Emergency RAM: can I use these PC133's?

Scott J · Post by **Scott J** » Wed Jan 06, 2010 9:38 pm

My old Dell is on its last legs. I thought I lost her about a half-hour ago when the hard-drive seemed to be stuck in a continual loop and slowed my system to a crawl. I hit the power off button, and that was probably not a good idea, because it took about another half-hour to get the computer to boot up again. It asked me to hit "F1" but that didn't do anything, so I re-booted again and it said the system was corrupt and I needed to access my system disks. That didn't seem like a good idea, so I rebooted again, and Windows finally came up.

During the down time, I opened the computer case from one of my old PC's and grabbed the RAM modules. They have "256MB PC-133" stickers on each one. My Dell has two 512MB sticks, with "PC-3200" stickers on them, and two open/available memory slots.

Before I just stick the two cannibalized 256MB PC-133 memory sticks in my old Dell to boost my total system RAM to 1.5GB, I wanted to find out from someone here whether it would work, or whether this might prematurely retire my old Dell permanently, before my new system is built (that would be bad).

Thanks,

Scott

edh · Post by **edh** » Thu Jan 07, 2010 2:22 am

That won't work. PC133 is SDRAM. PC3200 will be DDR and is a different socket size and electrically different so won't work.

I wouldn't think that adding RAM would help that much as from what you describe you may have other issues. As your system runs Windows, the install may be on it's last legs but not the hardware. A reinstall may fix the problems you are having.

fpsrandy · Post by **fpsrandy** » Thu Jan 07, 2010 10:43 am

pc133 would not fit into the ddr socket.

DDR memory is almost as obsolete as old sd ram. To get more ram for your system would probably not worth it.

You should run a hard drive utility like "SeaTools". if you poke around on seagate's website you should be to find a download for a disc iso for "Seatools DOS Bootable" which will run hard drive diagnostics for almost any manufacturer's hard drive, and will run without having windows running.

It may just repair bad sectors (or flag them not to be used) which may help with system hangs.

Scott J · Post by **Scott J** » Thu Jan 07, 2010 11:47 am

edh wrote:That won't work. PC133 is SDRAM. PC3200 will be DDR and is a different socket size and electrically different so won't work.

I wouldn't think that adding RAM would help that much as from what you describe you may have other issues. As your system runs Windows, the install may be on it's last legs but not the hardware. A reinstall may fix the problems you are having.

Hi edh,

Thanks for the info on the RAM, I was hoping to give myself a little more headroom but I understand now that the old RAM won't work. My system seems to run fine until I have about 15 tabs open in my browser, along with a couple of applications open. My Glary Utilities program (Disk clean up/management utility) shows 945MB of memory being used, out of my 1GB available RAM...

Scott J · Post by **Scott J** » Thu Jan 07, 2010 11:53 am

fpsrandy wrote:pc133 would not fit into the ddr socket.

DDR memory is almost as obsolete as old sd ram. To get more ram for your system would probably not worth it.

You should run a hard drive utility like "SeaTools". if you poke around on seagate's website you should be to find a download for a disc iso for "Seatools DOS Bootable" which will run hard drive diagnostics for almost any manufacturer's hard drive, and will run without having windows running.

It may just repair bad sectors (or flag them not to be used) which may help with system hangs.

Thanks fpsrandy,

I agree, there's no point in getting more RAM for this old PC now. I'm sure there are all kinds of things wrong with the hard drive after 6 years of use without a single re-format, I just need it to last a few more weeks...

I know it's not supposed to be difficult to re-format, and most people do it now and then to clean up their system, but I always bought "pre-built" computers before. I never learned how to re-format, or save all my information from being lost during the re-format, and (mostly?) I was afraid to try and fix something that wasn't broke.

I'm going to learn how to do these things now, in the process of my first computer build... hopefully...

Monkeh16 · Post by **Monkeh16** » Thu Jan 07, 2010 1:25 pm

Scott J wrote:I'm sure there are all kinds of things wrong with the hard drive after 6 years of use without a single re-format, I just need it to last a few more weeks...:

I'm sure there aren't. At that age it's either working or it's not. Reformatting has no bearing on the mechanical or electrical condition of the drive.

