Memories yada yada

[bluemando]

Thanks to everyone who recently supplied me info and recommendations for and about hard drives. I ordered a 60 MB HD from www.z-buy.com (http://www.z-buy.com) and look forward to gettng it by the weekend.

Now I would like to get some more memory for my system. I had purchased a new mobo this past September. According to the box, it's manufactured by ECS and has an AMD/Duron K7 type processor on board. It supports front-side bus speeds of 200/266MHz; uses the SiS 735 chipset; supports a 4X AGP slot; has a DDR interface and Ultra DMA 33/66/100 function. When I bought the mobo, I also purchased 256 MB of memory. The box that the memory came in is labeled: 265MB 184-PIN DIMM 32x64 DDR PC2100. I'm wondering if I ordered the right thing and if I can add 256 MB of the same memory to it? I want more memory because my system sometimes "lingers" or "hangs" before it "kicks in" and gets me a folder or file. I'm looking forward to some replies and recommendations. Many thanks.

Bluemando

[BigBlue66]

Hey Mando,

While it's entirely up to you when it comes to getting more memory, I don't think it will fix your current problem of hanging up. Many many people get by on 256mb of physical memory.

Your problem has more to do with what's running in the background. Once your computer is booted up and running "normally", hit Ctrl,Alt,Del ONCE. The Close Program dialog box should pop up and inside it will be a listing of the currently running programs. Highlight each one except Explorer and Systray and choose End Task. Now, try doing what you were doing before and post back to let us know if things improved or not.

Cheers,

Big Blue 66

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This space reserved for highly intelligent observations and witty remarks.

"From up on the roof top there came such a clamor, I ran to the window and threw up"
-- Tommy Smothers

[bluemando]

Hi BB66. I've been thinking about what you have said - about 256 MB's of memory being enough for all pracitcal purposes - and I must agree. Upon your recommendaton, I checked what was running in the background and it's really not that much. In addition to Explorer and Systray three is 1) a program called "Dun tray" (and autodialer that remembers my dial up connection #) 2) a program called "CleverKeys" (which automatically looks-up words when I highlight them); 3) a program called Instant Access (for Word, Wordpad) and 4) Rundll (which I guess runs dll files.) I haven't been using my computer that much (yesterday and today) to notice a difference when working without the "extra files" Before the got my new motherboard, I was using a Cyrix (686x's chip I think it was) and things worked better than what I'm using now, which is the AMD K7 Duron SiS® 735 chipset. The reviews I read on the ECS motherboard/processor were very good.

I'd like to make it clear that my system is not a constant problem... only now and then. I click on a file or folder or media player, for instance and nothing happens for awhile. Then a sound comes....like the whining sound one hears when a jet airplane is preparing to take off. It does that for a couple seconds and than the file or folder or media player will execute properly. I concluded that the processor was working faster than the capability of the memory and therefore I needed more memory. I don't know much about computers, so I'm probably jumping to wrong conclusions. Anyway,many thanks for trying to help.

Glenn

[BigBlue66]

Hey Bluemando,

OK, so the next thing you need to do is tweak your system a little. Rather than me trying to lay it all out here, just do a search on google.com for things like "Your OS, Tweaks, How-To's". That should get you going.

You need to add tweaking lines to your system.ini file under the [386Enh] section that have to do with conservative swap file usage and setting your swap file to a fixed size. You can also tweak the disk caching section under [vcache] in the system.ini file. Read up on these How-To things, make the changes and maybe that will help.

Another thing that might contribute to the problem is that the Duron processor only has a 64Kb L2 cache. I don't know offhand what the Cyrix you were using had, but maybe it was more.

I would say that the next purchase you make should be for an Athlon processor. They have a 256Kb L2 cache and of course process things quicker than the Duron. I know because I have a Duron system and two Athlon systems. The Athlons are faster than the Duron. I believe that you can get a 1.0 or 1.2GHz 200Mhz FSB Athlon nowadays for less than $100. Check them out at www.accessmicro.com. (http://www.accessmicro.com.)

Combining a new Athlon processor with some of the tweaks you will learn about will surely help.

Edit: Oh, and if I were you, I would try to pinpoint the origin of that noise you hear. That's not natural.

Cheers,

BB 66

------------------
This space reserved for highly intelligent observations and witty remarks.

"From up on the roof top there came such a clamor, I ran to the window and threw up"
-- Tommy Smothers

[This message has been edited by BigBlue66 (edited 01-23-2002).]

[bluemando]

Originally posted by BigBlue66:
Hey Bluemando,

OK, so the next thing you need to do is tweak your system a little. Rather than me trying to lay it all out here, just do a search on google.com for things like "Your OS, Tweaks, How-To's". That should get you going. <snipped more great advice>



Hello BB 66. I appreciate all your good advice and I will heed all of it. Many thanks!

Bluemando