Is it possible to upgrade old Compaq laptop with new hard drive?

[NoMoreSnowForMe]

Originally Posted by Tek_Freek

Creating recovery discs in Windows XP. From HP Support. Using either a recovery partition on the hard drive or a program in XP.

Creating the Recovery Disc Set (Windows XP) | HP® Support

Oh yay! Excellent. Thanks!

[NoMoreSnowForMe]

Originally Posted by Tek_Freek

For the freezing and rebooting problems it never hurts to do this:

Open My Computer (or Windows Explorer) and find drive C:

Right click the drive icon and click Properties

Click the Tools tab

Click Check Now in the Error Checking section

Make sure both boxes have a check mark in them and click Start.

You should see a dialog box stating that you need to restart the computer in order for the programs to run. I'm not able to see that now so I may have it slightly wrong.

Restart the computer and wait while the programs run. It will take a while.

Don't expect to see any immediate improvement as the problems these programs find and repair are subtle, but they do fix a lot of unseen errors.

And you should try Ccleaner. It cleans cookies, temp files, etc off the hard drive and can help with performance. Probably similar to the AVG program you used. Click on the green box at top right and don't click anything else until the gray dialog box opens with the download text. Quite often people click on a background box because they get impatient and download the wrong thing. (Not that I've ever done that. No, not me. )

Thanks! Will do this as well :-)

[NoMoreSnowForMe]

Woo hoo! Got my 2 GB of memory today. I can't believe it was so easy to install! I found a little screwdriver in my boss' work room (I am on-site manager of an apt bldg) - I raided his toolbox.

Took off the plate that had a little icon that looked like a memory chip lol! Bingo! Carefully took out the 2 chips that were in there, put in the new ones one at a time, turning the computer on in-between (read this on the memory forum of crucial.com - said if you put them both in at once, it doesn't always recognize the total new memory). Anyway, don't know if I needed to do that but...

I now have 2 GB memory instead of the 512MB I had. Wow! When I looked at CPU usage, instead of it being maxed out, it now shows 0 - 18% with Firefox running. Wow! And the angels sang!

I just did it, so haven't tried watching Netflix, etc., yet to see if I have any freezing issues. If I do, I will try some of the other suggestions here.

Thank soooooo much you guys! The crucial.com website was amazing, with the automatic scanner, then the video that shows you how to do it. Even a non-techie like me was able to do it. Thanks so much for that link.

I'm just so excited, I can't stand it! LOL! Here's a big kiss for you all mmmmmmmwwwwwwaaaaaaahhhhhhh!