Computers & Networking

[twinboys191]

it's a Dell 3200 dimension with 40gb hard drive and 256 memory (i think).

[Adamtech Emerging Expert]

Are you running Windows XP? I would upgrade the memory to improve performance greatly.

[twinboys191]

i am running windows xp. it's a dell 2400. what size memory would you suggest?

[Lance21]

4 GB  

[Adamtech Emerging Expert]

That computer would not know what to do with 4gigabytes of memory. I would add 1gigabyte to bring it up to 1.5 gigabytes or make is 2 gigabytes. That should be plenty for anything that PC is going to able to run.

[hockeycanuckjc Trusted Contributor]

If you upgrade your hard drive, check the support section of your computer model on the Dell website to see if it will address over 120 gigabytes. Some motherboards cannot address the large hard drive space without the addition of a EIDE PCI controller card to address the BIOS issue. 

[DUSlider]

I was looking on Dell's website and they don't list a Dimension 3200.  However, if your computer came originally with only 256MB of RAM, it may be time to look into a new one instead of upgrading.  

You can goto this website...

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/DellPartsFamily.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs

And enter your service tag # to see what type of RAM you need.  If your computer requires RDRAM, it is time to buy a new computer.  If it required DDR, then a 1GB chip should help assuming there aren't other problems with the computer.  Slowness can also be caused by a failing hard drive or malware infection.  If you need to deal with either of these issues, you are better off purchasing a new computer.

[RealGeorgeW Emerging Expert]

I personally own a Dell 2400. You can only put two 1GB cards in it, which I would recommend you do.

[faith]

I have a HP Pavilion a1020n with Windows XP. It has been running slow so I deleted a lot of my pictures and that did not help. I recently loaded Microsoft Office. Could that be one of my problems? What should I do?

[RealGeorgeW Emerging Expert]

Holy zombie thread batman.

If you're looking to upgrade your RAM, just google "RAM upgrade advisor" there's tons of them out there. It will scan your system to determine what you have, and what you can put in.

As far as cleaning up your system, I swear by CCleaner to get rid of junk files.