Upgraded but no improvement, any ideas?

[Hailstorm]

Well first off i'd like to simply say howdy and that this place seems to be a very helpful place (hope I can benefit too:) )

Anyways my story begins about 5 months ago when a friend of mine helped me put together my computer. After a few problems we got my system working and it works prety well though when compared to most of my friends systems it doesn't work nearly as well as it should. A couple days ago got a new video card and some more RAM just too see if I could get my system running as well as my friends' do but after I did the upgrade nothing seems to be improve

Any ideas about how I could improve my computer?

Motherboard: ECS K7S5A
Processor: 1700+(maybe 1800+) AMD Athlon
Video card: GeForce 2 MX(400) 64MD AGP VA (old)
GeForce 3 Ti500 64 MB (new)
RAM: 256 MB DDR PC2100 (not sure about the brand)
512 MB DDR PC2100 (new RAM I added, not sure about the brand either)
Monitor: ViewSonic E70f

Main problems: weak refresh rate when playing games
simple programs (internet explorer, media players, etc..) respond slowly and load very slowly[FONT=arial]

[Budfred]

Do you have any memory resident programs running? You could run msconfig and remove programs one at a time to see if any of them are causing the slowdown. To run msconfig, go to Start, Run, type msconfig and hit enter. Choose Selective Startup and go to the tab that specifies startup programs. There are some you don't want to disable, like Task Manager, but most can be safely disabled. Reboot, then see if you have more speed.

Good luck,
Budfred

[david eaton]

Hi Hailstorm, Welcome to the PC Guide Forums.

First - the slow refresh rate - are you using the correct drivers for your video card? If you are uncertain try HERE (http://www.drivershq.com//) and see if there are updated drivers.

Second - slow loading - go to Control Panel / System/ device manager and select the hard disc. check under the settings tab and see if the DMA box is checked. if not, check it and reboot.
Also how long since you ran Defrag?

Hope that helps.

David

[ranchdog]

Which flavor of Windoz are you
running?

With that much RAM I hope it isn't
a version of 98.

If so, hold up at a limit of 512MB
unless adjustments to the O/S are made.


RD.

[malcore]

Hey Hailstorm. With a name like that are you an Albertan? From the west anyway? Greetings from Taiwan from a fellow Canuck (Edmontonian);)
What is your Hard Drive and what do you have it set at in the BIOS? Slow loading of programs could be that you HDD is set too low, maybe in PIO mode and not UDMA mode.Also, as most HDDs are at least ATA 100, are you using an 80 wire IDE cable?
If you are a gamer, then yes, after all that "fraggin'", some regular "defraggin'" would be in order. You aren't running your memory at the same frequency as your FSB?

[Hailstorm]

Wow, u guys are very quick around here, I thought I'd be lucky to have 1 reply by now.

Anyways, i'm not sure about what type of programs are memory resident but I tried the remove programs thing and I did notice an increase in speed though not sure what programs I should have/haven't removed. (thanks Budfred)

I believe I'm using the correct drives, though I didn't delete the stuff from my old video card, it that a problem? About the hard disc thing I couldn't find it (I'm running windows XP if that makes a difference). And I haven't/don't know how to Defrag (tahnks david eaton)

As I said above I'm running windows XP, not 98 and what's O/S stand for? (thanks ranchdog)

Well first off ur right malcore, I do live in Alberta, secondly i have 40 GB in my hard drive and my friend worked with the Bios so I've know idea about the other stuff u said (what does HDD, PIO, UDMA, ATA 100, and 80 wire IDE cable mean?). And about the defragging thing I 've heard of it but it's never done it nor know how to do it. What's my FSB?

[joea64]

Originally posted by Hailstorm
Wow, u guys are very quick around here, I thought I'd be lucky to have 1 reply by now.

