puntoMX

MSI is working hard on their motherboards as well, could be an option too .

Yes, the E3300 is a great pick for 40-45USD, supports VT, 2.5GHz, 1MB cache, 800MT/s Bus and about 4 times as fast as your current CPU, get that with a G31(ICH7)/G41(ICH7)/P45((ICH10®)with a video card) mobo and you are done. Also AMD has a nice Athlon II 240/245 AM3 CPU for a low price, combine that with a AMD 760G/710 chipset based mobo, might be a bit more expensive than the Intel setup but could be worth it when you look at the onboard GPU, better southbridge (compared to the ICH7) and a faster CPU. No need to buy an Intel brand motherboard, you burned your fingers ones on that so why do it again?

Just a note, remember that you are running XP with SP3, the notebook came with SP1? If so, install a fresh copy and update it from there to SP3, but before you do this, install all the Sony drivers and software. It gets so bad with their software, that I even returned some notebooks to customers with the words "call Sony", you install one driver/software and it breaks the other, so, what should be installed first of 40 files that you can download for their page?... What a joy and a waste of my time. Any way, try a SP1 XP with no updates and install that webcam driver with software first to see if that works.

@ DJB, If you have an AMD chipset and you like to speed up your PC, install the AMD chipset drivers and set ACHI in the BIOS, could be a new install but your score will go up, say 7.1 to 7.3 for the HDD. NoteI didn't test if I could switch between SATA (IDE) and ACHI without problems without re-installing Windows... That's just a small upgrade .

You are talking about the badly designed P4 478, with a bus speed of 400MHz (quad pumped 100Mhz), so a 200MHz DDR (100MHz x2) stick would be in sync with the CPU, so, when you have a 800MHz RDRAM you would have twice the bandwidth over any DDR stick that can be useful, so, you are right with your statement there, however... The 333 DDR and 266 DDR should not be much of a difference with those CPUs and I can hardly believe you can feel the difference; it must have been the timing on those DDR modules that gave you a smoother experience. I don't know much about what flash does with memory or so, but it must be a lot of reads/writes at random addresses. EDIT: The CPU on the i850, was that not a socket 423?

Ah the joy of Sony notebooks... Even me as a no newbee to drivers and so, HATE Sony software/drivers so much that I would not buy anything from SONY when it comes to computers (okay, I stop ranting now ). I see that the install of the driver didn't go trough and that it's using a driver made/from Microsoft some how. You could also revert back to SP1 or so that came with the notebook and install the service packs over that but let's do it a different way. like ricktendo64 said, a hardware ID of the device could lead to the correct driver.

I would keep that system as is. If you need something that reacts and feels smoother you would be better off buying a new system.

You are only going to see a speed difference in the cache I believe. It may not be worth upgrading if you are already using HyperThreading. Ow yes he will feel the difference for sure, note that a HT CPU isn't a real dual cored CPU and a dual core for sure is; the cache is something less to worry about.It's just no use to upgrade only the CPU, he will be stuck with the older and more expensive models...

MSE eats up a bit more for my feeling; I won't install that on a 256MB machine, besides that, I won't service a PC with less than 320MB (XP start up plus MSE will use 320MB without tweaking).

Mass Effect 2 here, lots of fun if it's your kind of game. Playing it now on the heaviest level!

No problems with free version of AVG here, never have seen the problems you two had, Tarun and CoffeeFiend. But, with Microsoft Security Essentials I dropped AVG; best Anti malware in my eyes and for free as well!

Word goes that they are looking for better IGPs as well, so they are looking for AMD/ATI setups as well.

Now, don't start to kick me, but the new 7200.11 drives come out well... But I can feel with you, Seagate just wanted to ignore the users and that ain't right. I buy my drives from a local wholesale that gives me the 3 year warranty, Also I run RAID 1 for my backup.

4 years for a notebook is a good age, hell, most will not make the 2 years. And if you are really talking about a bad design, take the V3000 from HP/Compaq with nVidia 6100/410 / 6150/430 chipsets and you have a winner; trash in less than 6 months. The ACER Acer Aspire 4520 has a nVidia chipset as well... now, what did we learn today?

