Oh help me, Techi Wan Kenobi, You're My Only Hope

[m31andy]

I'm a bad fiancée. After spending a few months talking about doing something to cuvalwen's incredibly old computer (and not doing anything about it), I finally got round to transferring a lot of files off it (no room on the 20Gb hard drive) and defragging it. This should've made the thing a little faster at least, except there was no virus software on the computer beforehand and so I loaded up Avast.

Suffice to say the computer is now running *slower* and I'm definitely not flavour of the month.

[Yes, I did know this was an issue with Avast beforehand - and AVG, for that matter, but it was that or let the two trojans we found carry on, unabated...]

So, my wonderful *techie* friendslist, please to be helping. I'm in dire need of decent (preferably free, but not necessarily) virus software which doesn't make the machine run like molasses on a cold day. Is there such a thing?

Also - any tips or encouragement to get the damn thing running a little faster / better would be incredibly wonderful as well.

(To let you know what I'm dealing with, the vital statistics are: AMD processor, 600MHz, 386Mb RAM, 20Gb hard drive, Windows XP Home, Service Pack 3. Slower than a turtle on dope.)

You are all utterly wonderful!

Comments

[m31andy.livejournal.com]

It's definitely old... Duron - so, from googling it, April 2000.

What's the odds on being about to support that much RAM? And how would I be able to tell???

[narenek.livejournal.com]

If you know the make/model (of either the base unit or the motherboard) then you can use Crucial's web thingy

I suspect Bob has the right idea, it's a rather aged system which will take a fair chunk of effort to get a small improvement out of it.

I'm duty bound to suggest putting linux on it for optimum bang for the buck :-)

[m31andy.livejournal.com]

Ta chuck. I'll check that out, but I can't see there's any point in upgrading the RAM.

I'm tempted to go down the linux route for a similar spec laptop which is poorly performing as well. But, you know, I got confused when faced with Xandros, let alone thinking along the lines of "maybe Ubuntu isn't good enough"....

eep!

[ian-wyrdness.livejournal.com]

Buying RAM for such an old machine would be a complete waste of money.

[gmh.livejournal.com]

On the contrary; it's the cheapest way of getting some performance increase out of it; when I had a K6-2 533 running Win2K and gave it more than 128MB, it was a real shot in the arm.

Most motherboards of that age will take up to 768MB of RAM no problems - 3 x 256MB SDRAM PC133. You can pick up 256MB of RAM dirt cheap in the computer fairs in London; again, we're not talking a truly long-term solution; but you can get a few more months or a year or so out of an ancient system, which can make a difference if you're not flush enough to afford a new PC.

If you're going the new PC route, I would keep an eye on Dell - every now and then they have a habit of putting up short-term offers of a basic PC box for £99; it's usually not a great machine performancewise, but it should scream in comparison to a Duron 600.

Of course, I might happen to have a motherboard and processor and RAM and a graphics card going spare very shortly, as it's upgrade time here - it's not exactly new (Athlon 64 3700+, 2GB RAM, Asus nForce m/b, Nvidia 7800 GTX - about 4 years old) - but it's free and does work!

[gmh.livejournal.com]

What other people said - check the motherboard manufacture.

As I said below, though - it's upgrade time here, so I'll have various innards going free to a good home if you'd like them - it's not exactly new (Athlon 64 3700+, 2GB RAM, Asus nForce m/b, Nvidia 7800 GTX - about 4 years old) - but it's free and does work!