Can I Pimp a 6-Year Old HP Pavilion? :-P

[digitald]

I'm naive about building PCs. I'm not trying to build one from scratch, but just replace the parts that are very outdated to make a fair system that runs better for listening to Internet radio and web surfing.

I know that HP does some "special" things with their PCs. I'm only interested in replacing the hard drive so that I can install WinXP Home and whatever would be necessary after such a change. The OS now is Win98 and the drive only has 15GB memory. I'm not trying to bring it to today's "premier" systems, just get rid of Win98 and increase the hard disk memory. It has 192MB RAM which is OK. I don't need a lotta GB either -- between 40-80GB is fine.

I don't know if I'd need a new motherboard or processor or not (given HP's idiosynchratic design), but the processor is 566mHz. It has a Linksys LNE 100tx ethernet adapter and an A-Open 850AW sound card (which I don't think Win98 is handling too well...).

Can someone first of all tell me if this can be done with a Hewlett Packard PC, and if so, what kind of cost am I looking at? (Ballpark range?) Or should I just chunk it? (I really don't need this PC, I just wanted to make it useful -- I have 2 desktops & a lap top that do everything that I really "need.")

[nicolaus corelius]

if u wanna just do a ram and HDD upgrade, then, yes its possible.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by digitald It has 192MB RAM which is OK.

That's okay for Win98 but it's not going to be okay for WinXP. Minimum I would use with WinXP is 512MB.

Originally Posted by digitald I don't need a lotta GB either -- between 40-80GB is fine.

You "might" be able to get a 80GB recognized by the HP BIOS but the 40GB is probably the safer bet.

Originally Posted by digitald I don't know if I'd need a new motherboard or processor or not (given HP's idiosynchratic design), but the processor is 566mHz.

I just finished upgrading a computer that had a PIII 500MHz, 13GB HDD, 256MB of RAM and Win98SE. I replaced the 13GB HDD with a 40GB HDD, added another 256MB of RAM, replaced the CD burner with a DVD burner, installed a wireless adapter card and installed WinXP Home. It's only going to be used for internet surfing and homework for a pre-teen. I played around with it before my friend picked it up and it performed pretty good for a older system. A little slower than my own PIII 600MHz with 512MB, but not by much.

Originally Posted by digitald Can someone first of all tell me if this can be done with a Hewlett Packard PC,

Sure.

Originally Posted by digitald and if so, what kind of cost am I looking at? (Ballpark range?)

The upgrade I did cost $280 for the 40GB hard drive, 256MB of RAM, DVD burner, wireless PCI adapter and WinXP Home. Figure about $200 without the DVD burner and wireless PCI adapter.

Cricket

[Kiwi]

My own opinion, 566 MHz for an XP cpu is going to be way too slow. The first point at which the difference in speed of going from "quick" with Win98, to "snail" with XP is finally less noticeable is right around the 1.0 GHz mark. But XP is still slower than either W2K or W98, right up through 2.4 GHz on P4's, and on A64 3000's. There are products similar to Nlite that will help a lot by putting XP on a diet (it suffers hugely from MS' "Feature Bloat").

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by Kiwi My own opinion, 566 MHz for an XP cpu is going to be way too slow.

It really depends on what you do with the computer. digitald said the box is only going to be used for internet and simple stuff so it won't matter if it's only a 566MHz processor. My own computer is a PIII 600MHz with 512MB of RAM with the WinXP performance options set for best performance (all the eye candy turned off) and I can't tell the difference between now and when I had Win98SE installed on this computer (which was only 3 months ago). Boot up time is roughly the same but it does take a little longer to shutdown. Aside from that, performance while in Windows is fine.

Cricket

[glc]

What exact model is that Pavilion? It *might* be limited to 256mb ram - and if that's the case, you might want to consider Win2000 instead of XP. It may also be limited to hard drives less than 32gb.

[flawedreality5]

My old HP computer my family got from 1998 was limited to 256mb ram. I agree with glc on this.

[digitald]

Thanks for all the input. It's a Pavilion 6645C.

[flawedreality5]

That's a little later than mine. Mine's a 4550, but the max memory is 256mb I see here.

http://www.upgradememory.com/categor...solution=8249&

[digitald]

Thanks so much for the info & the link. If I decide to increase the RAM, I'll know the limits of what I can accomplish with it.

I'm well on my way now. Thanks everyone!