It's taken me awhile to start this thread, sorry. I know this may end up in flame wars. Again I am sorry.

So everyone knows my situation. Well those close to me on this site do. My computer is finally showing signs of how old it truly is. Keep in mind my computer has a Pentium 4 processor so I am guessing this setup to be almost ten years old. The problem, even after a few friends helped me here with a new hard drive and more memory, is the rest of the system. The processor can't keep up with the newer operating systems. I'm having a hard time just running XP. Found out the other day my DVD Burner drive is almost dead as it will read disc sometimes and other times it will not. Monitor is on it's last legs as well. Hard to read anything and the brightness is going out. It's an old CRT Dell monitor that is almost as old as the tower.

As Starkers had told you this computer is my main way to communicate with the things that are important in my life. So I was hoping someone out there had a few newer parts I could install to extend the life of the machine a bit. Nothing special. I already have DDR2 memory and a newer hard drive. Just need a few other things.

So carry on. Discuss I guess.


Comments (Page 13)
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on Jan 21, 2013

kona0197
Is that card better than the onboard graphics system?

Should be.

on Jan 21, 2013

Okay......7 is coming. You do know how to dual boot.....right. (Dumb question)

cause I got no idea

on Jan 21, 2013

You do know how to dual boot.....right. (Dumb question)

Yeah I do. Thanks!!

on Jan 21, 2013

Wizard do you have my address?

I got the DVD Burner in today. So far so good!

on Jan 21, 2013

Guys I don't want to go to far off topic but I had an issue. I thought I would install the new DVD-RW drive in the system I have so I could play a few games that I have on DVD. The old drive would not read the disc. After installing the drive and looking in my BIOS settings the drive is there and working fine. The problem is that XP itself does not show the drive. Any ideas on a fix? Was looking forward to playing some games to kill some time.

on Jan 21, 2013

kona0197
Quoting Uvah, reply 182You do know how to dual boot.....right. (Dumb question)

Yeah I do. Thanks!!

 

Dual booting with 8 can be problematic....be warned. 

on Jan 21, 2013

Windows is still not recognizing the drive. I did everything in that article. Any other ideas?

 

on Jan 21, 2013

Kona, put 7 on it until you get 8. 7 will see the drive.

 

You can legally run 7 for 30 days before it has to be activated. By then, you'll have 8, or a product key for 7.

 

You can get 7 from MS all day long. The OS is free, it's the product key that costs you.

 

XP doesn't have sata drivers, by default, so maybe you just need drivers.

on Jan 21, 2013

Also, did you run the FixIt file from Microsoft?

on Jan 21, 2013

Yeah I used the FixIt file from MS. It could not find the DVD-RW drive. Funny thing is that BIOS says it's there and the drive can boot bootable CDs and DVDs when the machine is turned on so this is a Windows XP issue. I would load 7 but the game I want to play only works on XP. I've tried it on 7 with no success. I have the SATA drivers for XP installed. Without them my hard drive would not work.

Any other ideas?

on Jan 21, 2013

I believe it is not showing up due to your old board. You have a sata dvd plugged into a ide plug? when you get your new old board, you should have no trouble

on Jan 21, 2013

Okay,try saying that again,.

 

Are you using a adapter to run your sata to a ide plug, could be the problem.

on Jan 21, 2013

Had a different thought, are you using a masterjumper setting on your hard drive or cable select? set to master and the dvd to slave or cable select on both, might help.

on Jan 21, 2013

The hard drive has a SATA interface. The DVD-RW drive has a SATA interface. My motherboard has 4 SATA connectors. The hard drive is plugged into one, the DVD-RW drive into another. This isn't a matter of a master/slave mess up. In fact the DVD-RW drive has no jumpers. It is a simple matter of Windows XP not recognizing the drive.

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