Page 1 of Am I flogging a dead horse?

[originally posted in error under Retailer Reviews]
My 7-year old PC (P-II 500 MHZ, 128 MB RAM, Win 98 ) is used mainly for surfing the net, creating the usual MS Office documents, and downloading pictures from a digital camera.
It has 2 Hard disks - one with 4 GB where program files are stored (75% full), and a 20 GB which is used to store data files.
Of late, it has begun to freeze for a couple of seconds at a time, and has generally slowed down.
I doubled the RAM to 256K, and the Windows Resource Manager shows 56% free. However, this occasional freezing is still there, and there is no appreciable improvement in speed.

Should I accept the inevitable, and buy a new PC? I will do so anyway, but would want the kids to have the old one for schoolwork, etc. provided I can make it speed up like it used to be.

Some people say I should overwrite Win 98 (don`t know the technical term) which would iron out many bugs. Others say I should re-format the 4 GB disk.

What are my options?

Cheers

Tarzan

You should ditch Win98 and get a new system. For a start, Win98 is no longer supported by Microsoft in any real capacity. The system you have is way, way too old and slow run XP as well. You can pick up decent, complete systems for a few hundred quid now. If you`re not bothered about games hen you might want to look at the bundles in Tesco and other supermarket chains, or perhaps even Dell.

These will give you an idea of the sort of thing you can pick up, but there are even cheaper deals to be had:

http://www.tesco.com/electrical/browse.aspx?N=266

If you go to www.dell.co.uk you can customise the system you want. Their cheapest system is £249 inc. VAT and delivery.

I have to disagree here. The PC will run Windows 2000 or XP but not very well. I recommend sticking to Windows 98. Overwriting it does not remove bugs but provides you with a fresh install with any corrupted data and drivers fixed.

The problem with lock ups in Windows 98 is commonly caused by driver issues. Before you reinstall Windows 98 try reinstalling your drivers first (you may also try latest drivers too). Corrupted data can be caused by cross linked files, corrupted VXDs and DLL files and many other system files.

You might also want to check the size of your swap file. If the swap file is located on the smaller hard disc which is 75% full you may be running out of virtual memory space. You can relocate it to the larger hard disc with more free space. I can`t remember how to do this in Windows 98 but I`m sure someone here knows. If not, I can find out for you.

Well obviously it will run it, but it will be crap. There comes a point when productivity suffers because of the speed of the HDD, processor, memory or whatever. These are the minimum requirements for XP:

[list]
[*] PC with 300 megahertz or higher processor clock speed recommended; 233 MHz minimum required (single or dual processor system);* Intel Pentium/Celeron family, or AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended
[*] 128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)
[*] 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available hard disk space*
[*] Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution video adapter and monitor
[*] CD-ROM or DVD drive
[*] Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device
[/list]
His PC is only just above those. With the price of PCs nowadays it`s well worth spending a few hundred quid and getting something that`s easy to use and will run the latest applications/games. Admittedly Win2K will run on low-end systems (but again, quite slowly), and maybe I`m a hardware whore, but seven years is a long time in PC land. If it was me I`d be spending some cash rather than `flogging a dead horse` as the original poster put it.

This item was edited on Friday, 6th January 2006, 12:11

I won`t repeat what I said in the other thread, but I use a PII 450 Windows 2000, 256MB ram and it is fine for the internet and email and word processing.

Right now at work, I`m using a p4 2.8ghz with 512MB, dvd reviewer works just as well here as it does at home, as does using email.

Every now and again I think about buying a new PC, but I will wait until mine well and truely dies :) i.e. if it needed a new mobo and hard drive, and dvd drive I`d pick up a cheap PC, but when the DVD drive went, it made sense just to buy a new dvd burner.

i think there is a temptation to buy a new PC, just cos a good spec seems so cheap these days, making ppl think they need a new PC. Unless you want to play the latest games, you don`t generally need one.

Also I did put XP on my PC briefly, and took it off as it was sluggish on my old PC. And it work we have noticed that. The old PCs are best left with the old OSes, patched as much as possible.

My advice to the original poster is back up everything. Reformat, fresh install of Windows 98 and all the patches, lastest Win98 drivers, and should keep you going a bit longer :)

Al

www.admars.co.uk

The biggest problem with lazy computer techs is that they will upgrade windows XP onto a s***ty PC then not even attempt to optomise it by turning off al the graphical effects and so on.

256mb is the absolute bare minimum for winXP. Well its not, but if you want to retain your sanity, you wont want anything less.

As admars said, if you dont notice that your pc wont do something then you dont need more power. Just soldier on until it dies. Back up everything onto cd and re-install windows 98. Given how old your installation must be, it will probably give you a noticable speed increase too.

Apologies for a delayed response. A big thanks to all who have given me some valuable inputs.
I`ll be buying a new PC soon, and when I do, I intend moving all the data to the new one.
I`ll format the hard disk and reinstall Win 98, and the few essentials it will need, and the kids can use it till it finally dies.

Thanks again folks!

Tarzan