Running Windows 98?

Question

It has 64mb ram
8gb hardrive
pentium 2 intel 433mhz
compaq presario 5352

The pc is very slow, i will add 256 total of ram, think it will work faster
It might also have viruses since there is none installed, any advice on antiviruses for win 98 not win98se.
If i wanted to change the motherboard how do i know what size of newer motherboard + processor can be used?
Thanks!

The reason to change motherboard would be if i decide to upgrade to win xp

Answer 1

I agree with the other answerers. Upgrading the RAM is a waste of money. A Pentium 2 is way too slow for XP. The XP operating system itself requires much more power than your computer can muster. Also, programs written for XP aren't nearly as efficient on memory, hard drive space, and CPU efficiency as the programs written when the Pentium 3 was still around.

At the very LEAST, you should buy a used 1.6-2.0 GHZ Intel Pentium 4 Celeron CPU and a motherboard which allows you to overclock the CPU. (You can overclock a 1.8 GHZ to 2.4 GHZ safely and still use the stock fan and heatsink.) Get at least a 40 gig hard drive and 512 MB of PC2700 RAM if you want to move up to XP. You'll want at least a 350 watt power supply too.

Answer 2

If you can afford to buy a new system, I would do that.
To find a new board, try going to www.abit-usa.com
Click on motherboards, then find one you like & it lists what kind of processors are compatible & which ones are not.

If you can't swing it, just get a 40GB hard drive to replace that one & install 98 on it. That way it only costs you around $30 or so.
It will run faster with more RAM. I just upgraded a friend of mines old pentium 2 Dell last week. It only had around 128mb of RAM. I upgraded it to 512 & it's 5 times faster.
RAM is cheap, especially a 256mb stick.
If you want to work with what you got, try that.

Answer 3

To be quite candid, by the time you make all the changes necessary to upgrade (hard drive, RAM, Motherboard, Video Card, Sound card, etc.) It would be cheaper to just buy a new unit and it would also have the latest hadrware and software. That whole system is just too old and out of date.

Answer 4

yes, adding ram (almost) always makes it run faster
and it will run xp, but it will be much slower than if you were to upgrade to a new computer all together
you can build a 3GHz Celeron with 1GB memory and 40GB hard drive on tigerdirect.com for about $325, shipping included
that will work great for xp
check out Ad-Aware SE, AVG Free, and Sbybot S&D (download.com)
they all work on 98
just make sure that, before you upgrade to xp, add the memory
otherwise xp will be the only thing running
have fun

Answer 5

Try AVG for the virus software, it's free. The advice to buy a new machine is good, considering the age you will probably need a new power supply also and probably a new hard drive. You could try linux on the old machine. There are some versions that will run fairly well on undersized hardware.

Answer 6

it will get faster if you add ram,avg free should work with windows 98,but if you are going to change the motherboard id just get a whole new pc as you will probably need all new ram as your ram is probably obsolete,also youll need new hd as 8gb just isnt enough to run xp smoothly,so instead of getting new ram for an old pc maybe should look into saving for a new pc.good luck

Answer 7

If you want to upgrade to WinXP and buy a new motherboard and CPU....you'd best be off doing a complete upgrade. The compaq is way to small to run WinXP effectively and once you change the Motherboard and CPU, none of your current items can be transferred over.

Answer 8

it will cost you more to upgrade the computerm then it will actually be worth, (you wont even get back the money for the new parts!!) just buy a new system.

and you'll be lucky if you find any ram chips for your motherboard, as they probably (well almost 100% sure) dont make them or sell them anymore.

your processor, even with the extra ram will be slow. you can get cheap new computers that have much more power!

Answer 9

Before you spend money on a computer that will never perform as you will expect look at some of the ebay choices. For around $150 you can get a much better computer than you can upgrade that one to.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Dell-Optiplex-GX50-1-1-Ghz-40GB-512MB-DVDROM-SFF_W0QQitemZ110134049261QQihZ001QQcategoryZ140076QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Answer 10

Avg free antivirus is a good free program ! Click the link: http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1

You may also want to get a spyware detection program and a good one is spybot search and destroy and it's also free ! Click the link: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

Good luck ! I hope this helps !