Hard Drive And Extra Ram

ok, to see if you have any free memory slots, download belarc advisor.
run belarc and under the "installed modules" section in memory, it should tell you if you have any ram slots free.
the most you'll have free is obviously one, although it's quite likely you'll have no free slots.
if you have one free slot then everything is good, you'll be able to buy another 512MB stick no problems at all.
if you currently have no free slots you'll have to throw away your current ram and start over again.
run belarc and tell us what it's saying

Hiya 2nd gen noob, cheers for the reply :) Ran Belarc and getting

512 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot 'AO' has 256 MB
Slot 'A1' has 256 MB

I take it this means I am up the proverbial creek without so much as a paddle?

Quote:

---

Originally posted by (>Zero Cool<)@19 June 2003 - 06:44
Hiya 2nd gen noob, cheers for the reply :) Ran Belarc and getting

512 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot &#39;AO&#39; has 256 MB
Slot &#39;A1&#39; has 256 MB

I take it this means I am up the proverbial creek without so much as a paddle?

---

indeed it does.
basically it&#39;s up to you now, you can either keep what you have just now ram wise, or you can throw away one (or both) of your sticks of ram and buy another (or two).
can you tell us what motherboard and what cpu belarc said you had too please, i forgot to ask last time
thanks

OK (hope I get the right bits here&#33;)

Processor:
2533 megehertz Intel Pentium 4
8 kilobyte primary memory cache
512 kilobyte secondary memory cache

Main Circuit Board
Micro Star international co. ms-6533
Bus clock 133 megahertz

is this what you were asking for? :)

Quote:

---

Originally posted by (>Zero Cool<)@19 June 2003 - 06:56
OK (hope I get the right bits here&#33;)

Processor:
2533 megehertz Intel Pentium 4
8 kilobyte primary memory cache
512 kilobyte secondary memory cache

Main Circuit Board
Micro Star international co. ms-6533
Bus clock 133 megahertz

is this what you were asking for? :)

---

yeah, that&#39;s pretty handy

however, you&#39;ll need to decide if you want to keep one stick of ram or buy 2 new sticks.
if you&#39;re going to keep one stick you&#39;ll need to find out what speed of ram you currently have.
the way i check is to look in my bios. to enter your bios, when you reboot your computer, you will see a message saying "press ??? to enter setup"
??? is usually the "del" key. if you hit the proper key in a certain window, you&#39;ll get into your bios. once in your bios, you have to navigate using the arrow keys on your keyboard and the enter key. look for a section called "advanced settings" or "dram timings".
whilst in here, you&#39;re looking for a field called "memory rate" or "memory frequency", something like that.
write down the value for this (it should be something like 133MHz, 166MHz etc)

If I am going to do the upgrade then I will likely go the whole hog and replace both of them at the same time. I noticed on the box for my pc that it said &#39; 2 modules max memory 1 Gb&#39; I take it this means that I will be ok with 2 x 512 DDR? Can you recommend what to go for?

Quote:

---

Originally posted by (>Zero Cool<)@19 June 2003 - 07:39
If I am going to do the upgrade then I will likely go the whole hog and replace both of them at the same time. I noticed on the box for my pc that it said &#39; 2 modules max memory 1 Gb&#39; I take it this means that I will be ok with 2 x 512 DDR? Can you recommend what to go for?

---

yeah, you&#39;re looking for 2x512MB modules.
the type and speed you get are totally dependent on price.
if you&#39;re just looking for more ram and don&#39;t really mind too much what brand you get, look for 333MHz ram

if you can afford the asking price, i&#39;d recommend corsair ram. here is a 512MB stick of corsair xms2700 ram of cas latency 2.

That looks good to me, I&#39;ll probably go with that :) . Is that the best place to buy or is it worth shopping around? Sorry to bother you again but any recommendations on extra hard drive space, I&#39;ve you&#39;ve had enough then no probs and thanks very much for all your help. Cheers pal. :D

Quote:

---

Originally posted by (>Zero Cool<)@19 June 2003 - 08:03
That looks good to me, I&#39;ll probably go with that :) . Is that the best place to buy or is it worth shopping around? Sorry to bother you again but any recommendations on extra hard drive space, I&#39;ve you&#39;ve had enough then no probs and thanks very much for all your help. Cheers pal. :D

---

eBuyer is pretty much the best i&#39;ve found so far.
Dabs is worth a try too, but it&#39;s probably just about the same price really.

as for your hard drive, are you thinking of adding a new drive, or replacing your existing drive?

adding a new drive is more of a problem than just replacing one, but if you replace your hard drive, you&#39;ll need to reinstall windows.

the actual mechanics of fitting a new hard drive should be pretty easy. when i installed mine, i never had any problems. basically, all you need to do is to slot your new hard drive into one of your bays in your case (if you replace your current one just put the new one where the old one was).

then you need to connect up what is called an IDE cable (a flat wide cable that goes from your motherboard to the back of the drive. again, if you replace the drive, you&#39;ll be able to tell from the old one where to put it.
you&#39;ll also have to plug in a 4 pin power connector from your power supply unit to the drive (which you&#39;ll again be able to see if you&#39;re replacing). you may have to change a jumper on the back of the drive depending on the default setting, but this is an easy job and can be done in 20 secs with a pair of tweezers.

any new drive should be detected by your computer, and all you&#39;ll need to do is either reinstall windows (if you&#39;re replacing the drive) or format it (if you&#39;re just adding one).

hope this has been of some help to you :)

It&#39;s been a great help thanks very much for your time and your patience :D Hopefully I can repay the favour sometime in the future. All the best pal, thanks again. :D