speed up the performance

A)
"the more ram in a cpu can speed up the performance" ...

With more you can open more programs in the same time ...
More ram,less swap ( no virtual memory on the disk - access time very bad / memory  - 2 milli second (disk) vs 60 nanos second (ram)).
64 Mo is OK - no need to increase with Pentium board ( chiupset problem with more).

B) Change disk :
Good way : new disk have more memory cache (2Mo), are UDMA66 ( better transfer rate) and turn at 7200tr/min ( old disk : 4500 or 5400 tr/min - better transfer - more quick).
170$
You must buy a IDE-UDMA66 controler.
40$

C) Video card : important for games ..
Matrox( G400),ATI (rage128),Voodoo (2000...),...
PCI slot
50 to 200$

D) Overclock : why not ?
P200MMx -> P233MMX or P250MMX ...
Motherboard jumpers ... with experimented help...
Free

E) CDRom ?
IF you have an old model ( X4 to 16X)buy a new one at 40X...
50$

F) Defrag your disk ...

Using UDMA 66 will probably speed up your system a little bit, but in fact there are no hard disks that do the 66MB/s.
If you need more RAM depends on the applications you use and how many of them at the same time. Nowadays 128MB are a good recommendation, but 64 are enough in most cases if you are using Win9x.
fraches tells you to eventually buy a new graphics card which I recommend as well.
Like everyone knows, Mhz is not all that speeds up a computer, but remember that OS'es and applications are getting to use more and more processor power.

All in all, to give a good recommendation, one needs to know which applications you use. If you want to play up-to-date games, you should buy a completely new system.

If your hard disk is full (less than aproximately 400MB free) you should first buy a new HD.

Also check if you are running programs you don't need. Remove them or at least take them out of the startup folder.

If you want a faster system upgrade your MB & CPU, depending on what you are running a PII 350-400mhz is a good speed for the internet and games. For games buy a good 3D accellerated graphics card. What kind of processor do you have? If you have a intel overclocking is fine, if you have a Cyrix DO NOT TRY IT, IT RUNS HOT ENOUGH ALREADY. I have not heard about the AMD's and overclocking but I would guess they would be running about as hot as Cyrix's. A faster HD should also speed up the system.

BUY MORE RAM.

i personally think you just need to reinstall windows and your computer will be running nice and fast..you probably have installed/deleted programs, etc..and your registry is filthy.  Every time I reinstall windows...wheee...it starts FLYING.  But when you do it, you gotta do it right...reformat that sucka and start from scratch and only install the programs that you use on a regular and consistent basis.

i did reinstall the windows lately coz my hard drive crash due to bad sector of my hard drives. the computer technician repair the hard drives and reinstall back the windows and all the program i need. the problem is, after this incident, my pc always pop up an error and illegal operation message suddenly. sometimes i need to restart my pc because it hangs. besides that my pc runs slow and as i said it pop up a message telling my program has cause an illegal operation and need to close it. the funny thing is i haven't even touch or done anything to the program yet. i try to defragment but the computer doesn't let me to do it and a message said that there are errors and need to be correct before defragment. then i try to scan the error using scandisk but the result is fine. there are no error found. what are the problem???? what should i do the make my pc to run faster? should i change my hard drive to a bigger version. does changing the hard drive can make the pc run faster??

OK, this looks like some dll's or registry setting are corrupted. You should give REGCLEAN a try.
http://support.microsoft.com/download/support/mslfiles/Regclean.exe

If scandisk does not find any errors and defrag tells there are after that, better spend a few dollars for Norton Utilites 2000. (I assume you are using Win95 or Win98??? NU2000 do not work with NT.)
A NU2000 trial can be donloaded at http://www.symantecstore.com/Pages/TBYB/nu2k.html
If this works, you should check again if your system had sped up.

To your question on the hard drive: Yes ist does and no it does not. Without knowing which hard drive you have and which one you plan to buy, both answers may be correct.
An IBM DPTA drive is one of the fastest IDE hard drive that can be bought for an acceptable price. I recommend this if you plan an upgrade. About 13Gig is more than needed at the time. Disks from 20Gigs on are not that much more expensive. You can choose.

Perhaps your system is running as fast as it possibly can... if you've installed Windows 9x, then efficient memory management is possible for up to 64MB. Windows won't handle efficiently it's memory above this figure.. Also, when your system's registry has grown, the system performance slows down! Try running 'regclean' or similar tools to optimize the registry as Windows uses a lot of mem to manage the registry.
Perhaps installing a good PCI Videocard can help!

