Computer help?

I just measured a 3.5 inch drive. It's actual size is 4 x 5.9, and almost 1 inch depth. That's to help you identify. It is called 3.5, because it is designed to fit in the same space as a 3.5 inch floppy drive. There was a break through in disk technology a few years ago, that pushed prices down and capacities up. That's the processor type. The original pentium was the 80586 processor, from around 1995. You probably have something newer and faster than that, but with "pentium" still part of the name.

CD's aren't magnetic, they encode data optically, so they're all but immune to magnetic fields and the like. But they can be ruined by scratches on the data side (the side without the label) so keep them in some kind of sleeve or jewel case.Keep that stuff off your magnetic storage, though - things like hard drives and floppy disks. Old (ATA) and new (SATA) technologies for hard drives to connect to computers. We're pretty sure that, if your computer is as old as you make it out to be, you'll want to ask the guy at the store for their cheapest ATA hard drive. Even on the offchance that your geek friends gifted you with a system that uses SATA hard drives - and those only became common in mid/low-range desktops in about the past 1-2 years - your computer will still have support for the older hard drive technology. They can be. There's a lot of competition among hard drive makers so the prices go up and down, and sometimes the stores offer deep discounts. If wherever you go can't offer you a drive for under $100, go somewhere else.

What Jazzns did was free up some RAM for you. Your computer isn't running all those startup programmes now so RAM is available to do the work you want. XP is heavy on RAM and if your computer is old then it might be a bit light in this area. I worked on a mates computer which ran either slow or stop. The advice I got included removing startup stuff but there was more you can do to free RAM. This you've done although I question what virus programme your running if nothing gets started automatically. I left his McAfee checked in the startup box. You said you ran a virus checker but have you nothing on all the time to prevent stuff coming in in the first place? This gets rid of unnecesary detail in your XP display (sexy shadowing and highlights and stuff). It will look very much the same whilst releasing some RAM for important use I did these things an his computer came back to life. No speedy gonzalez but it runs reliably.Furthermore...I used CCleaner (a piece of freeware recommended IIRC by Asgara). It does a general cleanout of old files but it has a registry cleaner too. The registary cleaner ("Issues" on the side bar) seems to work well enough and might find something wrong. You can run it and it will scan and give you a list of issues in the registry. It takes no action with them unless you decide to "fix issues".I've heard the odd story that if you don't know what you are resolving by way of issue you might cause problems. I've run it on 3 or 4 computers ( by just pressing 'fix issues' and haven't had any problem with it. Depends on if your a risk taker or not CCleaner Makes Your Computer Faster & More Secure | Official WebsiteTheres a download link on the home page - a little ways down the pageEdited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

just about right--the data side is the most important part, hence that piece of plastic underneath it. The label is, then, the most important part to protect--it is the most easily damaged part of the cd, and if you scratch that label, you've scratched the data. My best of chuck mangione got ruined because of that, as well as my broadway soundtrack of the lion king.In other words--protect that label side with your life--the other side with half your life

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If the cd doesn't work anymore, you can always get openoffice for free. It's essentially the same thing as microsoft word. Just play around with it for a few minutes and you will very quickly find that it's the same as ms office. Like everything, you can get something for as cheap as you like or as expensive as you like. A house can cost as little as $50k and as much as $100 million.Jazzns is recommending you to get one of the more expensive ones to get the quality with it. I have a different philosophy on that. In regards to computers, I almost always get the cheapest parts I could find. I've spent years testing everything from the most expensive hardware pieces to the least expensive ones and my experiences tell me unless you're doing something that involves life and death getting the expensive pieces is only a waste of money.Besides, everytime you spend that much money to get the latest, most badass stuff, you will quickly find that by the time you got it home they've already come up with something else newer, better, and more badass than yours.If all you're doing is typing papers for work and going online, you will not notice any difference between a 30 dollar harddrive and a 2 million dollar harddrive.Same thing with memory. The technology nowadays has allowed for mass production of relatively decent memory cards. The only reason you'd want to get the best ram on the market is if you're among computer nerds like myself and would like to show off to his fellow computer nerds how much money he wasted on a damn piece of computer hardware... just like that fellow across the street from my house that spent 500 bucks on a koi.Added by edit.Here is a joke to lighten up the mood.Two IT guys were talking in a bar after work. "Guess what," says
the first IT guy, "I met this gorgeous blonde in a bar.""What did you do?" says the other IT guy."Well, I invited her over to my place, we had a couple of drinks,
we got into the mood and then she suddenly asked me to take all
her clothes off!""You're kidding me!" says the second IT guy."Nope." says IT guy one. "I took her miniskirt off, and then I
lifted her up and put her on my desk, next to my new laptop.""Really?" asked the second IT guy. "You got a new laptop?"Edited by gasby, : No reason given.

