Aces High Bulletin Board

General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: DREDIOCK on January 08, 2007, 08:54:35 AM

Title: Memory for Dell
Post by: DREDIOCK on January 08, 2007, 08:54:35 AM
No I didnt buy one

I have two machines here the parents of my daughters friend asked me to see if I could straighten them out.

Dig this


Dell Demention 2400 running Windows XP Home

Onboard Video/sound and ethernet (that doesnt work)

All currently running on 128 Megs of Ram

Exactly how peppy you think this thing runs?

Lemme...tell.....ya....instal ..l..ing....S....P....2....to ok.....some.....time


After tidying up the proccess mess and other assorted problems that come with. two kids. one of them a teenage boy with full access to the internet  and myspace with No firewall No antivirus and XP using only SP1

installed an old D-Link Ethernet card I had laying around in one of my spare parts machines.
Set up their firewall and Avast

Set Virtual memory to max and computer for "best performance"
Now it can at least run some things.

I'll probobly toss in an old 128 GForce 5200 Video card I have laying around also

Obviously it is in dire need of more Ram

What type of Ram do these things take?
As the Ram I have in the parts machines isnt of the right type (read. notches dont match up)

Heh, I cant wait to see whats waiting for me in the other machine
Title: Memory for Dell
Post by: jigsaw on January 08, 2007, 10:00:16 AM
Crucial's site has a "find it" tool for memory.  

http://www.crucial.com/calculator/listmodel.asp

Don't specifically have to use Crucial sticks, but that should tell you what types to shop for at places like newegg or mwave.
Title: Memory for Dell
Post by: Brenjen on January 08, 2007, 01:18:36 PM
I may have a couple sticks of ram that will work laying about. When you find out what kind you need, let me know & I'll see what I have. I think some of it even came out of my old dell Dimension box.
Title: Memory for Dell
Post by: DREDIOCK on January 09, 2007, 08:53:57 AM
Well closing in on finishing up with the second computer.
Same model as the other.

Some differences.

Started off with 57 proccesses
this one actually had SP2, a firewall, and Nortons.

ONE small problem.
While they had nortons..2005
They never bothered to activate it.
End result

192 infected files!(as of this moment) I watermelon you not
I had to get rid of a few things by hand before I could even install a virus checker
then I DLed Easy Cleaner (http://www.docsdownloads.com/easycleaner.htm)
Handy little tool for doing some preliminary stuff and in tidying things up once in a while.

Then Ran AVG which found and got rid of most of the stuff.
then finally AVAST which removed the last 4.
I've disabled system restore as some stuff was in there (not surprising)
Figure once Im done I'll turn it back on so they can start up with relitively safe restore points
Now Im going to run V Cleaner in safe mode as a final clean

Nortons. even when not activated was spiking CPU usage to 100%

Proccesses are now at 31 after removing Nortons Bloatware and installing AVAST and AVG anti spyware

CPU usage is now beteen 0- 2 and 5%  with a rare but occasional spike to 16%
Hmmm
something else going on perhaps?

Oh well gotta head out.
Will run Vclean while Im gone and see what those results are like
Will update later
Title: Memory for Dell
Post by: Brenjen on January 09, 2007, 11:41:38 AM
Norton probably still has processes running even though you deleted it. It was 2005 or 2006 Norton Internet Security suite that you have to go through a major p.i.t.a. to completely un-install. Google it, my sister let my dad install that garbage on her machine & it took me three or four hours to get it all off there & install avast. You should be running about 22 or 23 processes with XP & running firefox, not counting the task manager. 31 is still way too many.
Title: Memory for Dell
Post by: DREDIOCK on January 09, 2007, 12:29:30 PM
Quote
Originally posted by Brenjen
Norton probably still has processes running even though you deleted it. It was 2005 or 2006 Norton Internet Security suite that you have to go through a major p.i.t.a. to completely un-install. Google it, my sister let my dad install that garbage on her machine & it took me three or four hours to get it all off there & install avast. You should be running about 22 or 23 processes with XP & running firefox, not counting the task manager. 31 is still way too many.


It was indeed 2005 Norton SS
And yea I know. There were several uninstalls I hadta do.

There are a couple I dint know if he would want me to get rid of
such as his iPod service and one that seems ot be related to a camera.
  "Firststart.exe" which seems to be from Olympus Imagining

Not sure what it is.

Some stufff he may just wana plug in and have it run without clicking Icons.
So I dont expext to go completely that low
Title: Memory for Dell
Post by: Brenjen on January 10, 2007, 07:17:57 AM
You could play around in msconfig & shut down the ones you know you don't need starting up automatically & that will cut back on the processes until they are started manually of course.
Title: Memory for Dell
Post by: DREDIOCK on January 10, 2007, 07:24:06 AM
Thats what I've been doing :)