So's you guys'll know, I work on PCs as part of my self-employed living. I'm no authority and I do make the odd stupid mistake, but I sorta know my way around machines and Win OS.

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From what I can find the OP's system is pretty old.



Five years.

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The first thing to do when possible is increase system memory. 2 gigs is good, 4 gigs is better, though it may not be possible in the OPs case because of physical limitations of the motherboard.


I'm maxed at 2 Gb.

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If you build your own machines (I do) then a motherboard / processor swap might be the best bet. AMD dual and even quad cores are CHEAP as is memory. I actually swap motherboards without even reinstalling the system. Just have your driver disk handy for the new mb. This assumes of course that you are not using a raid for the boot disk and changing to an incompatible chipset.

A dual core with 4 gigs should give you all the processing power you need and can use.



AFAIK, the best I can do with the present mobo is go to a 2.2 GHz AMD Athlon XP v the present 1.8 GHz. I've long since deemed that unworthy of the time, effort, and expense. If I replace both MB and processor, then I need new memory and drives as well. So, until I can afford the new system from the ground up--(and I've been building my own since 2000)--this is still the fastest thing I've ever owned. I'll just have to make do, I guess. *g*

R.

"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."