For Those With Expertise with Computers

[virgino_orsino]

My wife and I are in the "contemplation" stage of altering our computer situation. A lot of this depends on available funds, which may or may not be there. But we would love some input from those of you who have been through the process before. Here is what we have

Comments

[eliza_bennett]

A backup and a fresh install of the operating system would be a good idea. Also, if there's room, a memory upgrade would probably speed things up at little. You get a lotta bang for your buck for the price of memory nowadays. Your Dell Dimension 4400 can handle 1Gb of RAM (2 x 512mb. Check how much you have now by right clicking on My Computer, click Properties and on the General tab under Computer: it lists your processor and RAM. If its less then 1024mb or 1Gb, then you have some room. That will run you about $66. Flat screen monitors rule. Probably your most expensive upgrade but worth the desk space if you need it. Check prices on newegg.com or tigerdirect.com. Should be around $150-$200+. Also check newegg for a CD/DVD burner they're selling them for $30-$40! - the word according to B - b/c I don't know jack about technology.

You know where to find me. ;)

[virgino_orsino]

Please thank B. for us. I'll check into all of this when we get back from our weekend. I have a feeling that we do have a little more room left to add some RAM. We did add one chip previously. But I think we still have some room in there.
If/when we do all of the upgrades we would love to hire B. to help us out. I don't trust myself installing/uninstalling Windows.

[eliza_bennett]

i have a feeling he'd be happy to help. :)

[virgino_orsino]

A note to profthunder

So, I have defragged the thing. I uninstalled a bunch of useless programs that I haven't used in years that were taking up an amazing amount of space. I condensed older temporary files. I even deleted a bunch of files I didn't need anymore. It is STILL loading slowly. The programs are functioning better. But the start-up is still slow. After the defrag. it said I only have 39% free space on my hard drive. That was before I uninstalled a bunch of stuff.

I have 768 mgs of RAM. So, I'm guessing I have some space available?

[profthunder]

One way to help with the startup is to click on Start, click Run, then type 'msconfig' and hit OK. This will bring up the System Configuration Utility. From there you can click on the Startup tab and uncheck anything you don't want to run on startup such as, Quicktime or any instant messenger or some old hidden AOL program. If your NOT sure what something is LEAVE IT CHECKED. You can google something you're not sure of to see if you need it at startup also. You will have to reboot after this.

It looks like your PC can handle 1024mb of RAM. 1024mg of RAM = 1 Gb. Go to crucial.com and run asystem scan. It will show you what you need to upgrade.

Hope that helps a little. If I think of anything else I'll let you know :)

[virgino_orsino]

Do I need to click "Disable All" or "Enable All" after I uncheck stuff? I tried to do this and it didn't work very well. Now I also have a new error message every time I start up saying that my 'puter can't find some sort of MSWindowsPlayer file.

Sorry to keep bugging you. . .But thank you for any help!

[profthunder]

Sorry, I should have wrote out ALL the steps.

Ignore the 'disable all/enable all' buttons.
After you check/uncheck the boxes you want click 'apply' then 'close'.
A new window will pop up, click 'restart'.
after your PC restarts another window will appear stating that you've made some changes in the way Windows starts. Check the box that says 'don't show this message.....' and click 'ok'

I don't know why you're getting that error message. You can try going back into msconfig/startup and see if any MSWindowsPlayer boxes are unchecked. If they are, check them and follow the steps above.
If that doesn't work or doesn't seem to be the problem sand me the whole error message and I will look it up for you. :)