh snappy feeling back?
Click to expand...

Like this:

Autoruns http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902

To remove crap startup entries, scheduled tasks and general bloat.

Device Remover to remove old and crap hardware entries
http://www.pro-it-education.de/software/deviceremover/ (View> Show Hidden/Detached Devices, remove the whole shebang).

A standard CCleaner run through the system, registry and temp files.

A defrag of the hard drive with any Defragmenter you trust, this could work as well www.mydefrag.com

If the system is not where it is suppose to be, you didn't follow all the steps :)
 
NomNom said:
You could try simply repairing the Windows (not a full format), CCleaner, Defragment ect..

This is also very helpful: 75 free ways to refresh Windows XP & Vista

I'm not saying the above will work, I'm simply saying that it's worth a try.
Click to expand...

No harm in him trying all that but by the time you run have run all those programs everything could be up and running beautifully. I tried running all that stuff yet the systems still felt slow, i found when it was fresh it ran like nobody's business :D. Windows vista/7 never suffered that chronic slowness issue.
 
+1 for a reload. Brings the machine back to 'virgin' status. Getting hold of all the data on the machine may be a problem. Fact is, if you don't know where it is you can't back it up, and it will be lost if the machine dies. Rather bite the bullet now. Make a complete backup with something like Acronis or EaseUS - free for 30 days. Get a external drive to put the backups on.

+1 for more RAM. Be careful with mixing different brand/sizes/speeds though. Chances are the machines were bought in batches and the RAM in some of the machines may match. Rather pair them and get totally new RAM for the other machine.

Some useful utils I use - Belarc - to get all the Windows & Office keys, MailPass from Nirsoft, gets the mail settings and password - sometimes shows as virus but is safe. For drivers My-Config (or Ma-config).

Oh, and WSUSoffline for taking care of the Microsoft updates - download them once for all the machines.

Once all is working, something like SugarSync or Mozy Backup is nice for offsite backups.

This is my opinion and method - yours may be different..
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the share of My-Config T-Man. I just got a nice driver update for my SATA controller, which has given me problems for a while now. Thanks :)
 
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