Im having a few problems with my laptop. Its slow opening programs, and general performance is shite.

Its a Dell Inspiron 1300. Mainly have problems when images are on a page, it says "virtual memory too low"? then often crashes the programs. I only tend to have Firefox and msn open at any one time, and occasionally paint but thats it, hardly testing it am I?

Also, a second problem Im having is random crashes, the whole lot goes down, and i just get a colour on the entire screen. It has been blue/red/black/purple/green.... no text or warning, just boom and i have to restart.

I have AVG and have run diagnostics, nothing untoward found. Done a defrag and nothing helps.

Need to get a new one anyway, but I'd like to keep this one working. If not, i need inventive ideas on how to destroy it.

Steve

 

You need to see what programs you have running in the background, if you have lots then you'll need to grab yourself some more RAM or disable them at startup. You could also try increasing your Virtual Memory allocation.

To be honest Steve, RAM is really cheap nowadays so get onto Dell Website and buy yourself a couple of sticks, it'll be a simple plug and play jobbie.

Also do some general housekeeping in terms of what programs you have installed and how much space you have on your main hard drive, I'd expect you to see an improvement in performance if you can clear 30% of your current hard drive.

Hope that helps
Tim

 

Cheers tim

I have no idea whats running in the background, is that the icons next to the clock in the bottom right? i dont know how to disable/uninstall them

 

it's loading up all the images and filling up the memory,

how much memory has it got ?

what OS?

 

System Properties says:

Windows XP

1.60ghz

248mb RAM

 

Also, hard drive

total size: 34.0GB

Free Space: 21.2GB

 

how many images are you trying to load at a time?

in what program?

are they "high res" pictures?

right click on the task bar and choose task manager, that will tell you whats using all your memory

 

Its mainly resto threads and pic threads on here and other forums. I try to only load one page at a time, and keep my tabs down to about 3-4.
Will look at task manager, cheers spiky.

 

There is your problem. 1.6ghz not so bad but only 248MB ram is next to useless. Need about 4 times that amount ie 1GIG Ram and then all will ok

 

Cheers Rich!
Had a quick look on ebay like Tim suggested and found a 1GB RAM for £12.

Do you know if i can get a 2GB one, or fit 2x1GB cards at all?

 

Type your pc model into google, or visit crucial.com, and do a system scan on their site, it will tell you exactly what ram you need and how much you can fit.

But yeah 200 odd ram is very low, should get at least 1 gig but 2 if your machine supports it

 

as it is XP 512mb will be suffuiecnt

anything over this and it's a waist

if you were running vista, 230 GIG might just be enough

 

For £12, it might be a high density ram stick. Check wether your Dell can take high density, might need low density.

 

Yes Steve you can fit 2x1GB Memory Sticks to your Laptop.

Dell reccomend the following - http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna...4&chassisid=-1

If you can find those bits elsewhere for cheaper then great but personally I'd buy with Dell for peace of mind.

HTH
Tim

 

Just out of curiosity, how did you get on upgrading this?