Upgrading tower possiblities??

[lacuna bless]

I am running AMD Athlon XP2800 with MSI K7N2 ILSR Delta motherboard and a 200Gb Maxtor Diamond H/D. I have a 420w power supply is it possible to upgrade the motherboard and processor? I'm only 40% disk full but keep getting messages my virtual memory is low and whole system will not play Utube or iplayer etc. Is it worth upgrading or have I reached the end of the road tower wise??

[Buenchico]

If you're receiving 'low virtual memory' messages, it's probably a sign of either:
(a) an incorrect setting for your virtual memory paging file (which will take just a few mouse clicks to put right) ; or
(b) insufficient RAM (which is far more relevant to your problem than your processor or your motherboard).

You've told us nearly everything about your PC except the operating system and the size of its RAM. Unfortunately, that's probably we'll need to know to help you fix your problem!

Chris

[VHG]

Not being able to play YouTube or Iplayer is nothing to do with the power of your PC.

You dont say why you CANT use YouTube or Iplayer. Do they not work at all, or are they just slow?

If they dont work at all then that will probably be a software problem and nothing to do with your hardware.

If they are slow then that is more likely to be due to your broadband speed.

[VHG]

I agree with Buenchico, we need to know your RAM size.

When you first start a computer the RAM is empty. As it starts things like Windows and programs are loaded into RAM.

If RAM "fills up" then Windows copies parts of RAM out to hard disk in an area it calls Virtual Memory. This is quite a slow operation (in computer terms) and can slow your computer down.

When Windows need the data that is in Virtual Memory it copies it back into RAM, and something else out to Virtual Memory. This process is called swapping and is fairly slow.

The problem is, if your RAM memory is far too low your computer will spend all its time swapping and cant do anything else. Your computer will grind to a halt.

I would try to put at least 1Gb of RAM memory in there. If you already have 1Gb then increase it to 2Gb.

[galeck1947]

It is difficult to diagnose your problem withour knowing your OS and the amount of installed ram . A good guide for ram size is with XP 2gb and with Windows Vista or Windows 7 4gb of ram. You can use ready boost with Vista and Windows 7 by installing a 2or4 gb USB sitick and configuring it to increase your ram capacity which is cheap way of doing it.

[lacuna bless]

It's XP Home and I already upgraded from 512 to 1Gb RAM about 2yrs ago. It will play uTube and iPlayer but keeps stopping and buffering then halting. I was worried my motherboard would not support any more RAM? I am on Virgin broadband cable and my son's pc (with 3Gb RAM) is lightning fast on same wireless network hub.