Let's assume you have a perfectly good pc and you want to put win98se on it.
I would start by booting from the win98se setup diskette, choose 'command
prompt' from the menu that appears, and when the A> prompt comes up, type
fdisk
Choose delete a partition, delete an extended partition, and say ok.
choose delete a partition, delete a primary partition, and say ok.
Now you can reboot with the diskette in the drive and the cd in the cdrom,
and windows will setup your drive as one big disk, which is better when its
only 4 gig.
Let's assume your parts are no newer than your 4 gig drive and the 300 mhz
cpu. Win98se should have everything you need for middle of the road
performance right on the cdrom. Going to a web site is only necessary when
the parts came out after Microsoft released the windows version, or in the
case of integrated motherboards (called on-board) when you have a
motherboard with built-in sound, modem, network, etc. then you get a driver
cd with the pc which you will load after windows is installed.
Under no circumstances would I mess with bios (ROM) flashing unless there
was something wrong with the old bios. Your bios probably won't support a
hard disk as big as they sell today, 30 gig and higher. Do you plan to get
one?
Your cpu speed could be showing 285 because your bios adjusted its memory
timing to try and match what it detected when you installed the extra 128
meg.
The cpu is still 300 mhz, but your test program is not sophisticated enough
to gauge the cpu raw speed and is using memory somehow. Since the memory is
not set to the optimum settings anymore, its negatively effecting the
overall score and the program is attributing this to a slower cpu! You may
be able to clear this up by going into cmos setup, (press del when you see
the message 'press del to enter setup' soon after you first power on the pc)
and looking for a selection on the advanced setup page that looks like
'sdram setup' and setting it to auto if it isn't set to that now. Exit setup
and say yes to save settings. Or you may have luck simply by moving the ram
to a different slot, it might force the bios to reconfigure itself.
I don't know that you need the ram upgrade, is this a personal home
computer? Unless you plan to network it with other pc's and a dsl router,
128 is plenty.
Digital imaging and sound editing can really benefit, but you won't get very
far with those until you replace your 4 gig drive with something that can
store all that stuff.
Tom Turak
-----Original Message-----
From: James Powers [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2001 9:31 AM
You should go for it, but,
1st things first. I would suggest that you take out the memory in your
computer that works, and take it with you when you return to the store where
you purchased the additional memory. Get that squared away first...the more
memory the better......
.....go to the web site of the manufacturer of your machine, armed with your
serial # and any other info you have. there are almost always updates
available. Look for ROM Flash utilities and for set-up utilities that are
newer than what you already have.......
>>> [log in to unmask] 11/08/01 07:46PM >>>
#1. I have a 300 MHZ computer 128 MB RAM 4 gig HD partioned into 2
(2000). I am thinking about installing Win 98 SE. Would it be better to
re-partion the HD into one drive reformat and then install as my CD is
full reversion. I am not sure that I know how but I have downloaded
instructions.
#2. I had recently install another 128 MB of Ram and shortly afterwards
my computer would lock up. I removed it and it seems ok now. I have a
small file that reads the speed of the processor and it now reads on 285
MHZ. Does this mean something has happened to the processor as it used
to read 300.x MHZ.
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