Computer is driving me mad again. Freezing and so on. (i'm blaming my recent download of Kazaa). Going to give it the old format C: treatment. Now that I have supercharged my RAM up to a whopping 96MB will I be able to run XP?

I've only got 3 RAM slots that each have a 32MB card. All these newfangled computers with tonnes of RAM.... do they have the same slots? Im assuming they dont have 50 rows of 32MB cards.



cout<<"Hello World";

Ok, I asked Rustbucket (husband) and he said XP won't run very well on that amount of RAM, it's very hungry for hardware resources. Windows 98 Second Edition I find is the most stable on slower computers. You should be able to upgrade your RAM if it is SDRAM.
How old and what size is your computer?

Hi Amazer,
Minimum requirements for Windows XP Home is 64MB but good luck running it on this. They recommend 128MB RAM which I reckon is the absolute minimum - Microcrap are always exagerating!! Anyway you could probably install it with 96MB RAM but it will run like shit.

As to your second question - most new mainboards have 2-4 RAM slots, but the RAM that you buy these days comes in 128, 256, 512MB DIMMS which slot into these slots. E.g If you had 3 slots then you could whack in 3 x 512MB DIMMS to give you a whopping 1.5GB of RAM. Hope that this helps!

Cheers

Adam:bounce

This should give you some food for thought

http://www.zdnet.com.au/itmanager/technology/story/0,2000029587,20264077,00.htm 

I have installed XP on loads of box's and can attest that its not worth the effort unless there is more than 128meg...256 is closer to the mark and if you can get strech to 768 then xp can function from RAM memory without virtual memory. The speed difference is noticable and with the price of RAM being so cheap its worth grabbing a couple of sticks (unless you're puter is old and using EDO RAM cause thats pricy stuff). Why not try Windows Me its probably the fastest of the oldes OS's

Yeah for the price of old memory style memory you could pretty much upgrade your whole machine.
If you dont have access to a copy of ME let me know 'cos I have one (Somewhere) that you can have.

BTW I have installed Kazaa on a fair amount of machines and although I think that it is truly one of the most superb bits of software EVER, it is very unstable. I still use it though and just put up with it because of the "benefits"

hey fatboy you really should check out e-muel if its warez youre into..opensource no popups and plenty of shares..i'm sharing like 40gig of ...stuff

Heard xp is pretty shitty and unstable, we have 2 here at work and are downgrading them to 2000. they have been running crap and losing info.

the tech guys seem to be saying the same thing.

Since the demise of Napster I havent done anything bad... well mostly. But recently I was bored. Read reviews of Kazaa sounded OK but had spyware. So download Ad-aware as well. But Kazaa arent that stupid. You remove the spyware and Kazaa dont work. System starts freezing. Now removing both Kazaa and Ad-Aware hasnt made my system stable. I've had a good run this last year cos I havent downloaded any dodgy shareware stuff. One day I will learn.

I've been ripped off. I looked at my reciepts to find out what sort of RAM I have and it says I should have had 64Meg, but I only had 32. (up to 96 now)

According to ZDnet's article (thanks for the link) I just need more RAM. Heaps more. So all ram slots are not created equal? How do I find out what kind I have? (Reciept says 64MB PC-100MHz). I bought it in October 99.

Hi Mate,

Can you tell me the make and model of your motherboard ?

I'll find out what ram you can use.

You may be able to use PC133

The biggest PC100 I can supply is 256meg, but if you can use PC133 then I can get 512meg

"Heard xp is pretty shitty and unstable"

First time I've ever heard anyone say XP is unstable.

It is easy to lose info though (or rather think you have lostit) as the search function operates differently than in 2000 - I read an article in the kast few months inone of the ozzie pc mags about it - but can't remember which one. anyone ?

ive got 3 slots if that makes a difference all now have 32 meg each.

motherboard according to reciept is M726MRT

[edit] found on second page another listing for motherboard. ATX Form Card.



System.out.println( "What the hell????" ) ;





[Edited on 17-6-2003 by amazer]

Have look here.

http://www.amptron.com/html/m726mrt.html 

If this is your bosrd then there is good news and bad news.

The good news is that it can use PC133 memory (cheaper) but it will only support 3x256meg so those 512meg sticks are no help.

So what $$$ would I be looking at (just guess ballpark) for 3 x 256megs?

where do I look? computer fairs?

