Updating a desktop

John_G66

I have a mesh desktop running win 98, 128 ram, 40 gig hd. Sick of it crashing every few months and would like to update it instead of buying new. Also putting on a new os. How much to completely re vamp and what bits do i need.
Cheers.........

sk1n

Hi,
Depends a great deal on the budget u are gonna allow yourself for this rebuild,

Also what processor do u have at the mo?

nickmack

You might be better off finding out why it's crashing instead of throwing money at it.

There are plenty of tools listed on this board to test memory, discs etc. Try some and find out whether it's a faulty memory chip, damaged hard disk, corrupt OS or something else.

Do you know exactly what model it is now? Depending on the motherboard there maybe some economical upgrades that will help performance.

When you have upgraded, you should consider Win2k or WinXP as the OS.

johnnytee

Personaly I wouldn't bother with an upgrade. You could easily double your spec going for a second hand machine for the same money you would fork out for a modest upgrade, thus potentialy saving yourself a load of hassle.

fairytooth

Get a cheap Dell - some good offers around lately - cheaper in the long run plus running on XP which is more stable I believe.

Little_John

You have a windows 98 machine and it crashes every few months, you are very lucky. most windows 98 machines that havnt been reinstalled within the last 2 months will crash daily. Throwing money at somthing like this wont stop it crashing just improve the performance.

Depending on the spec of the machine, the above should be ok but what cpu is it? as it could mean you can upgrade to windows 2000 Windows xp will cause the machine to slow down so 2000 would be as far as you should go if your CPU speed is 700mhz or more. If it is slower then just format and reinstall windows 98 SE it is the most stable version before 2000 or NT4

To upgrade your existing pc, you will need a new motherboard, CPU, memory and possibly a graphics card this is all as long as your existing case will take the newer motherboards proberbly about £150 for the above parts if you do it on the cheap.