Hi Cricket and glc!
I found a local mom and pop PC shop because I thought I'd might need a bit of support with the upgrade project. It turned out I only needed some help with assembling some of the case. The hardware mounting and connections took my just over an hour.
I ended up getting the Intel D845PESV motherboard, a P4 2.4 GHz CPU, 512 MB Kingston PC2700 DDR Ram and a case with a 300w power supply. The cost was $470 which was about $30-$40 more than newegg.com but I got a lot of friendly advice.
The OS repair install did not go well, however. I was upgrading from a Dell P3 500MHz that originally had Windows 98 SE and had been upgraded to XP by me. The OS went in fine but I had a lot of trouble with my apps. So, I bit the bullet and bought a fresh copy of Windows XP. The clean install made all the difference and I now have a hopping system compared to my previous one for under $700 total.
I want to thank you folks for your essential advice. It made thing s a whole lot easier for me.
Cheers,
Gregg
