One Last Effort

I have an old Dell C610 Laptop (about 2006). I use it around the house mainly for web browsing. The laptop came with Win98SE installed. Later I upgraded to Win XP SP3 which currently resides on the laptop. It only has 512MB Ram and is a Pentium III.

I realize fully it is a dinosaur. However, I still want to try to keep it as one last effort before forking out bucks for a newer laptop. However, it runs so slow when browsing. I know for a fact that it used to run a lot faster. Thus I want to take the laptop back to the basics and see if I can get better web browsing experiences out of it.

My question is this: I want to reinstall the OS. I have a reserve "full install" OEM XP disk that IS NOT from Dell. Can I go ahead and install that non Dell OEM XP OS onto the Dell C610? -OR- do I have to go back to the beginning and install the original Dell WIN98SE then proceed with an upgrade into XP?

Thanks for any help.

 

You can try to install from the oem xp disk, but it is not guaranteed to work, in which case, you can do the latter.

 

You may not need to go through all of that. The Latitude C610 can support up to 1GB of RAM. How much do you have in it? The browsers van gobble up 200MB of RAM easily, especially if you've got multiple tabs open. And if you've got more than one browser open at a time (like I sometimes do) it ban use more than half of your RAM and REALLY slow things down. The Latitude C610 uses low density PC133 RAM. You should be able to get 2 - 512MB modules for less than $30 on ebay and it's easy to replace in the laptop.

 

mdonah,

Thank you. Couple of questions for you ... where was it you found that the C610 could go to 1GB? Let me know if you would please. I could have sworn I looked that up a year ago and found that 512 was the max. Now, moving on, let's say I can go 1GB; I just found out something today as I successfully used the OEM disk to install XP SP2. I still need to download SP3. I found out that Microsoft is stopping ALL XP support on April 12th. (I may not be able to download SP3 period in the next few days; I don't know yet). Anyway, would that mean that I can no longer receive any virus definitions/updates from ANY antivirus provider? I was using Microsoft Essentials Antivirus but could not get it to install today on SP2 at all. However, I have not yet went to Dell's website and downloaded all current drivers. Is that maybe the reason why - the drivers and SP3? Then I went to AVG Free 2014 and it would only load a portion of the entire AVG Free Antivirus package; But I do have antivirus now for the meantime. I can't really recall what the holdup for the entire install was. I was not focusing closely enough as it proceeded.

So in summary, do you think I am or am not protected antivirus wise after April 12th, 2014? I'd hate to get a virus on this old laptop and have it travel through the home network here.

Let me know what you have to say on all of this if you don't mind.

Thanks kindly,

 

I found the max RAM capacity here. If you Google "Dell Latitude C610 specs", the second item is a spec sheet in PDF format from Dell that says the same.

You'd definitely need XP SP3. Microsoft support for SP2 ended in July of 2010. Did that non-Dell OEM activate? If not, you'll only have 30 days to use it. The SP3 is also necessary for AVG and many other programs.

Microsoft support for XP ends on April 8th not 12th which means you won't get any security updates for XP after that. However, definition updates for MSE will continue to be available until April 15, 2015. Third party AV and antimalware will still be available for XP. But, on my XP drive, a Windows Update notice came up in my system tray. It was for an update for the MSE app. When I installed it, a nag screen about the end of support for XP immediately came up and the system tray icon is orange with a white exclamation mark inside it. It comes up every time I restart the computer in XP as well.

If you upgrade your RAM, you may have the minimum requirements to run Vista Home Basic or another version of Vista. This page shows the minimum hardware requirements.

I've got Vista Ultimate installed on my "C:\" drive and XP installed on a drive that's in a modular/media drive bay caddy. With Vista, I'm "good to go" until April 15, 2017. As far as XP, I'm going to "re-do" everything in the next couple of days and instead of MSE, I'm going to run Comodo Internet Security (contains firewall, AV and Comodo Dragon browser that can be run "sandboxed"), SuperAntiSpyware and Spyware Blaster. I'll have to check for compatibility/conflicts on anything else I may run.

