Freeing Up RAM?

[Lilith Morgaine]

I have a Dell Dimension 8400 with Windows XP Media Ed. and only 512 RAM. I feel it's the only bad feature of my computer, but it's slowing everything down.

1.) Is there a program I can DL to free up RAM, or otherwise help?

2.) What steps could I take to free up RAM?

3.) If I needed to get RAM in the future, where the best deals and is it hard to install?

[Cloaked Raven]

I don't know of any programs that would help you free up your RAM. But I do know that 512 MB is not a lot in this day and age.

I wouldn't run too many programs at once... Windows itself is taking up a lot of the RAM without you running anything else... In fact, XP takes up more than half of what you currently have in your computer. Add in your web browser and your anti-viral/spyware and you're probably using all of your RAM, which slows things down a lot.

How old is your system??? I know that any computers made within the last 2 or three years have a different type of RAM than ones made earlier than that and RAM for an older system is getting hard to find. My old system took RAM that only cost me $20 for 384 MB two years ago. RAM for my current system costs on average about $44 Cdn. plus taxes for 1 GB at the moment.

I'd call around to the computer stores in your area and ask how much RAM for your computer would cost and how much it would cost you for them to install it. Just tell them what you have for a computer and they will probably know exactly what you're talking about.

Hope this helps.

[memnoch]

Originally Posted by Lilith Morgaine

I have a Dell Dimension 8400 with Windows XP Media Ed. and only 512 RAM. I feel it's the only bad feature of my computer, but it's slowing everything down.

1.) Is there a program I can DL to free up RAM, or otherwise help?

2.) What steps could I take to free up RAM?

3.) If I needed to get RAM in the future, where the best deals and is it hard to install?

There are several things you can do that will help, depending on how drastic you want to go. The best option would be to reformat and reinstall Windows. If you can't do that remove everything you do not use, also if you have a lot of links on your desktop, move them into folders, you want the fewest links on your desktop possible. You will want to defrag your computer as well as run a few programs such as ccleaner and malwarebytes.

As for where to buy ram, I suggest newegg.com, but you must know exactly what you are looking for that way you buy the right ram based on your hardware.

With that said the best option may be to sell it on Craigslist (you can usually get $50 for a P4 computer), and buy a new one, you can get something like this for $250
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olstempl...c=abcat0500000

[Diashto]

Originally Posted by Lilith Morgaine

1.) Is there a program I can DL to free up RAM, or otherwise help?

2.) What steps could I take to free up RAM?

There isn't really a way to "Free up ram", like you would harddrive space. If you prevent some things from starting up (all the little gadgets and gizmos that load with the icons by the clock) that could help you speed up some, but putting more RAM in it is usually alot easier, and less time consuming.

3.) If I needed to get RAM in the future, where the best deals and is it hard to install?

It's not difficult to install at all.. pretty much just snap in place.

This is what you'd need:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/NewPro...82E16820231036

I would recommend two of them (and remove the ones that are there).. but one would definately give you a performance increase.