Anyways, i'm not sure about what type of programs are memory resident but I tried the remove programs thing and I did notice an increase in speed though not sure what programs I should have/haven't removed. (thanks Budfred)

I believe I'm using the correct drives, though I didn't delete the stuff from my old video card, it that a problem? About the hard disc thing I couldn't find it (I'm running windows XP if that makes a difference). And I haven't/don't know how to Defrag (tahnks david eaton)

As I said above I'm running windows XP, not 98 and what's O/S stand for? (thanks ranchdog)

Well first off ur right malcore, I do live in Alberta, secondly i have 40 GB in my hard drive and my friend worked with the Bios so I've know idea about the other stuff u said (what does HDD, PIO, UDMA, ATA 100, and 80 wire IDE cable mean?). And about the defragging thing I 've heard of it but it's never done it nor know how to do it. What's my FSB?

1) O/S - operating system, also abbreviated as "OS"
HDD - hard disk drive
ATA and PIO - interfaces for IDE hard drives and other devices; ATA is the more modern and much faster interface, ATA-100 is standard on most current mainboards; there are ATA-133 hard drives around but you would usually need a special interface card to plug into one of your PCI expansion slots
DMA and UDMA - "Direct Memory Address" (if that's the right expansion of the acronym); an interface that allows IDE devices such as hard drives and CD-ROM's to address memory directly without having to go through the CPU, which speeds up the system; the "U" stands for "Ultra"
FSB - "front side bus", the mainboard/motherboard interface that governs the overall speed of the system, especially in interactions between the CPU and RAM and the rest of the system. The documentation for your motherboard, if you have it around, will tell you what the speed (in megahertz, or Mhz), is, or you can look it up in the CMOS program. FSB is important because, among other things, some CPU's (for instance, the Athlon T-Bird 1.4Ghz 266mhz variant, or 1400C) will only work on a mainboard with the same FSB as the CPU.

2) Yes, it's always a good idea to delete your old video-card drivers when you install a new video card. To do that, you should uninstall the drivers using either the uninstall program provided by the driver installation CD itself or "Add/Remove Programs" in the Windows control panel, then reboot to standard VGA (640 x 480 x 256 colors), then install the new video device drivers.

3) Reboot your system, then press the appropriate key (if you're using an ECS board, that means you probably have an Award BIOS, so you should press "DEL") upon bootup when the system prompts you in order to enter the CMOS program. There you can check and change all sorts of hardware settings. Actually, your mainboard should recognize the hard drives as ATA-100 if they're connected properly - which basically means they need to have the right kind of EIDE drive cable. That particular kind has a blue connector on one end (the end that plugs into the mainboard, which will also have a blue-colored connector on the primary IDE channel, or on some boards, on both IDE channels) and black on the other end, which is for connecting with the master IDE hard drive. ATA-100 drive cables are also recognizable because they have 80 wires as opposed to the older 40-wire IDE cables; the difference is readily apparent if you compare the two side by side. What all this basically means is that you will need to open up your system again and look at the IDE drive cable connected to the primary IDE channel and see what kind it is, and also if it's properly connected (blue is supposed to go into the mainboard, black into the master IDE drive, and gray - the one in the middle - into the slave IDE drive if there's one).

4) Defragging (or defragmentation) - this is a basic system-maintenance operation that you should carry out at least every month. Files tend to get split up and moved around to different places on your hard drive as they're accessed and used, and then the CPU and Windows have to go looking for them again when they're needed, which slows the system down. If files get too fragmented, it can even interfere with the proper operation of some programs. Windows has a defragmentation program (in Windows 98 SE, which I use, it's called "Disk Defragmenter" and is located in the "System Tools" folder of "Accessories" in the Startup Menu) which you can and should use to get the files on your hard drive back into the proper places. It's easy to use, just read the help file and make sure you don't have anything else running while Disk Defragmenter is operating.

-Joe-

[Budfred]

One more note. When joea64 says not to have anything else running when you defrag, this includes turning off your screen saver and antivirus program. Basically almost all of the little icons in what is probably the lower right hand corner of your screen should be gone. I am not sure how XP works, but to turn off the screen saver in most versions of Windows, you Right click on the screen in an empty area and you should get a menu. Choose properties and the window that opens up will have a tab for screen savers where you can set it to None.

Good luck,
Budfred

[malcore]

That was beautiful Joe. A nice rundown.:)