Chipset for pentium Processor are :
Intel FX
Intel HX
Intel VX

.... VIA,ALI,... ?

All Intel chipset have a bug. There is a problem when there is more than 64 Mo
(Performance : - 10 %).

The "bug" is a marketing strategy by Intel. If you use more than 64MB, Intel chipsets don't cache everything over 64MB. So the system slows down extremely. This slowdown is beeing supported by Windows (NT,9x) because it adresses memory top-down.
This issue was removed with the LX and BX chipsets, as well as the new i820. On these three chipsets the processor does caching itself.

i did use norton utilities 2000 but it doesn't help me too because when i install the program, my pc doesn't support some of the utilities and said it is corrupted and sometimes said illegal operation. all the program in my pc is the same too. even if i never done anything it still provided me the illegal operation message. sometimes my pc get a loud noise like banging sound when starting windows or other program. it is cause by the hard drives bad sector? should i change my hard drives? can a bigger version of hard drives make the pc run faster or it is just provided extra space only? my hard drives is 3.2Gb and i consider to change it to 8.4GB coz i didn't use much programs.

Hard drives' performance depend on their rpm (7200rpm are regrded as fast, 5400rpm as normal). Capacity does not increase performance as long as the drive is not full. A full hard disk may cause errors. How much space is free on your drive?
Programs also crash when memory has a defect. Do you have the possibility to exchange with that of a friend for a day or two?
Also try to remove one ISA and PCI step by step. Always try the system after having removed a card. If problems are gone, exchange the defect hardware for new one.
But first, you should try other memory.

..sorry, forgot one point: after having the PC run for an hour or longer, check if it is getting hot. In that case, try to run the system with the case opened.

Check these and see if it helps.  

  I had a system the was doing the same thing I found out that the CD-Drive was deffective.  Whenever I installed something using the CD it would run the install fine.  When it finished I started getting the memory messages.
Solution: I replaced the CD-Drive and the problem was solved.

  The other thing is you might have a "cheap" motherboard.  I paid $105 for a Tyan S1590s and have never had the same problem since.

zzconsumer has a good point I would check the temperature on the CPU first as a overheating CPU will cause the same kind of messages.

my hard disk is not full yet. it still have 2.29GB and my original hard disk space is 3.2GB. my computer never overheat too. at first this problem never occur and it run fast and smooth. my pc start to become like this since my hard drive has a bad sector on it and my computer technician reformat the whole hard drive and repair it. i don't know how they repair. after repairing, they reinstall all the program back. when returning my pc, i have try using it but it still work fine but it became unstable, slow and keep popping out a illegal operation message suddenly after a few days of using. then the culprit of the problem is the hard drive or my program?

for your information, my CD-ROM is still new. i just upgrade it not long ago. i'm using ABIT motherboard.

I think you should take it back to where you had it fixed.

maybe the technician replaced your parts without you knowing it and took all the good parts to give to himself and put crummy parts into your computer?

Reformatting a hard drive when bad clusters occur may, no in most cases will result in an unstable system. When a hard disk once had one so called "grown defect", in most cases there will come up more and more "grown defects" (bad clusters). Exchange your disk for a new one.

the answer lie in determining where the bottleneck is.  it could be the memory, it could be the hard drive, maybe the processor, may be the registry or a program running in the background that's chewing on processor time, could even be the bus speed.  a few questions,
what version of windows are you running?
do you have system monitor installed on your system?  check a few things

run system monitor an watch kernel processor usage % and watch memory manager page faults.  this will help us determine whether you processor or memory are being over worked.  if processor percentage runs consistantly over 50%, that is probably the problem.  if page faults run consistantly in the mid 100's or higher, that could be the problem.  it might also be of benefit to check and see what programs are running in the background by pressing ctrl/alt/del.  if you recently had your hd repaired and all your software reloaded, maybe the tech loaded on something that is causing a problem.  finally you should try cleaning your registry out.  reg clean is a good program, i've also had great success with winoptimizer 99. available in a trial version at
       http://www.pts-shop.com

let me know what os you're running, what system monitor tells you and
what's happening in the background and
perhaps we can get things moving a bit
faster for you.

joe

It definately sounds like a hardware problem.  I had a similar problem to yours.  I replaced my RAM and my machine runs great now.

Applications running in your systray will also slow things down.  Each of those applications uses some memory.  A lot of applications add an icon to the systray for quick access, but generally all you really need in your systray is a virus scanner.  You should remove everything you can from the systray.  This will help performance a little, especially on start up.

