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My computer is olde, like me, but not ancient, so it's running slow. Is it time to buy more RAm, or whatever it's called now, or have it reformatted? My Son The Computer Genius ( so he says ), wants to reformat the computer, my other son the Apple Man, says to increase the RAM, or whatever it's called. Opinions and advice requested. Just on topic please, no comments about my advanced age....... :D
[puts on nerd hat]
I reformat my computer almost every year, no matter.
I would start with that if your comfortable with it and see if you notice any change in speed.
RAM is always good, but it depends how much you have right now and what applications yours using (simultaneously that is).
I always recommend 512MB to 1GB RAM for XP (mostly for internet users) and up to 2GB's for more advanced users (photo/video editing, games, etc)
Is your hard drive saturated? If you have less than 25% left, it can really slow down because it has to fragment files when creating them. So another option is to do a defrag of your hard drive. Even getting a newer drive is sometimes a good idea (read: replace your old drive by ghosting it to your new drive).

There are so many variables it is sometimes hard to pinpoint. So if you can provide more info on your personal confuser, it might be easier.

[/removes nerd hard]

Good luck
Basically, it's really slow to open on start up. I clean up the files weekly and defrag weekly. Hard drive is 50% full.
Put a gig of ram in her and maybe get a utility softeware like System Mechanic to assist with the clean up and the shutdown of programs that don't need to run on start up. I've been using System Mech for 4-5 years now on atleast 9 PC's XP-Vista no probs. Speeds up everything.

System Mechcanic
How old is the computer?

reformatting the drive and re-installing everything will speed it up -- for a short while.

Adding more RAM will keep things in memory and prevent them from swapping to your hdd all the time.

A few tips to help speed things up
1 ) defrag your machine regularily (which you seem to do)
2 ) don't install and uninstall things too frequently
3 ) set your virtual memory minimum and maximum sizes to the same so the swap file never changes and fragments (which eats up tonnes of performance)
4 ) add more RAM

If your machine is only slow on boot-up, I'd recommend just living with it. If the machine is horribly slow to respond to commands once it's done booting, then I'd look into adding RAM, wiping the drive, etc, etc.
Without knowing your computers vital statistics, we can only offer generic advice (good advice yes, but very generic in nature) that may not in fact deal with your specific issues.

As an aside, "nuke & pave" (reinstall / reformat) will get you back to the starting point, but once you start adding programs again, all bets are off.

Can you give us things like:

What processor do you have in the machine?

How much RAM do you have? (and do you know how much you can add to the machine?)

How big is your hard drive? (I know you said it's 50% full, but depending on the age / size of the drive that may be a more critical piece of information)

What video card do you have in this machine?

What operating system are you running?

That will enable us to give you more specific advice tailored to the machine you have.

NefCanuck
darkpuppet,Jun 18 2009, 09:30 AM Wrote:How old is the computer?

reformatting the drive and re-installing everything will speed it up -- for a short while.

Adding more RAM will keep things in memory and prevent them from swapping to your hdd all the time.

A few tips to help speed things up
1 )  defrag your machine regularily (which you seem to do)
2 )  don't install and uninstall things too frequently
3 )  set your virtual memory minimum and maximum sizes to the same so the swap file never changes and fragments (which eats up tonnes of performance)
4 )  add more RAM

If your machine is only slow on boot-up, I'd recommend just living with it.  If the machine is horribly slow to respond to commands once it's done booting, then I'd look into adding RAM, wiping the drive, etc, etc.
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Dell Dimension 4600, 6 years old I do believe.
Okay, cruising Dell.ca found me the specs (although it appears some things were options and so I have no idea of your exact machine specs) it gives us a good starting point:

Dellâ„¢ Dimensionâ„¢ 4600 Series Service Manual


Microprocessor type
Intel® Pentium® 4 that runs at 2.4, 2.6, 2.8, or 3.0 GHz internally and 800 MHz externally; or 2.26, 2.4, 2.53, 2.666, 2.8, or 3.06 GHz internally and 533 MHz externally.

System Information

System chip set
Intel 865PE

Expansion Bus

Bus type
PCI

PCI connectors
three

AGP
AGP 1X, 2X, 4X, 8X

Memory

Architecture
Dual Channel DDR SDRAM

Memory connectors
four

Minimum memory
128 MB DDR SDRAM

Maximum memory
4 GB

Memory type
PC2700 (333-MHz) or PC3200 (400-MHz) DDR SDRAM (non-ECC)

Drives

Internally accessible
two bays for 1-inch–high IDE hard drive



Ports and Connectors

Serial
9-pin connector; 16550C-compatible

Parallel
25-hole connector (bidirectional)

USB
two front-panel and six back-panel USB 2.0–compliant connectors

Network
RJ-45 connector

Audio
Five back miniature connectors for line-in, line-out, microphone, surround and center/Low-Frequency Effects (LFE) channel

Internally accessible:

Primary IDE channel
40-pin connector on PCI local bus

Secondary IDE channel
40-pin connector on PCI local bus

Serial ATA
two 7-pin connectors

Video

Video controller
AGP8X

Network

Network controller
Integrated Intel® PRO 10/100 Ethernet

Okay, that's the generic stats, assuming that you're running Windows XP, if you can go to: Start -> Settings -> Control Panel and then click on the System icon, you'll get us what memory and CPU you have in the machine.

