jay1b

I've been given a PC by some friends of mine and i wished to upgrade it, could anyone please give me some advice? The PC is a Compaq 510 small form factor (also known as D51S). The PC is a P4 1.8GHz with 256 mb RAM, i've checked the specification documents and apparently the PC can hold 2Gb of RAM in any variation (ie: 256 + 1024 chip would work). However the type of RAM is DDR2100, i've checked the crucial website to see what RAM they recommend for the PC and its something like DDR2100 and DDR2700 - but the higher spec will only run at DDR2100. It didnt mention the faster DDR3200 RAM. Rather then buy out of date RAM, i would rather buy the later DDR3200 incase i then get a newer PC so it can be reused. I would of imagined that Crucial would of just assigned what RAM they have for that computer at that time, and not updated it if newer compatible RAMs become available at a later point. So what i am asking is whether the PC will run the DDR3200 RAM at the slower speed or whether it will just not work all together? If its a yes it will run it, how certain are you? I also wanted a new graphics card, i dont know whether the PC has a AGP8x slot or a AGP4x slot, is there anyway to tell this easily? Also do you know of a particularly good graphics card for this system..... by good i mean good value for money Thanks for any help!

Ok, let me go into a bit more details. If you copy the IE history directory into another folder then copy it back, it doesnt work. Some sort of reader is needed. Does anyone know anything about this? Thanks

Does anyone know anything about how IE history is stored? Basically put, i want to write a program that copies IE history every second into another directory, so its not lost when the user goes 'Clear History'. Writing the program is not problem at all, but i need to know about how and where the history is stored. Thanks.

That explains a lot thank you.

Hi I was wondering whether anyone could explain the deal with different ratings on PSU's? I would of thought that the motherboard always draws x amount and each power plug thingy (cant remember there actual name) also requires x amount of power. But it doesnt seem to work like this. Really as much information on PSU's as possible would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Thanks. I have tried completely stopping all SP2 related security issues, but it had little effect. I tried it again last nite, it wasnt lagging as badly - but still a lot more then it use too. I think its probably just one of those things.

I finally got round to formatting and reinstalling Windows at the weekend, as it had got so clogged it was taking as much as 5 minutes to read a directory in Explorer. However my games ran fine and without lag. After reinstalling XP (now with SP2) and a couple of other programs (which were installed before anyway). Since the reinstall when i run Warcraft3 online i seem to suffer from serious lag, i mean really really bad lag - which i never suffered from before. I cant see why my empty system is lagging so much more then before. The only new thing is SP2 and bit-torrent, i have disabled the built in Firewall on SP2, to no effect - and bit-torrent isnt actually downloading anything anyway. Can anyone suggest anything i could try to resolve this issue pls? I think its the computer not the connection. Thanks.

Never use download accelerator - it cant work by default! Just misleading crap. I think i got mine off DVD Copy or something similar with that name. I found that whenever i deleted the registry entries, they were recreated straight away. In the end i used the good old DOS program 'Replace' to replace the exe with some other random file, and that worked. After the next reboot i could delete the other files and registry entries with no problems.

Cheers. In the end i found a way of using DOS's replace command.

You really should use XP its a great OS. Far better than anything else on the market. First things first, have you checked. Cable connected? DHCP is switched on? Can you try it on a different network with a fixed IP? Tested the NIC/Modem actually works? Do you have the correct protocols installed? Over protective firewall?

Thanks. You actually stopped explorer? Didnt think about that will try it tonight when i get home. Will let you know how i get on. I use XP, which tends to restart explorer, but i will give it ago. Alternatively i will write a new windows shell, boot to that THEN remove the exe, before setting back to the original Windows shell. -Any excuse to dig out .net and knock something up :)

Yes i know. But i want a new hard-drive now, then i will buy the other components next year sometime.

There is no process called TVM.exe running at any point, and i cant see any other process that looks out of place - any i am not sure about i have been looking up. I have even wrote my own VB program that returns a list of processes just incase task manager cant show it for some reason.

My current PC doesnt support SATA directly, but i think new computers from next year will only be able to support 2 IDE drives, instead of the current standard of 4. For that reason i am trying to get away from buying another one. So i can get a PCI Card? That will allow me to connect to a SATA drive? I have never heard of PATA before.

I have already tried them. The only way i can think of, is removing the hard-drive and taking it into work to install it as a slave, then removing it from there. But that seems to be a lot of effort for something which doesnt actually cause me any problems - and just uses a little processing power. I just hate the idea of having something on my pc that i have no control over.