Conundrum...

julianhj

julianhj

julianhj

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My parents' PC went wibble last week, wouldn't boot up at all, just a blue screen with some guff about a hard disc error. It's about six years old, a Dell Dimension 5150 - a P4 3.0 Ghz system with 1GB RAM. It came with Windows XP, and has been dog-slow for some time, despite my best efforts to clean it up.

The machine is used 95% of the time for internet browsing, the remaining usage being a bit of light office work and some photo storage.

As the hard disc is clearly on the way out, I'm considering either sticking one of my old 320GB drives in and doing a fresh install. I've been considering Windows 7 as well, as it made a fair difference to my last machine, which was a similar vintage.

Given that a new machine seems an unnecessary expense, I've been giving thought to buying a new 60GB SSD and W7HP. Is it worth it for a machine of this age? Will there be a noticeable difference over an old mechanical HDD and XP? Would an extra 1GB RAM make it all the more worthwhile, as I can scavange some from my old (unused) machine.
 
A new HDD is the best option until something else breaks and you need to buy/build a new machine.

If you buy a new hard disk it can also be used on a new machine in the future.

Memory is cheap but any investment there will be lost when the machine dies.

Windows 7, if you buy the retail version (also comes with 32-bit and 64bit versions), can be used on a future machine when the old machine dies. This would be wothwhile if you are considering gettiing more memory. Remember 32-bit systems can only use about 3GB of memory, but you will probably end up buying 4GB, or just getting an extra 1GB depending on what memory config you currently have.
 
SSD is a waste of money on that machine, with the current prices of hard drives you maybe better off just getting them a new ready built pc from the local high street stores for a lot less then it will cost to update that. But if you have a spare hard drive floating about maybe worth just adding more RAM to it, 1gb of ram is what is slowing that machine down with it swapping back and forth to the windows page file on a slow and with errors hard drive. Have you tried low level formatting the drive ? You will need to go to the drives makers site and download their tool for the drive and basically say full erase and run a full test from that too and see what it says. Make sure to remove what is important 1st from the drive before doing anything to it ofcourse. Also find out what memory that machine is using I may have some old sticks floating about that may work on it and how many spare RAM slots are remaining. The memory for that new will be expensive with it being old RAM and so best to look 2nd hand for RAM for that.
 
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I'd considered a brand new machine, but that would have meant doubling the budget to somewhere north of £300 to get away with something half-way decent.

The RAM is DDR2 PC2-5300. It has 2x512MB currently, and two free slots. My old machine has 3x1GB Corsair PC2-4200 - I realise this is not quite as fast (533Mhz vs 667Mhz I think), but as they are both 240 pin configuration and 1.8v, would it be worth sticking say 2 of these 1GB Corsairs in, to give a total of 3GB RAM? Purgatory, if you do have anything you can chuck my way, it'd be much appreciated! :D

It looks like the CPU fitted is 64-bit compatible, so I think I'm going to buy a retail version of W7HP as per Socrates' suggestion.

I think I'll donate one of my smaller drives for the time being.

Thanks for your replies.
 
Would be worth a try with the 2 1gb sticks you have and see if you can get 3gb to work you may have to clock down the other 2 sticks to a slower speed but should work, if not use the 2 slower larger sticks only for now. It will still be better having 2GB rather then 1GB. I will have a look threw my RAM box and see if I have some but they will be 512mb sticks only not 1GB I managed to sell the larger sticks in the past with no problems.
 
Don't be a penny pincher. Just spend a few quid and get a new machine that will last them another 6-10 years. Buy cheap... Buy twice!

There is absolutely no point in buying bits and pieces to throw it away on an old machine. If your struggling for cash. Save up first.
 
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