General Chat

My desktop pc has a 40 GB hard drive, about 75% is spare, unused.

However, I only have 512 MB RAM, vitual memory, sometimes making my pc rather slow.

HOW do I translate some of that 75% spare to RAM please ?

Can any one advise ?

all you can do, David is allocate disc space as virtual ram, you will find the help you need
go start,
and click on
help and support,
when THAT loads you will find much assistance( if confusing) there.......


but I doubt if it will speed up your pc.....what you REALLY need is actual RAM.

it also depends on how many programs are running in the background...like AntiVirus, and similar progs

things like screen savers,

and too high a pixel resolution, are you using TRUE colour? (64 bit)THAT eats up loads.....if you are, then reduce it to 16 or 32 bit colour
for normal use you are unlikely to see any difference in picture quality, you only need that (Hi Res)for photos etc...


Bob

Thank you Bob and Dion.
I will take Bob's advice first and see if it helps.
If it doesn't then I will take Dion's advice.

I'd have thought that the XP OS would allowed an adjustment

glad to try to help. let us know the outcome?

Bob

Hi David

I had exactly the same problem as you. Have a look at www.crucial.com. You can either put in your pc model and find out the maximum RAM you can put in your computer with prices for the memory modules.

If you don't know your model number then download their little whizz thingy that scans your pc and tells you what you've already got and how much more you can have and then gives you the prices of the maximum memory modules for your pc. I probably haven't explained that very well but honestly it's dead easy to do.

Why take your pc out of the house when you can sit back and do it all online I say! LOL

Mary

I reduced the screen coulour resolution to 24 minimum with no visible difference yet on disc defragmentation I gained another 1.5% free space. Coincidence ?

I wanted to increase the RAM with a view of upgrading to Windows 7

David

The only way you can increase your RAM memory is by buying some more and putting it in your pc. You can do it yourself very easily but you need to know what is the maximum RAM your pc supports and how many slots you have in it. Or take it to somewhere like PC World and paying them to do it for you?

And the free space you've gained is on your hard drive, not on your RAM memory.

Mary

I looked at www.crucial.com
Would cost me about £35 plus the shop's charge

Hi David

IMO, the best way is to download the little tool available on Crucial.com which scans your pc and tells you exactly what you've got in your pc and how many slots you have free. This then tells you how much total RAM you can put in your pc. Print it off, take it to PC World (or somewhere suchlike) and buy the card off the shelf. Go home, open your pc, slot the RAM card in. Close pc. Job done!!

I did mine this morning, took 5 minutes. :-)))

Mary

Howard, me a bitto thicko,,,,,, what are BSOD's
please...

Bob

Bob, BSOD = Blue Screen Of Death, a typical windows crash.

David, another thing to consider if you wish to upgrade to Windows 7, does your pc/laptop meet the other required specs?

The MINIMUM spec is as follows:-

1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

To take advantage of the full features of Windows7 you will need more than the minimum.

AH! yes I knew of that, LOL but didnt connect the abbreviation..........
Bob
as a pure off the cuff request and I am sorry to be using davids thread, but it may be relevant,
My PC lately has been re starting itself, and occasionally got a message re serious faults.and also doing chdsk. and also retrieving a registry log from a previously saved file...

it NOW wont boot at all properly the AV is making multiple attempts to start ( next to the clock) and the task manager shows CPU is at 100%but getting no where.
also in safe mode i wont open up any of the diagnostics tools at all just sits there........is it a hard drive fault? you think?

Bob

Just making sure I can find this thread again. It looks really useful info.

Beth :)

Bob, it could be a combination of things, hard drive, or even simple dust accumulation causing CPU overheating.
My laptop recently had a wobbly with pink and wavy screens, it turned out when I checked that the fan was not working, probably causing it to overheat, cleaned it up, dusted inside and hey presto, good as new.

Hullo Keith, thanks for that Seems a blow out with the 'oover wont go amiss.......

I trust your daughter is improving?

My best wishes to her,

Bob

Yes Bob she is thanks, will be a long slow process, they think the physio on her jaw may take six months to work to get her nearly full jaw movement back.
Possibly eye problems in coming years as well. Time will tell.

Thank you everyone.
I will put my colour resolution back where it was and buy a memory card.

Incidently this PC was purchased A1 refurbished.
Only one fault. At leasst once a day I gey a fatal error 500 flash in my task bar followed by a dialogue box on screen informing me that Motive Chorus couldnt perform some function.

I think this is some previous media programme that was never completely deleted/formatted or I have a virus ?

Whatever it is it got past my anti virus and firewall