Just got new computer with XP, have many questions.

[RandyJr]

Okay, just to let everyone know I am very new to the computer scene. A lot of talk on here goes over my head so please bear with me. I just bought a HP with a 2.7 Intel Celeron. It has 256mb ram with a 40gig hard drive. XP is very nice, what kind of things can I do to get speed? I believe I can go to 1 gig ram but probably will go up to 512 for now. Where's the cheapest place to get some DDR ram at?
Also, in one of my bays I have a cd-writer, with that, can I copy stuff from my hard drive to a cd? Or do I need a cd burner to do that? Reason I ask is because I want to make a restore cd or whatever cd it is in case the system crashes, I have a back-up. Can someone clue me in on what to do exactly?
I also noticed that when I went to the add/remove programs in the control panel, that there are tons of programs that were preinstalled. I don't think I need many of them, should I keep them or are they taking up a lot of memory?
One last question, since this is my first new computer, I want to know exactly how to take care of it. What steps can I take to keep it running like new? Should I do disk defrag or clean-up every week? Please let me know, the last thing I need is the computer to crash early. Later.

Randy

 

[RandyJr]

Sorry but I'm having trouble finding info on this specific brand computer on the net. The computer I bought is the computer that Wal-mart had on black friday for $498. Anyhow, I can't find it on some lists and I need to know exactly what kind of ram I need. It is a HP Pavilion a305w. I see that e-bay is a good place for cheap ram. Does anyone know if my computer takes PC2100 ram or pc2700? Isn't it ddr 184 pin? Like I said, I can't find out. Any info would help. Thanks.

 

[SYAR2003]

Download and run aida32

http://www.aida32.hu/aida32.php

It will help to identify motherboard
chipset.
Witch is needed to know in regards of memory type supported.

SYAR

 

[34534534534555]

"what kind of things can I do to get speed?"
Turn off all of the screen effects such as shadows, fades etc these waste lots of memory. In Control Panel | Display | Appearance .. i think you can say classicXP desktop or something similar.

Performance Tweaking: Turn off unwanted system services. I suggest you don't do this if you are not familiar as it will only give you small gains but could stop your computer from running if you do something wrong. Do this by typing services.msc in Start Menu | Run... and right click and configure each one individually.

For ease, there is a program called TWEAK XP which hives you a GUI to do all this..i think, although i have never used it.

"I have a cd-writer, with that, can I copy stuff from my hard drive to a cd? Or do I need a cd burner to do that?"
A cd-writer and a cd-burner are the same thing. You can 'burn' cd's using a writer! If you open the cd-writer window, you can drag and drop files into it and then click File | Write CD (this is windows' own cd-writer software) which is fine for backing up files, if you want any more functionality get Nero or something similar.

You should have got a recovery cd from the manufacturer, this will re-install the operating system if necessary, all you need to do is to back-up your data. You can create system restore points -but these take up LOTS of memory (Right Click My Computer | Properties | System Restore)

"tons of programs that were preinstalled. I don't think I need many of them, should I keep them or are they taking up a lot of memory?"
Installed programs do take up memory, if you will not use them they are obviously wasting space. So.. Remove them!

"What steps can I take to keep it running like new?"
As you pointed out, running Defrag will keep your HDD in shape, the amount you run this should be relative to how much data you write to and delete from your harddisk. But, once a week should be enough. You can specify that this be done automatically at a particular time identified by you.

Clean-up will delete Internet Explorer Cache, which is just files of data from pages you have viewed, it serves to make frequently viewed pages load faster.. It also removes cookies etc. (which do not actually take up much space) aim to do this once a month.


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