To get us your hard drive specs, click on My Computer on the desktop, right click on your hard drive (C:) and then click on Properties, that will get us how big the drive is and how much space is used and then click on the tab marked "Hardware" and take down the model number of the hard drive (it's called only "drive" under XP) and we can then see what kind of device we're dealing with here.

NefCanuck
Go to http://www.cpuid.com and dnload the monitor there to find all this out if you don't know how too.
CPU speed isn't the big issue here IMO.

an 800Mhz machine can run win xp quickly if it's not bogged down with fragmentation and a battered registry.

because you've been running the standard xp install for so long, I would probably suggest that you nuke and re-install.

so do the following:
- backup all your documents and pictures to an external hdd (or CD, or whatever works for you)... don't miss anything!
- re-install windows from scratch
- From the scratch install, the first thing you should do is set your paging file's max and min sizes to the same- (take the recommended size, and set the max/min accordingly) This file cannot be defragmented after it's fragmented, so it's best to make sure it's one contiguous space now.
- run windows update until you can't run it anymore -- hopefully you can just install SP3 and be done with.
- install your software and drivers.
- make a backup of this clean state install

The thing with windows is that it always slows down eventually .. the registry gets clogged with things like internet plugins, installed and uninstalled programs, etc, and I don't recommend using registry cleaners as I've seen people break more than they fix if you're not an advanced user

yes, it sucks, but it's been 6 years, so it's had a good run, and this is the easiest way to get back to fresh without having to know too much.

I'll check when I get home, and let everyone know tomorrowe, or tonight.
Thank for all the input :D
Memory Specs, 256mb RAM, 40 gig Hard Drive.
Did a scan and my RAM is 90% full
256 megabites of ram is kinda low for todays spec. 1 jig should be the minimum now, with 2 jigs being the recommended.
paolo,Jun 19 2009, 09:34 AM Wrote:256 megabites of ram is kinda low for todays spec.  1 jig should be the minimum now, with 2 jigs being the recommended.
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I'm thinkin' the same thing. I just need to know what type to buy,and how to install.
paolo,Jun 19 2009, 08:34 AM Wrote:256 megabites of ram is kinda low for todays spec.  1 jig should be the minimum now, with 2 jigs being the recommended.
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I thought you were some form of techie? Jigs? You mean gigs right? I always thought a jig was a dance not a form of memory :lol:
habmann,Jun 19 2009, 11:21 AM Wrote:
paolo,Jun 19 2009, 08:34 AM Wrote:256 megabites of ram is kinda low for todays spec.   1 jig should be the minimum now, with 2 jigs being the recommended.
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I thought you were some form of techie? Jigs? You mean gigs right? I always thought a jig was a dance not a form of memory :lol:
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its not called jigabyte? great scott. i guess i've been watching too much back 2 the future, Doc!

by the way, another very knowledgable member on here, his name is NAS hes quite the tecky, he can tell you what different kinds of ram there are and whats faster than others, etc.. basically.

oldeguy,Jun 19 2009, 05:47 AM Wrote:Memory Specs, 256mb RAM, 40 gig Hard Drive.
Did a scan and my RAM is 90% full
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Ah okay, right there is your issue I think, now the queestion is figuring out which memory sticks you have and whether you can salvage them and simply add more, or if you will have to buy new and discard what you have.

There are programs that claim to be able to read the memory type and speed but I've never trusted them 100% on propriatary systems like Dell.

Are you comfortable opening the PC? If yes can you see the memory specs on the sticks that are in the machine (and how many of the memory slots are full?) or better yet, take a photo of the RAM showing the specs and post it here for us to look at (The generic specs I pulled up on the Dell website suggests there could be many different types of memory in the box)

NefCanuck
I'm thinking of bringing in my boy genius, computer boy, to give me a hand, as
a) he knows what he is doing, most of the time
B) he can read the little tiny print that this oldeguy can't.
I may spend some time calling Dell to see what I can do, besides buying a new CPU
Certainly an option, if you weren't on the other end of the world I would pop by and take a look (Because likely the next step would be a trip into "Computer parts alley" to get the kind of wacky RAM this machine will likely take :()

NefCanuck
If your not sure what RAm you have and you have never opened/upgraded anything in your pc, then go here:

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/glo...=gen&~ck=anavml

Input your Service Tag (serial number) and it will show you exactly what it came with.
It'll tell you if you have one stick or two, etc...
Of course like someone already mentionned, you could install and run "cpu-z" (http://www.cpuid.com/) and it will show you the same info.
Those 4600 are fairly easy to open up and change the memory in no time.
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