 

mdonah,

Very interesting that your are still an XP user also. I did actually Google a spec sheet on the C610 last night. See it here. Sure enough it says 1GB max Ram, I'll look at your link also.

Yep, the non Dell OEM did activate. I started about ten minutes ago 9:08am CDT with the download/install of SP3. I likewise had SP3 on the previous install on the laptop. Comodo ... So, what do you think of it? I have never known about it. I could not get MSE installed yesterday so I installed AVG just to be temporarily safe while surfing. AVG did crash my desktop computer one time. I'm pretty certain that the MSE install issue was because I was still at the SP1 level. Today, I am going to uninstall AVG and then go through the registry and manually remove every reference to AVG. Ever since AVG caused an international goof up scandal about 4 years ago I have detested them and have been EXTREMELY skeptical of their quality control.

Do you know of anything in particular that I would gain with Vista?

As soon as SP3 is done installing I am going to remove the back cover and look at the Ram location and just get a general feel of everything relative to it. Last night I found 512MB PC133 sticks on Newegg for $28 each. Have not looked at Ebay yet. Ebay has a tendency to really irritate me anymore. Seems like all it is anymore is "small stores". The individual to individual aspect of Ebay trading and selling has left the scene pretty much. I have built all of my home desktops in the past 7 years (4 desktops total over the years) and I have put new hinges on the C610 screen. That was a major delicate procedure. So, that said, I can't see any trouble with the RAM. All my machines except for the C610 are running WIN 7 Pro.

Finally, What does the term "Sandboxed" mean? How do you perform the setup and what would be the profit in doing so with the Comodo browser?

 

It's a security program.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/sandboxie.html

 

Along with what PSCO2007 refers to about Sandboxie, runnibg your browsers in "sandboxed" mode is like running a virtual browser in as much as nothing can get to your computer. Once the sandboxed browser is closed, it's gone. Nothing remains in any temp folder or registry value.

Comodo received top marks in AV/firewall tests and has steadily improved it's performance. The AV part of it is cloud based like Panda. There's a pass/fail test called Leak Test that Windows firewall and others fail but Comodo won't even let it run. It quarantines it as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program).

Initially, Vista was a dog. But over time it's been much improved. When I get updates through Windows Update, there is a platform update and a platform update supplement that get installed. Also with Vista is the fact that Microsoft will still be supporting it beyond April 8th. Vista configured my devices very well during installation. There were only two devices that it didn't configure (my Sigmatel C Major audio and my Dell Alps Touchpad). But for those my XP drivers work. That wasn't the case when I tried out Win 7. Another poster in another thread said that running drivers in compatibility mode worked for him in Win 7. But, why should you have to do that?

MGs has an AVG Removal Tool that should make completely removing AVG a snap.

As far as ebay, over the past year, I've had transactions with just as many private individuals as with "small stores". It's been with the individuals that I've had a couple of problematic transactions — not the "small stores". The prices, including shipping, are lower on ebay than at places like newegg or Crucial — important to me because I'm on a limited, fixed income. I get used (but tested) or refurbished computer parts for my Dell Precision M70 laptop. I've replaced the system board, graphics card, inverter board, flex cable and upgraded the hard drive and RAM. I even got a floppy drive that can either go in the modular/media bay or connect via USB cable along with a couple of external DVD +/- RWs.

 

mdonah,

Thanks for the bunches of good information. I did not know about the MG AVG Removal Tool. I need to check MGs more often before I take steps to do things. I have already went through the regedit manually to get rid of AVG. Maybe I'll run the MG tool again anyway to make certain. I ended up getting 1GB PC133 RAM on Ebay because the Newegg set was 168 pin and I needed 144 pin. Saved $20. That's a good thing. I am going to study Vista and see if I should put it on the laptop. I wish that I could upgrade to a whole new more modern motherboard. WHAT I REALLY want to do is build my own laptop. I am going to start looking at the possibilities and needs to do just that. Anyway, thanks again for your help. I'll be back at ya if I come up with any other issues relative to this post.