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| Thread ID: 127091 | 2012-10-03 08:20:00 | Couple of questions on old computers. | Slankydudl (16687) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1304945 | 2012-10-03 08:20:00 | My Grandparents had an old 2001 imac but now have an old 2003 dell with a 2.4ghz celeron cpu and 256mb of ram. Now this dell was handed down from another family member and is riddled with malware and viruses etc, after a 5 hour scan of 20gb of data i found about 27 different malicious things from msse and spybot i removed them but pc performance hasn't improved. I would like to do a fresh install but i have no xp disc and i would also like to double the ram, so where can i find such old hardware? | Slankydudl (16687) | ||
| 1304946 | 2012-10-03 08:34:00 | Also what would be considered a normal read/write speed of a 2003 IDE 40gb HD, this one seems really slow but i may just be too used to hardware that runs faster than my digital watch. | Slankydudl (16687) | ||
| 1304947 | 2012-10-03 08:44:00 | Dunno about the HD speed, well, it's theoretical only right :D IDE, that's Ultra 133 right? SATA 1st generation was 150. From what I have noticed with SATA 1 or 2, no diff whatsoever. If I copied a huge ISO file the diff might be a couple of seconds. Re: the RAM upgrade, you might find that the RAM would be more expensive than the current stuff, might be close to least half of a mobo/ram upgrade. |
Nomad (952) | ||
| 1304948 | 2012-10-03 09:07:00 | oh come on, its not that old :) . Ram is probably DDR 333 or 266, it might even be DDR400 at a scratch . Regardless though, you shold be able to put DDR400 in it as its backward compatible . And you can still buy that . Problem is, some branded motherboards didnt like some ram, and Dells were often ones that didnt . Pull the ram and see what it has to start with . Youre not going to get much with a celeron 2 . 4 anyway, but adding some more ram will give a small increase, and will certainly take a load off the hard drive at least . . Doing a fresh install without the Dell driver disk at least is pretty time consuming . Suggest going to Dells website, looking up the model and download all the drivers you need - make sure you have 3rd party driver such as graphics if required also . IDE Drives were ATA 100 or later on 133, so not as fast transfer as SATA drives we are used to today . What make of HDD is it, Toshiba, Hitachi, Samsung drives were bits of dogs anyway . Might even be a Maxtor, some of those were a bit crunchy . It shouldnt be to hard to get hold of an XP OEM install disk and use your own Dell product key . Home or Pro? Sounds like a fun project . Good luck :thumbs: |
Iantech (16386) | ||
| 1304949 | 2012-10-03 09:15:00 | Slankydudl , what's the CPU Socket ?? Is it 478 ? Also what type of RAM - SD or DDR ? I have a fair amount of Old RAM (256MB) laying about gathering dust, and a couple of socket 478 P4 CPU's, as well as a handful of Celerons if any are of any good I'll donate some to you. Does the PC still have the COA for XP ? Edited: re Ians comment -- The Dell will have he drivers in a folder on the C drive (may be hidden), how they work is they unpack to a folder, then install. The folder can be copied off to a USB drive and installed from there, or put back and install. What model of Dell is it, I have a reasonable collection of Dell drivers, may be able to supply those if you cant locate them on the HDD. |
wainuitech (129) | ||
| 1304950 | 2012-10-03 09:41:00 | Probably easier to just download them . . . the drivers . Not sure if the original Dell drivers are like that but the ones you download is just in the C:\drivers or C:\dell from recollection . The folder is visible . When I downloaded for our 3 . 0Ghz Dual Core, the video drivers are just original Intel drivers . You arn't gonna see a big diff with the HD speed . Even if it is a 133 100 IDE . HD never work at their peak anyway . I even compared a laptop HD isn't that 4800 or 5400 RPM, laptop IDE and another that's SATA, not much diff . Daily computing is made out of many smaller files so the speed isn't able to ramp up anyway . . I would think a Celeron should be fine thou for daily computing and startups . Is the HD working fine? |
Nomad (952) | ||
| 1304951 | 2012-10-03 10:01:00 | Drive could be slow due to fragmentation, motherboard not supporting the full speed, windows set the drive to PIO mode, drive is just simply not a fast model, drive is on a 40 conductor cable when it should be 80 conductor, drive might be failing... Reinstall Windows to fix some of the problems. Performance probably will still suck as you're used to something faster, just get used to it. When something is riddled with viruses you should reinstall anyway. If you have a legit COA just borrow an XP disk from someone or whatever. |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1304952 | 2012-10-03 10:19:00 | Our dual core Win7 1.6Ghz laptop 4GB, takes 50sec to power-up to the login screen. Our dual core 3.0 Dell PC, 1GB takes a lil' less than 50 sec. WinXP. Yeah right IDE channel plugged in, not sharing with the CD/DVD ROM? Right cable? Try to use the Ultra IDE one .. Maybe try to reinstall the drivers esp the motherboard DMA ones .. |
Nomad (952) | ||
| 1304953 | 2012-10-03 18:56:00 | Had a Compaq of the same era and 256mb of Ram is nowhere near enough,ended up with 2Gb of ram and went from a 1.8 Celeron to a P4 2.8 CPU ($20) You could also pickup Video card as it probably won't have one for a few bucks |
Lawrence (2987) | ||
| 1304954 | 2012-10-03 20:49:00 | I also have a couple of P4 socket 478 CPUs free to anyone who wants to pay for the postage. A 2.8 and a 3.2 and a cooler but that's harder to post. I was trying to resurrect one of them as a file server but the motherboard has died. |
dugimodo (138) | ||
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