Upgrade

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Niece asked this in a PM

Can you give her some advice please

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Ok, if your going to go down that road then it might be better to just keep the monitor, keyboard, mouse and depending on the size of the video card, hard drive etc keep them too, to install Win98 you will need at least 125 and 355MB of free hard drive space, for Win 2000 you will need a min of 2GB with 650 MB of free hard drive space and 64 MB memory, then buy a new case, motherboard and processor along with all the other bits that you have been unable to salvage from the doner machine, plugging them all in is the easy bit (well for me anyway). Once everything is plugged in turn the machine on, you will need to boot from a Win 98 boot disc and fdisk/Format the hard drive (so remember to backup everything you want to keep before taking the old machine down the skip), Once formatted, restart the machine with the cd for the chosen Version of windows in the cd drive and follow the on screen instructions.

Hope this helps, and if it doesn't just tell me

 

Hi Derek.

In all honesty most of what you said went right over my head. I have 504mb free on my hard disk. I have 32 memory. It's a pentium MMX 200 Mhz, video memory is 2MB, hard disk is 2.1GB.........Are ou saying none if it is any good?? Could I not use the case, cd drive, floppy drive etc, and just exchange other parts????

Denise.

 

If you wanted to run Win 2000 you would need to upgrade to 64 MB Ram minimum, the hard drive should be fine as the min spec required (according to microsoft) is 2GB, video card is fine, processor is fine.

So to simply put it, To run win 2000 you will need to upgrade to 64MB Ram minimum (128 recommended), the rest of the system can be used (no need to upgrade), you may need to fit a network card for later in the course, depending on which course you are doing. It would not be supper fast but it would get Win 2000 on and running.

Hope that makes it a little clearer.

 

Thanks. That's a lot clearer....... So, this Win 95 PC will upgrade to 2000 then???? As for memory.........Mine are dimm, which I know are old now, but I have four slots.......I know doubling up would take it to 64, but what if I just replaced the lot.... How much would I be able to go up to on this PC?? I know about the network card...... Trying to get some info on what I need later so I can get it now........

I'll understand your lingo one day......

Denise........

 

Hi Neice,

I reckon you should just pick up some extra memory and go with what you've got for now (Nelix is right about a new build, but I reckon you want to do the basics for a while before that - sorry Nelix )

RAM is cheap just now - if you have a manual for the machine, it will tell you how much it can support in the 4 slots, or there may be a sticker inside the case - have a look.

Also, RAM can be very "machine-specific", so check with www.crucial.com - their site will pretty much pick the right stuff for your kit.

As for Win95 >2000, from memory, I'm sure it's a no go - youd need to go 95>98>2000 (tho' not entirely sure I'm right on that) I'd recommend if at all possible, do your backup of important stuff, then wipe your hard drive, and do a clean install of Win2000. That way, you know where you are, and you won't be carrying any "upgrade baggage" which might cause potential trouble down the line..

Hope thats of some use in the meantime - sing out if need be .....

 

My opinion: Dont spend the money unless your flush and i guess if you just started your course then your skint. I have an old P133, 64MB RAM, 4GB HD and cranking handle and I got windows 2000 running on it. Now it did take some time but once it was up and running I used ghost and created an image so next time it needed reinstalling it was done in less than 1/2 an hour.

I've used it to practice stuff on and its done everything i've needed. A little slower than I wanted but it's done it.

HTH

B

 

Hi Brent,

One of my boxes is also a P133 (maybe 166) but I find it runs w2k pro just fine - its got 96Mb RAM, right enough, but all the same - Neice will have a fine wee machine with the extra RAM - crikey - 64 Mb is only gonna be £10-15is, prob best if she can get 128 for £20-25ish

Neice,

2GB hard drive is also fine as a study machine - just don't expect to be video-editing, and ripping 4,000 MP3s on it :P

 

If you fancy an upgrade and can catch your uncle in a good mood ;) another option which might be worth considering would be replacing the processor & motherboard with one of the low cost integrated motherboards which come complete with processor, sound, graphics and everything a computer needs other than memory (also seen one with memory onboard), drives case ect.

Re-building your computer would probably cost about £60-£80 using this option but you would end up with a quicker system which would be useable for most things. inc ripping a few mp3s

Jakamoko. Apparently you can upgrade straight from Windows 95>2000 eventhough I wouldn't recommend it.

 

Hi and thanks for messages. My Uncle is paying for it, and he has told me to get whatever I need. Obviously I won't go mad, but if I only had one PC, then I'd have to start from scratch anyway.........Is that all it would cost Taz??? I was expecting a lot more. I told my uncle I'd need around £300/400 extra and he seemed fine with that. Is doing that part of the course work??/

Denise.......

 

Cheers, Taz - I stand corrected, but wouldn't fancy trying it - would you ?

Just wasn't too sure, that's all (and couldn't be a*sed reaching for the book) :P

 

Forgot to ask...... Why wouldn't it be a good idea to jump from 95 to 2000???
Also, can I buy a bigger hard drive than the one I have???

Thanks???

Neice.........

 

Given the choice I'd go with a fresh install rather than upgrade of any OS, you never know what is still lurking from the old installation which isn't compatible with the new OS waiting to trip you up.

 

Do you mean just start afresh and use the unit and CD, floppy etc???

If anyones here just starting a new thread in the lounge......

Neice........

 

By fresh install I think Phil means to format the hard drive and do a total re-install of the OS rather than trying to upgrade and hope that anything already installed still works.

If you are interested I'll pull together a few links from on-line computer suppliers with some examples of the parts you'll need. I managed to build a base unit for about £120 (excluding memory which I removed from another machine).

 

Neice

I upgraded my whole box from a K6 2-500Mhz to an AMD 2.2Mhz, extra Ram, Motherboard, and used the rest of the stuff from my old machine for around £100.

The quickest road to go down to get the machine to run Wim 2000 is just to get some more Memory 128 MB if you can afford it, bung it in the machine put the Win 2000 cd in the drive and do a fresh install (remembering to back up all important work first), that will get you going.

You can upgrade to Win 2000 from Win 95, 98 and Win NT 3.51 or 4 any other OS cannot upgrade but may be able to coexist with Win 2000 in a dual boot environment

 

Just a footnote

I hear W2K03 will not load onto a machine that is under the min spec! I have yet to try it.

 

You could try taking a look at this lovely piece of kit

http://www.1pcsource.com/barebone_kits/prod_detail.php?ProdID=F451-4010

It's called a barebone system, basically you would put you Drives etc in, the only thing you would need to buy would be a new CPU and memory.

the price of $239.99 works out at £148.59 depending on current exchange rate

 

I could build a whole new system for that price!

Speaking of which - I have one for sale!

EDIT: Duplicate Post

 

Ouch...

Or you could build it yourself for £305 for almost exact spec inc a CDRW.

It might sound daunting but with all the advice you can get here you'll learn loads by doing so...