If thats your board then I sell 256meg sticks for it at $94 each you should use that as a benchark and ring around, as I am not cheapest guy out there and you may find a better deal locally.

I dont know what the fairs are like in nsw but here you would be very lucky to find "NOS" Ram - which is essentially what your looking for .

OK. Well any purchases will have to wait till after nambucca. Dont want to leave myself short. Still havent got that ADSL from my last tech Q.

256MB sticks of PC-133 are going for $80-90. Don't worry about getting 3 sticks. 512 should be enough for you. No sense overcapitalising in old technology

EDIT: Looky here for example.

[Edited on 17-6-2003 by PostModern]

512 + one of my 32's makes 544 yee haa.
Its all very dreamy. Esp since I only had 32 a few weeks back. Bumping up to 96 made so much difference.

I suppose buying 2 would be the go, see how it performs and then add another at a later stage if needed. Then switch back to Win98 and never use it :P.

I dunno. All this upgrading and shit, but its still not much difference to ol faithful Win3.1!

*goes off to play solitaire*

Dude, if you don't "do much" with the PC, lots of RAM is overkill. I used to do tons of highend 3D gaming on a machine with 256MB and Windoze 98 SE. I upped that to 512MB when the price of RAM dropped last year. I paid $70 for 256MB then. It was for Windows 2000. Great OS.

I dont do much at all. I might have a few IE windows open. An excel spreedsheet or word doc. But the cruncher comes if I am having a game of yahoo euchre or the chat room for this forum. Then I get some heavy thrashing. Doesnt like java at all. That was before my big upgrade last month. Now its OK.

When I bought this computer the salesman was trying to tell me its probably not good enough to play serious games. Had a big argument with him about me having a playstation for games, he was saying I would switch to PC. BZZZ dont have games, no longer use playstation.

Chris, I find Windows XP to be the most stable OS I've used since 3.1 !! I'm using 392Mb of RAM at home on a K6 350 Mhz, and it is still a bit slow. I'm not sure how well your 100 Mhz will go even if you do increase the RAM. Either way, 512 Mb should be ample. The RAM certainly won't be the bottle-neck any longer.

I have a Pentium 350 MHz I'm selling at work for $300 if you're interested, but I think it only has 32 or 64 Mb of RAM still. Maybe you could put your RAM in it?

confusion reigns.

my processor is pentium 3, 500MHz.

That 100 MHz comes from something to do with RAM. Speed at which ram can be accessed??? Stuffed if I know these things.

Only know a little bit of programming in a few languages, a little bit of OS's, a little bit of networks, a little bit of web design, a little bit of server stuff, little bits of web applications, a tiny bit of database.... Lots of little bits but nuffin substantial about any bloody thing. Especially the bits that are hidden in that big white box!

I supose thats a bit of a disaster since I got my first computer nearly 20 years ago, there are 5 in the house at the moment, and I am pretty much in the final year of ComSci degree.


:jesus [size=4]help me[/size]:cry

Pretty please don't run XP on anything less than 192Mb of Ram and 500MHz .. it'll shit itself - especially once you start running a few appz at once !!!

If you do change the performance settings ... your XP won't look as glossy- but it helps you 'puter ... plus i'd strongly recomend TweakXP ... sweeeet program

Good Luck :thumb .. especialy with the comsci degree hahaha

Been running XP Professional at home one of the computers for a long time now and have not had any dramas (running W2K on the others). Also running some at work with XP too.

About Windows ME though, I would avoid it if possible. Some people are lucky and it runs fine on their PCs but I have heard quite a few bad experience stories about it. Also owners of ME systems can have trouble obtaining drivers for new hardware that are compatible with the operating system and some companies that provide technical support (for example hardware/software vendors, ISPs etc) will not want to know you if you are running ME or will use it as an excuse to blame any problem they can't fix on the fact that you are running ME.

Just a friendly word of warning

[Edited on 17-6-2003 by KOM123]

My mistake, 500 Mhz with 256 Mb of Ram or more should be fine. :thumb

Get rid of the full version of KaZaA and download KaZaA Lite, no spyware other wise it functions the same way as full version. Unless you really need to use XP stay with Win 98 or 2000. The only thing I liked in Windows Me was the system restore feature. Another thing you can try is get a hold of issue 34 of PC Utilities and run "No Install Linux" or download a copy at
http://www.knoppix.com/ 

Much better than Bill Gate's OS even works on 486 computers