Dell Dimension 4450 RAM upgrade

[rabbit]

That happened to me.  I reinstalled Windows and it's fine now.  But after 5 years, you should have reinstalled Windows at least once, probably twice.

[trust]

That happened to me.  I reinstalled Windows and it's fine now.  But after 5 years, you should have reinstalled Windows at least once, probably twice.

They're my grandparents. They were able to get online so why would they even consider reinstalling? 

[chuck]

Put a live linux CD in, and show them how much faster it is. If they like it, install it for them, else, just use the CD when your using the computer.

You're recommending that his grandparents use linux?!

Why not? I find linux just as easy as using a mac for simple tasks like web browsing and email.

[Chavo]

How do you figure the MBR is corrupt?

I remember reading somewhere that it can cause a prolonged blank screen during startup.

Depends on where you are seeing it...however a corrupt MBR wouldn't cause slowdowns during anything but boot.

Get rid of the freakin 256mb DIMM.  Memory can only run at one frequency (unless you have dual channel and then its one frequency per channel).  Guess whether it runs at the slower or faster frequency.

Defrag the drive.

If it is an ntfs formatted partition, run chkdsk on it too.  Then run it again unless it said it found no errors/didn't fix anything.  These should be obvious things before upgrading memory.  I'm obviously too late or I would have recommended you use Mushkin's memory finder instead of Best Buy as well.

[trust]

I had to buy it at Best Buy because that's what's here. My grandparents are computer illiterate and wouldn't function on Linux nor did I have time to teach them to use it. Plus, I'm not a huge fan of Linux so I doubt they would be.

I removed the 256 and just left the 512 in there. My grandma said she could notice a difference and was happy with the result. They let the computer sleep more than shutting it down so I suppose the black screen on boot doesn't really matter.