As a temporary fix, has anyone happily used (and maybe continue to use) any type of CPU or RAM acceleration software or mildly overclocked older processors? I'm working on a friend's computer, and the hamster wheel is getting rusty, and the hamsters are getting old. Rather than buy more RAM, she's going to get a new laptop sometime soon, but until then, I want to get this thing back to a bearable processing speed. Thanks in advance for any comments, suggestions, and especially snide remarks [img]smile.gif[/img]
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I never overclocked any processors that I had. I did have a friend that was all up in the overclocking thing......he said that the improvement was barely noticable. Maybe somebody else has actually done it.
As a side note, I have a bunch of spare memory that I'll sell to you..... [img]tongue.gif[/img]
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Originally posted by FlyinM: As a side note, I have a bunch of spare memory that I'll sell to you..... [img]tongue.gif[/img]
I might take you up on that for my own use, but this laptop I'm working on is several years old and hardly worth spending any money on. I'm actually pretty leery of overclocking it, which is why I was pushing for a software fix. PM me about the RAM specs.
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What processor is it? You know you can only overclock AMD processors right? There are programs such as "FreeRAM" that you can get from download.com which in my personal experiance don't work. Why not just post the specs here?
Because honestly, this machine is a hack job, parts pirated from different machines, then sold as something else (her dad got it for her a few years ago; he's a cheap bastard) [img]smile.gif[/img] I don't even know if the sysinfo file is right, but I'll test it on a couple components, then decide if it's worth posting. I AM pretty sure that it's an old Pentium Celeron, but that's about it.
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Since it’s an older machine I assume she’s using it mainly for internet, email and office apps. If that’s the case then I wouldn’t bother with overclocking as the small boost you may get wouldn’t even be noticeable and definitely not worth the time you’d need to spend on researching how to overclock that particular processor (unless your interested in learning how do it that is, then it might turn out to be an interesting project for you).
With older machines upping the RAM is about the only real option as this allows programs to run from fast memory rather than being constantly swapped back-and-forth to a slow hard drive. Depending on how much RAM is currently in the PC this can make a big difference. Unfortunately, there’s no other “speed booster” that can ring out extra performance from an old PC.
General maintenance such as defragging, cleaning up unnecessary files, removing unwanted programs running in the background (i.e. reducing items that start every time you boot the PC and hide out in the task bar) and making sure your hard drive isn’t completely full will help speed things up a bit as well.
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If she's on the Internet I'd run some type of Spyware removal program. I use a 233 Mhz at home with 128mb of RAM and it can surf the Internet and send e-mail just fine. If that doesn't help format the hard drive and reinstall the OS, I suggest Win 2k. Do a custom install and only install the services she'll be using.
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Yeah, it's just for Internet, e-mail, IM, and Office. Thanks for the ideas, but I've run through those--defrag, antivirus, ad- and spy-ware checks, cache size changes, and program deletions. Of course, running XP Pro and a couple other RAM-intensive programs 24/7 doesn't help. This is a pretty hopeless situation in the long run. I'm just trying to squeeze a couple months out. Oh well, I'll tell her to become a real college student and brave the computer labs
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