Upgrading a PC including replacing fan etc

nicki_2

No sound at all. Just the other fans working.

esuhl

Is there a cable that attaches the fan to the board that might have become loose?

Or a PCI-E power cable from the PSU into the motherboard? Something like this:

TakeThis

Take the RAM module out and clean the contacts with a pencil/pen eraser. Make sure there is no dust in the slot before replacing.
You can also take note of how much RAM is installed at that point.

TakeThis

The card is an ATI RADEON X1300S 256MB RAM AGP

It is possible to disable or remove the card if faulty and just revert to using the on-board graphics.

prowla

I'm not sure whether it's really worth putting a lot of cash into upgrading it.

That said, I think the machine takes PC3200U memory, which can be had for not a lot (or even free if you find somebody who has some unwanted - eg. I've got a couple of 512MB modules that I won't be using). The gotcha is though, that I think this machine only has 2 memory slots, so you'd need 1GB modules to get to the maximum 2GB.

I would think that it'll be easier to replace the graphics card than to repair it. Again you may find somebody who has an unwanted AGP card, or be able to get one on ebay.

Depending upon your location, you may have a local computer fair, and there is usually at least one stand with somebody selling cards for older machines.

You can run a utility called produkey to extract licence keys for Microsoft products, but I'm not sure which 3rd party ones it supports. No harm in trying it though.

nicki_2

esuhl - I've checked all the connections. As far as I can tell they're all okay, nothing is loose and I can't see any broken wire or anything unplugged that wasn't already.

TakeThis - I pulled the RAM out and cleaned the connectors up while I was there. There are 2 boards, in blue RAM slots, and 2 additional black slots. This is what I found:



Prowla - I'm not planning on upgrading it a lot, just enough that DD can use it for the foreseeable future instead of hogging my laptop. To replace stuff I'm going to have to shop around, but will probably end up on ebay.

Any more info needed?

More pics here: http://s99.photobucket.com/albums/l314/nicki210179/MSE%20share/

Hopefully that link will work. Its a while since I used photobucket! If you look at the 2nd picture you can see the sort of dust I've been dealing with on it - thick and damp and it clogged things up a lot!

TakeThis

The first issue that I'm having is the RAM shown does not fit the spec of the machine that you describe.
The Compaq Presario SR1000 takes DDR RAM, not DDR2.

Can you double check the model number? Come back with as many details as is possible.

These are the specs that I have for the SR1000 series.

You can simply bypass the graphics card and plug directly into the onboard graphics.

TakeThis

As you can see... there are black slots next to the blue slot, but they are there to support dual channel configuration.



If you look here, only DDR is supported:



So the thing will automatically blue screen with no output to the monitor.

But this doesn't make sense if you were using it like this before.....???

nicki_2

Specs not matching? Thats Comet for you :rotfl: I had a feeling things were going too smoothly. As far as I can recall nothing has been replaced on this PC since it was bought. I'll see if I can dig out the original paperwork and see if that sheds any light on the matter.

TakeThis

nicki wrote: »

Specs not matching? Thats Comet for you :rotfl: I had a feeling things were going too smoothly. As far as I can recall nothing has been replaced on this PC since it was bought. I'll see if I can dig out the original paperwork and see if that sheds any light on the matter.

What about the full details on the machine itself?