Memory upgrade school 101

We have Roadrunner High Speed internet. We also have a Dimension 4600 system. It came with 74GB of original memory. I wanted to upgrade the memory because we were down to 5.68 GB of free space and our system is slowing down. So I added 2GB. When I rebooted, I got a black screen recognizing the upgrade and asking if I wanted to do a F2 and go to setup. Since it recognized the upgrade and my instructions didn't inform me of the black screen I came to, I decided to go on and with the startup. Then, per instructions that came with the memory sticks, I went to My Computer, Properties, General Tab and it doesn't recognize the memory I added. I moused over the C: drive and it says I still have the same amount of free space. So I reseated the sticks, updated the BIOS on the Dell web page, according to the Crucial website, and still have the same amount of free space. I'm stuck. I was hoping that more memory would increase computer speed. What I am I not understanding here? I did a live chat with Crucial and they said I didn't add more space to the hard drive; I only added more memory to the motherboard. I'm a newbie at this, but these threads have helped me so much in the past that I thought I'd try again. Can you help me?

 

What you added was RAM or random access memory, and should speed up your computer once your hard drive issue is addressed. The 74GB that you referred to was the physical size/storage capability of your hard drive and adding ram will not fix this as Crucial explained.

I see two options, 1. get a larger hard drive, or 2. go through your present hard drive and move some of the things that you want to keep ( movies, pictures, documents, etc. to CD/DVD. You could also read and follow the advice in this link, http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=106650. It may reduce the amount of space used on your hard drive, but is good advice anyway. Hope this helps!

 

There are two types of common computer memory RAM (Random Access Memory) and Storage (often referred to as Hard Drive Space). You are technically correct in calling them both memory but today "memory" usually denotes RAM and "space" or "storage" usually denote HD capacity.

RAM is very fast and is used by your computer to store data needed to run currently loaded programs. Storage is used to keep the rest of your programs and files and is accessed as needed. So when you start a program your PC gets the instructions from your Storage HD and copies the program in RAM until you close it.

You bought two sticks of RAM which gives your PC more memory for running programs. It is helpful if you usually have several programs open at a time or watch videos on the PC. If you are running XP and already had 1GB of RAM you may not notice much difference with the additional sticks unless you run a large program like Photoshop. If you right-click on My Computer and select Properties you will see the total amount of RAM installed.

The 74GB is your Hard Drive. If you want to increase this storage/space you need to buy a larger HD or add a second one. (Some Dells only have a bracket for one HD so take a look to see if you have a slot/bay to hold a second one).

 

Well, I have a better understanding of what I need. I did review and delete several programs, used my CCleaner, looked at my startup and decided I was o.k with it having previously cleaned that up; I also updated/ran my Smart Defrag 1.10. So I gained about 2.5G. So any other suggestions? I looked at my owner's manual and I can add one additional hard drive. Any suggestions on a good quality hard drive would be appreciated. And thank you!

 

I failed to mention that I have a Seagate with 404 GB of freespace! We got it in 2008 to hold my husband's itunes library and my digital pictures when the issue of memory first came up. Can I throw over McAfee and Webroot to this external drive? They seem to eat up alot of CPU space.

 

Your CPU (Central Processing Unit) is the brains of your computer. It is what does all the calculations needed to make things run. It is physically limited in its abilities. The more you have running the harder it works. Upgrading it is a completely different story and probably unnecessary for a general user. Just to give you the very basics: your CPU talks to RAM faster than it can talk to your HD, so when you open a program or file the CPU copies it off the HD puts it in RAM so it can get at it quicker does its calculations and then removes it from RAM. This process is repeated all the while you run your PC.

As far as managing your HD space you have a few options. You could leave your external Seagate plugged in all the time and keep your largest files on it rather than your C: drive. This would be the simplest way. You would just have to get used to saving larger personal files to its drive letter rather than C:\ My Documents, My Music, My Video etc.

Adding a second internal HD would work about the same. The new internal would have a different drive letter and you would have to start saving large files to it instead of C:.

You could get a new internal drive say 500gb and clone/copy your whole C: drive including operating system to it and then you would have plenty of space to run things as you have been doing. You would then have no need of using your current 74gb drive.

*******

If you have 74gb drive almost full, a lot of it has to be music, photos, video. Something has to be taking up that much space. Your general Windows files and programs (McAfee etc.) as well as documents should be less than 20gb total. The simplest way would be start using the external for storing your rarely accessed file like large music collections so you could free up space on the C: drive. You could use a program like WinDirStat that will show you which files are taking up the most space and then decide which could be moved to the external drive. [You cannot move any programs from the C: drive because they have entered instructions during installation telling Windows they are located on the C: drive]. Look for large personal files that you have saved to move over.

 

I read and considered your last post. I have to say I don’t know where all our CPU usage is going. We’re not gamers, and we have no photo-editing programs such as Photoshop on our computer. We really don’t have any large personal files. Since we use Firefox as our browser, I did have quite a few extensions which I have either disabled or uninstalled. And I honestly thought I took care of the issue of iTunes with the addition of the external hard drive. It’s a lot of music—over 40GB now. So all the digital photos and the music is on the hard drive since we purchased it. Except…

I know the iTunes data itself stays on C: except that I still see all the music titles on C: (My Documents/My Music). So did I truly free up the space on C: or is all that music still physically there? (I reviewed all the steps and made sure that the downloads are all going to the D:drive). If so then that points to your comment about the music files being the source of a lot of the 74 G of space. I know I followed all of Apple’s instructions on putting that music off on the external hard drive, but I wonder if I left something out. It‘s the only explanation I can think of for our dwindling hard drive storage.

As I said previously, I reviewed your posting about cleaning up and deleting old programs, defraging and disabling some programs from startup. Having done that, I’m still looking for solutions. Firefox seems at times to be a resource hog (especially 3.1 but I LOVE Firefox), as well as Webroot and McAfee. I’m especially considering dumping McAfee Firewall before the program expires in the fall to replace with Webroot’s firewall. I like Webroot’s real time antivirus protection and it‘s more user friendly so I’ll eventually go all Webroot instead of all McAfee.

I will also consider adding a second internal hard drive since the Dimension 4600 has an additional slot for it. ANY other articles/advice you can give at this point would be greatly appreciated.

 

to Justshootme
To see what is using your RAM and CPU usage, just open the Task Manager and watch the Processes .

 

It sure sounds like your music is still on C:.

Try Amust Disk Cleaner it will give you a quick snapshot of where your files are located. You can see from mine 4GB for Programs 3GB for Windows 2GB for Restore Points and only 800mb for all users combined. [I keep practically all my data on other partitions/drive letters]. I'm guessing your Documents and Settings folder is still 40GB.

Windirstat gives a similar snapshot where you can click on the colored boxes to see the names of the large files. You shouldn't be interested in any program or Windows files but in your case music files.

***
Next time you download a song from ITunes verify that it goes to the D: drive and that a copy is not put in your My Documents/My Music folder. If it goes only to D: then it would just be a matter of moving your current songs over to D: drive. [Since you have over 400GB available on D: you could easily just make an extra copy (for safety) of your music before messing around with ITunes settings. Just make a new folder on D: called Music Backup and drag the My Music folder over and let it copy.