Scott J · Post by **Scott J** » Thu Jan 07, 2010 1:40 pm

Monkeh16 wrote:
Scott J wrote:I'm sure there are all kinds of things wrong with the hard drive after 6 years of use without a single re-format, I just need it to last a few more weeks...:
I'm sure there aren't. At that age it's either working or it's not. Reformatting has no bearing on the mechanical or electrical condition of the drive.

Hi Monkeh16,

I was thinking more along the lines of invalid registries, invalid short-cuts, broken dll links, tons of accumulated bloat-ware, needless background processes that have been activated over the years, etc., etc. A re-format, with a fresh WinXP install and just the programs I actually use would probably be helpful, if I understand correctly?

Thank you,

Scott

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Thu Jan 07, 2010 3:10 pm

Might as well do a virus scan, defragment, and run CCleaner.

worked wonders on a Dell I fixed for one of my dads co-workers just last night, and that only has 512mb of DDR.

Monkeh16 · Post by **Monkeh16** » Thu Jan 07, 2010 3:38 pm

Scott J wrote:
Monkeh16 wrote:
Scott J wrote:I'm sure there are all kinds of things wrong with the hard drive after 6 years of use without a single re-format, I just need it to last a few more weeks...:
I'm sure there aren't. At that age it's either working or it's not. Reformatting has no bearing on the mechanical or electrical condition of the drive.
Hi Monkeh16,

I was thinking more along the lines of invalid registries, invalid short-cuts, broken dll links, tons of accumulated bloat-ware, needless background processes that have been activated over the years, etc., etc. A re-format, with a fresh WinXP install and just the programs I actually use would probably be helpful, if I understand correctly?

Thank you,

Scott

Yes, but that has nothing to do with the state of the HDD.

RoGuE · Post by **RoGuE** » Thu Jan 07, 2010 4:51 pm

Monkeh is right, after 6 years, it works or it doesn't..there's really no mechanical deterioration untill many many more years, and by then we will all be riding SSD's

Taking care of your OS is another story. There are programs that will delete old registry items, cookies, etc. My favorite is "Advanced system care", does a good job for freeware. I also have aftermarket defragmenting tools. All in all, my computers never need to be re-formated becasue they are always as fast as the day I installed the OS. You just need to learn how to care for your OS. If you're getting too many bad sectors in your disk, it's time to transfer important stuff over to a new HDD and call it a day.

Scott J · Post by **Scott J** » Thu Jan 07, 2010 6:29 pm

RoGuE wrote:Monkeh is right, after 6 years, it works or it doesn't..there's really no mechanical deterioration untill many many more years, and by then we will all be riding SSD's

Taking care of your OS is another story. There are programs that will delete old registry items, cookies, etc. My favorite is "Advanced system care", does a good job for freeware. I also have aftermarket defragmenting tools. All in all, my computers never need to be re-formated becasue they are always as fast as the day I installed the OS. You just need to learn how to care for your OS. If you're getting too many bad sectors in your disk, it's time to transfer important stuff over to a new HDD and call it a day.

Hi RoGue,

These are all things I need to learn, and there's no time like when beginning my first PC build, where I'll have a personal investment of time and effort, as opposed to buying off-the-shelf and just plugging it in, as I've done in the past. I will take a look at Advanced System Care, and defrag my HD a little more often. Maybe once a week when I run my anti-virus scan. It would be easier if I left my computer running 24/7, then I could let it do maintenance while I'm not using it. Even on "slow scan", it slows my system down to a crawl if I'm trying to do anything else.

I use Commodo Firewall and AVG (free) anti-virus. The AVG runs a full HD scan once a week, so I think I'm okay in those departments. For back-up, I have an external WD 640GB HD, and I manually copy my critical data to it, updating it when regularly accessed files are changed. It would be nice to have an automatic back-up, but I've never heard of one that is truly "set and forget". The closest I've found is something called "ClickFree" http://www.amazon.com/Clickfree-Automat ... 191&sr=8-1

It looks promising with a lot of positive reviews on Amazon, but I haven't had a chance to research it on any of the Forums yet.

Thanks to everyone for the replies,

Scott