vista help

[brass neck]

I have just bought as dell pc which comes with vista Basic.It seems too me, to be very slow as compaired to my old XP. Is this normal? Is there anything i can check to see if the pc is running right. The internet is perfectly fast, but things like logging on off seems to take ages. My system is a Dimension C521 AMD x2 processor 4000 (2.1GHz, 2x512k) memory Single channel 512MB (1x512MB) 533Mhz DDR2, 160Gb Hard drive. If that meens anything to people, its all gobbldygook to me!! lol

 

[jay66uk]

Logging on and off DOES take ages. In it's corporate training material, Microsoft want people to learn to put their computer in their low power standby mode instead (never mind the global warming...).

That said, 512mb is a woeful amount of memory for XP, let alone Vista. Get on to Crucial.com and get more - 2Gb preferably. You will notice a huge difference.

Have you had the problem with the sound driver not being signed and McAfee not registering? There are fixes on t'Internet for those.

 

[Doctor Congo]

As Blacksheep says more RAM should certainly help. Re taking ages to log on and off, I set mine to hibernate when I hit the power button (it comes back on exactly as you switched it off and uses no power) and rarely log off/shutdown.

 

[brass neck]

Logging on and off DOES take ages. In it's corporate training material, Microsoft want people to learn to put their computer in their low power standby mode instead (never mind the global warming...).

That said, 512mb is a woeful amount of memory for XP, let alone Vista. Get on to Crucial.com and get more - 2Gb preferably. You will notice a huge difference.

Have you had the problem with the sound driver not being signed and McAfee not registering? There are fixes on t'Internet for those.

McAfee seems to be right, and i do have sound so i presume thats ok, with this memory thing, what happens? do i have to by a thing to stick in the gubins inside or is it a upgrade to download or something? sorry, i know nothing about computers, as you may have guessed!!

 

[brass neck]

so do i only have 512 k of memory then? or is it 512 x 2 ?

 

[mancmackem]

You only have 512MB mate. Try to get matched pairs of memory and maybe sell your current module on Ebay.

2 x 512MB
2 x 1GB
2 x 2GB

**I like to buy Corsair Value Select, very reliable memory at a good price, better than generic (Betabuy stuff).

See what your motherboard can take from the documentation that was given with your new Dell. I'd also try and put your Dell in a cool place/buy some extra fans to put in it as i hear all sorts of heating issues with Dell's, the casing is shite for dispensing heat.

I'm off to bed!!!

 

[jay66uk]

On the crucial.com website you can get it to scan your computer and tell you what memory is compatible, what slots you have, etc etc.

If you are lucky you will have 4 slots and you can buy 3 512mb modules to match the one you have. That isn't massively likely as 2 slots seems to be pretty common now.

No idea if Corsair memory is cheaper and/or any better, but Crucial haven't let me down buying lots of memory for customers - free p&p and it always comes next working day.

It will add to the overall cost of your machine but it will also transform how it works.

 

[brass neck]

all sorted, scanned it. told me there was 4 slots and i had 512m in. went to the shop down the road, got 1 meg he told me it doesnt matter about matching pairs now. Vista working bang on now, with 1.5meg of memory. Thanks for all the help.

 

[mancmackem]

Glad your problem was sorted Brass. Matching pairs do still kind of matter as it is a risk using a mix match of different memory modules due to the different latencies and voltages the memory runs at which affects ever so slightly its read/write speeds. Also, mismatched pairs are sometimes incompatible and causes PC's either not to boot or causes system crashes/hangs.

Depends if you like running a risk for saving some notes, like using cheap ink in printers :D