What's a "processor" as opposed to a hard drive?(Told you I'm not very computer literate.)

The processor, otherwise known as the cpu (computer processor unit), is the part of the computer that carries out the instructions. It's the part that adds 2 and 2 to make 4 when you want to make such a calculation on your computer.The harddrive is only a storage unit.In comparason to your brain...Harddrive = long term memory
RAM = short term memory
processor = your personality/consciousness
motherboard = hypothalamus
electricity = blood with oxygenStuff like that...

I think the level of trouble-shooting will have to drop a notch or two guys and gals.Why don't you just buy a new computer. They can't be that expensive stateside. The one you have sounds like a right dog and it also sounds like your not using it for mega-complex stuff (unlike crash who seems to have installed and industrial refrigeration unit to keep his supercharged processor (read brains) cool.Spending money on an old car is a fools errand and if your not sure what you are doing you could pour money in an old dog of a computer. Even the most basic computer will likely be far better than what you have.

Just to round out my options, if I could get together $500 or $600 for a new computer, what could I get for that much? What would you all recommend?I need MS Publisher, not Word, and Excel, and I'm on the internet a lot both for work and play, but none of that takes a lot of power. But I do tend to collect a lot of stuff on the computer, would like to be able to store all the back years of work, plus quite a bit of stuff I download from emails and the internet, without taxing the system. People do send me a lot of pictures and I now have a scanner so I send some myself. It would be REALLY nice to be able to hear a streaming audio or watch an online video without all the stopping and buffering, but maybe that's because I'm on dialup and not about the computer itself?

Do you think someone is telling us something?

I suspect that a geek could make mine work great, but I'm not a geek and my niece is currently on the outs with my geek nephew-in-law, and others I have known don't seem to be around any more, so you may be right, and I just wrote the post at the same time as yours inviting recommendations. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

So a processor, all that pentium stuff, is on those boards in the CPU, and the hard drive collects information or something like that.

Blessed are the poor in bandwidth for they shall inherity the earth. I take my hat off sis.Yup, dialup is your problem. Your trying to get highway volumes of traffic down a country lane.

With about 400$, you could get a computer with intel celeron 1 or so GHz with 80 or 100 GB harddrive and 256 MB DDR memory. What's more, with $14.95/month, you could get DSL via AT&T.The computer itself will, of course, come with a set of speakers and necessary softwares like the drivers for the hardwares and microsoft office. In most cases, however, you will only get office as a tryout version for a limited amount of time. I highly recommend you start using openoffice.And by the way, with DSL, the amount of time it takes for buffering is considerably less.Your choice.On a different note, right click on my computer and select properties. Tell me everything that you see on the first screen there.Added by edit.PS - The computer I am currently using is almost 8 years old. I've spent less than 150 bucks over the years to keep it running. It's still working fine for me, and you'd be surprised to know how much stuff I do with this baby.Edited by gasby, : No reason given.

It is the part that avtually does the computing. In your machine is is likely a flat square about 1 1/2" on a side and about 1/8" thick.Short course.RAM = the memory actually used during processing. They will look like long cards with smaller rectangualr chips lined up on one or more likely two sides. There will be one or more near identical memory cards and they will be arranged in a bank.Think of memory as the space on your desk where you work. Various things are taken out, worked on and then put back in storage.Hard Drive = storage or filing cabinet. This is a rectangular device, about the size nwr posted. It is a shell and inside will be one or more disks that revolve at a moderate speed, usually 7500 RPM or less. This is were you keep all of the things that you are not using right now. When you turn your computer off, it cleans off your desk, the stuff you had in memory, in RAM. But all the stuff on the hard drive is retained, like what is in a filing cabinet.Processor (AKA CPU) = You. It is what actually does the work. It gets things from the hard drive, moves them onto the desk (RAM), works on them and then puts the finished process away, either back on the hard drive or off to a printer or out onto the internet.You can see some of these here

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