And that's almost impossible to find in India, so, look for a E3300 and a G41/P45 chipset baset mobo, 90 bucks and you are ready.

Leave the USB where it is and use the UTP with a small 5 ports network switch or so, this way you will have no problems and it's connected at it should be .

I think that the IDE controller isn't supported as you would like in Windows 7. Just my 0.02. If the computer has less memory, Windows 7 will lower the memory usage and page a bit more.On a clean install on an average system, with microsoft security essentials installed and running a 479MB of "free" RAM (32/33MB shared memory) will use: 270MB to 300MB of RAM (yes, that low) 210MB Cached 60MB Paged kernel 11MB Non-paged kernel 0 to 15MB "free" memory memory in total with page is set at 1500MB and 33% of that is "in use" Now, I must say that with 1GB it works way better, that for sure .

Well, it's just the display name in the device manager. It's not needed to edit that but it's just the finishing touch.I would have expected that people already switched to Vista or Windows 7 and that this topic would have been dead by now (note that support for XP is going down by the day and that for example the new live messenger won't be working (unless you hack it yes) on XP. That as a side note). MDGx made it simple i hope . If I need to update the first post, let me know by PM.

So, I updated my AMD drivers and checked how well it goes with the over-popular Seagate (Seabrick yes ) 7200.11 1.5GB. CPU is a AMD X4 620 with L3 cache unlocked and working at 3.4GHz Memory is DDR3 @ 1400MT/s 7-7-7-15-20 Video card is a HD4730 at stock speeds (700 GPU and 3600 RAM) Motherboard with AMD SB750 southbridge Processor: 7.4 Memory (RAM): 7.7 Graphics: 7.1 Gaming graphics: 7.1 Primary hard disk: 7.4 Doesn't look that bad .

Doesn't look hardware related, but try to install DX9.0c and see what happens. Post back please.

It's the panel for 100%; The connector on top of the screen that is glued to the LCD grid is not making good contact any more. Solution: Replace LCD... no other way...

Hitachi makes reliable drives, not the fastest but hard to kill... I believe that Google servers also use them by default.

The BIOS will not accept any 45nm fabrication process based CPUs, I also presume that the VRM (Voltage regulator module) on that motherboard doesn't support the right voltage and power. In short, you need to find an outdated CPU to place on that motherboard, you are better off upgrading the motherboard too. A E3300 CPU (45 USD) with a simple 45USD motherboard will give you a great upgrade for 90USD.

I wasn't finished with my list but now it is .The Silverstone is indeed a nice case and I must say to pick a case is a personal taste. The HD5850 is a beast indeed, a it overkill I believe for what you will be doing with it. The 550W PSU will haul it indeed, I don't see a problem there . EDIT: the cooler that come with AMD CPUs are a bit... well... too cheap build. You could look for an aftermarket cooler there; I like the prices on the Coolermaster as much other brands just sell hot air.

Now, I would forget the case you have now an build yourself a computer with a new full (mid-tower) ATX case; You will get generally better/more airflow, more space to work inside and can fit a full ATX board as well. So, you like to play the latest flight simulators and use 1 screen to play it on? You would be fine with some latest generation ATI HD5xxx card and a simple quad core from AMD (model 620 or 630 for example), some 3 to 4GB of DDR3 RAM, new case with space for 12cm fans and a motherboard that supports USB3 / SATA gen.3. Let me give you an example from newegg (where you looked too): The CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 630 Propus 2.8GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Processor http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103704 99USD The Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-770T-USB3 AM3 AMD 770 USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128431 89USD The Video Card: SAPPHIRE 100283-2L Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102864 160USD The RAM: Crucial Ballistix 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model BL2KIT25664BN1337 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148323 114USD The Case: COOLER MASTER RC-690-KKN1-GP Black SECC/ ABS ATX Mid Tower Computer Case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119137 80USD 542USD in total...