My brother in law is convinced he's got a virus or somethings wrong with his
computer. After running Belarc Adviser to see what his computer was made up
of it shows he's only got 128 Mg of ram. I d'loaded AVG, Adaware and Spybot
to clean it up ( he did have a virus and bunches of malware) but the box is
painfully slow. Applications take so long to load it's a chore even working
on it. Will XP even function on 128, I told him I thought the minimum was at
least 256 if not more. He has room for 2 more sticks ( 2 empty slots) and
can max it out at something like 792 according to Crucial.

"the staring frogs of Southern Iberia" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Will XP even function on 128, I told him I thought the minimum was at
>least 256 if not more.

It will ABSOLUTELY SUCK with that little RAM.

Upgrade his computer to as much as it will take.

"the staring frogs of Southern Iberia" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:%(E-Mail Removed)...
> My brother in law is convinced he's got a virus or somethings wrong with
his
> computer. After running Belarc Adviser to see what his computer was made
up
> of it shows he's only got 128 Mg of ram. I d'loaded AVG, Adaware and
Spybot
> to clean it up ( he did have a virus and bunches of malware) but the box
is
> painfully slow. Applications take so long to load it's a chore even
working
> on it. Will XP even function on 128, I told him I thought the minimum was
at
> least 256 if not more. He has room for 2 more sticks ( 2 empty slots) and
> can max it out at something like 792 according to Crucial.
>
>

XP will run with 128 megs of RAM but quite poorly.
256megs is a more realistic minimal number

Go into the control panel, system
and on the advanced tab....set for best performance


that will help a little but the real solution is to add more ram

I'd add a stick of 512megs

Thanks. The confusing part is he has supposedly two identical computers that
he uses in his used car business that are networked and the other seems a
lot quicker. It's still not fast but definetly faster than the one I'm
working on.

the staring frogs of Southern Iberia wrote:
> My brother in law is convinced he's got a virus or somethings wrong
> with his computer. After running Belarc Adviser to see what his
> computer was made up of it shows he's only got 128 Mg of ram. I
> d'loaded AVG, Adaware and Spybot to clean it up ( he did have a
> virus and bunches of malware) but the box is painfully slow.
> Applications take so long to load it's a chore even working on it.
> Will XP even function on 128, I told him I thought the minimum was
> at least 256 if not more. He has room for 2 more sticks ( 2 empty
> slots) and can max it out at something like 792 according to
> Crucial.

First - 128MB iwill run slow on any Windows XP machine.
Second - having seen you respond that he has an identical machine that is
running faster - I have to ask just *how* identical is it? Same video card?
Same processor? Same hard disk drive? Same stuff installed?

It could be that you have *not* cleaned it up. The only way to be sure is
backup important (to them) stuff and clean install it.

Max it if possible in RAM (max them both out if there are plans to keep
these indefinitely.) Know that computers that will probably out-perform
this one with 3 year warranties would cost $300-$600 before doing it,
however.

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

On Mar 30, 5:16 pm, "the staring frogs of Southern Iberia"
<nob...@nowhere.net> wrote:
> My brother in law is convinced he's got a virus or somethings wrong with his
> computer. After running Belarc Adviser to see what his computer was made up
> of it shows he's only got 128 Mg of ram. I d'loaded AVG, Adaware and Spybot
> to clean it up ( he did have a virus and bunches of malware) but the box is
> painfully slow. Applications take so long to load it's a chore even working
> on it. Will XP even function on 128, I told him I thought the minimum was at
> least 256 if not more. He has room for 2 more sticks ( 2 empty slots) and
> can max it out at something like 792 according to Crucial.

I'd look at Control Panel / System ... General tab: The last line on
my system announce the speed and size of RAM.

HTH,
Richard

"the staring frogs of Southern Iberia" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:%(E-Mail Removed)...
> Thanks. The confusing part is he has supposedly two identical computers
that
> he uses in his used car business that are networked and the other seems a
> lot quicker. It's still not fast but definetly faster than the one I'm
> working on.
>
>


Well, to get the most out of the machine...
in addition to setting for best performance as I've already mentioned...

you may want to run a disk cleanup and defrag the harddrive

also run msconfig and take any unneeded applications out of startup.

You will need to leave the virus checker there...but chances are,
anything else there can be taken out.

But definately consider adding more RAM ithe prices have been pretty good
lately

Thanks for all suggestions. Machines are Compaq Deskpro En. Didn't run
Belarc on the "good" machine, probably should have to determine if they are
indeed the same. Gotta go find some memory, thanks.

Wrong decision. That computer will not use DDR2 memory. And any other
memory is very expensive because it is no longer commercial. You need to
know when to junk something that is making you less productive.

"the staring frogs of Southern Iberia" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Thanks for all suggestions. Machines are Compaq Deskpro En. Didn't run
> Belarc on the "good" machine, probably should have to determine if they
> are indeed the same. Gotta go find some memory, thanks.
>

"kookieman" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Wrong decision. That computer will not use DDR2 memory. And any other
> memory is very expensive because it is no longer commercial. You need to
> know when to junk something that is making you less productive.
>
> "the staring frogs of Southern Iberia" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
message
> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> > Thanks for all suggestions. Machines are Compaq Deskpro En. Didn't run
> > Belarc on the "good" machine, probably should have to determine if they
> > are indeed the same. Gotta go find some memory, thanks.
> >
>
>

LOL I just bought 2 gigs of DDR-1 for $80 total.
It's never been cheaper.

The only RAM that's too expensive to think about is that RDRAM which
probably costs $500
for a gig