Will more memory increase speed?

choccyface

how do i do a fresh install of windows? will it lose all my favourites, photos, files stored etc?

bomber2

loaner wrote: »

If you are trying to speed up the internet, buying more ram will have no effect. Xp can run easily in 512Meg, provided you don't have loads of rubbish running at startup.

Re-installing windows will lose all your favourites etc. Time to back things up?

WHAT THE BEST WAY TO CLEAR AWAY START-UP RUBBISH.

PROLIANT

bomber2 wrote: »

WHAT THE BEST WAY TO CLEAR AWAY START-UP RUBBISH.

Click Start>Run and type msconfig, locate the Startup tab on the far right of the window and un-tick all of the crap that you dont want to run automatically.

PROLIANT

loaner wrote: »

start, run
msconfig

or download autoruns or hijackthis.

But be careful you don't disable something important. Ask if you don't know.

Looks like we posted at the same time mate!

iviv

cheesy.mike wrote: »

To get an easy idea of how much memory you really need, start up all the programs and typical documents that you would normally have running then do CTRL-ALT-DEL to launch task manager. At the bottom right of the window it will show something like "Commit Charge: 700M / 1500M". The former number is how much memory you are using. If this is greater than the actual amount of memory in your PC then you would benefit from a RAM upgrade. If the commit charge is greater than 1024MB then 2GB RAM is what you want to buy, otherwise 1GB is probably fine.

Not always. You can benefit from a memory boost even if you aren't going over the 'commit charge' value. Many programs detect how much ram you have, and expand to fill this (I'm pretty sure Firefox3 does this). So it may not look like its using all the ram available, but if you had more, it would be running faster. Also, if you're close to the ram amount but not filling it all, if you open a new program, it will likely need a large chunk of ram while it loads everything up, which then drops down to a lower amount when its all running.

aliEnRIK

fwor wrote: »

That's a useful explanation.

If I test it on my laptop - which has 512Mb installed - and open five "typical" apps at the same time (Firefox with 4 tabs, Word, Autoroute, Omnipage and IE6 - plus zonealarm and AVG in the background) and Commit Charge never goes above 330Mb, so that suggests that I don't need more RAM.

It probably also suggests that the OP doesn't need more than 512Mb unless they have ~lots~ of applications open at the same time - though they can of course test that for themselves.

I assure you that 1 gig will be FAR quicker than your current 512Mb. You cant go off task manager as XP uses what ram you HAVE to best effect so LOOKS like you dont need more. Ive personally upgraded lots of computers with ram and 512Mb is like a minimum for XP but 1 gig has a hugh increase in speed (even 750 Mg will have a a fairly positive effect)
And anyone that has Vista REALLY needs min of 1 gig. Some come with 512 and run REALLY slowly.....

PROLIANT

When the O/S loads into RAM, Office, IE7 and Antivirus etc etc, with 512Mb of RAM the system will use around 500-800 Mb of virtual RAM ergo the page file, just doubling the hard RAM will give you a 100% performance gain..fact, but be aware that anything over 2Gb of physical RAM you will need to put the 3Gb switch in the boot.ini file otherwise the O/S will not use all of your hard RAM and you will get no improvement, I believe that in Vista they have resolved this issue however with XP you still need to do this.