As suggested by : tnordhoff, replace your hard drive first and see how things run.

My CD-drive was brand new out of the box and was defective.
Anyways, Try this:
Go into your start menu and click on run then type sysedit and press enter.  

In the autoexec.bat load anything high that you can.  Put doskey at the lastline or the line right beore it loads Windows. (Doskey is a program that "remembers" the last 20 things you did in dos, it also helps memory settings).

Close the autoexec.bat file and look at the config.sys window to make sure that himem.sys and emm386.exe is loaded. If you don't need expanded memory then put NOEMS -0 after it.
Add the following if they are not in the config.sys file already:
c:\windows(your windows directory)\himem.sys
c:\(your windows directory)windows\emm386.exe  If you don't need expanded memory then put NOEMS after it.
dos=high,umb
fileshigh=120
buffershigh=40,0
Set any devices you can as high with devicehigh.

This should speed up your computer at least a little without any cost involved.

Sorry,  After you have made those changes close the system editor and reboot.

my sys monitor tell that it is below 50%. about an average 35%-40%. i use win 98 operating sys. the problem occur almost in every program i have. some of them is IE, netscape, ms office, registry, photoshop, sys tool,etc..
like:- when i'm trying to run regedit from the start menu, the problem occur too when i'm just typing a few line like (reg). before finish typing the word regedit, the problem occur. and i have to close it. sometimes i just trying to open a program like ms word, on the moment i click on the icon and the problem start before the program open. sometimes my pc suddenly restart but the weird thing is that i never click on any button to restart.

Yvonne, how many programs are running in the background after you start-up? As an example is Nortons 2000 running? While Norton's 2000 is a decent utility (in my opinion)it is also a memory hog. I'm reading multiple questions and ultimately hear you want to have your system running smoothly and efficiently. I'd suggest you close all the background programs, using the close program routine: hold down Cntl+alt+delete one time. A window displays showing all your running programs, close all BUT systray and explorer. Then run Nortons Disk doctor by selecting it from it's placement on your start bar (perhaps the program file). When Disk doctor comes up, click the options tab and mid screen check the "thorough option" click the advance tab and make sure none of the 7 test options are checked. I would recommend for the General Tab  for repair options, you select "ask me first". The thorough scan will take some time to run but will check your disk for bad sectors, if you select the "ask me first option" then you will know exactly what Disk Doctor found if anything and what it did to correct the problem.
Assuming Disk Doctor completes its task and if errors are found and corrected or not found, close the program, and then run WINDOWS disk defragmenter, again use the setting feature and select both options. DO NOT USE Norton's Speed Disk, it is my experience that Norton's Speed Disk, fragments infrequently used files to the point programs at best are slowed down from loading and at worst,  will not load at all.  Please let me know if you do this and how it all works out .

you said:

>sometimes my pc suddenly restart but >the weird thing is that i never click >on any button to restart.

this is very bad, needless to say...two things, the cpu fan, is it working? is it working correctly?  you can check the fan operating speed in bios, but just listen to the machine. does it sound the same as it always did?

second thing, power supply...how old is it.  is it beginning to flake, is it plugged into an old UPS that has a degrading battery.  if your machine is spontaneously restarting and bogging down under load...i'd investigate power supply...real good candidate for the source of your problems.  by the way, did you recently move or move the computer?  if it's getting power from a circuit that is way over loaded, it might just be voltage drops on that line.  try plugging the system into another outlet on a different circuit

i have tried your method but it doesn't work out too. when i try to run disk defragment, the program doesn't let me to do so and it pop up a message saying that my pc have an error and need to correct it using scandisk or whatever method. then i try to scan my disk using scandisk and finally the result stated that my pc doesn't have any error or bad sector found. i don't know whether my cpu fan is working or not. my it seem to be working fine. but lately, my pc sound weird. just like banging sound from inside and it is quite loud and sometime it is like a whirling sound that seem like something spinning inside. my power supply is about 2 years now.

Like I said before:
I think you should take it back to where you had it fixed!!!!!!!!!!!!

thanks. i will ask call the com technician to have a look at it. by the way, can the whirring sound come from the hard drive? coz some of my friends who have this experience said that the sound might come from the hard drive too.

If the sound came from the drive, you would not be able to boot the system. Best have a look at the fans.

it is common to hear the drive seeking, but the whirring is of low volume and would probably not be described as a banging sound.  if the drive is making a loud banging sound however it would indicate catastrophic damage, probably a head crash, or what was at one time refered to as "head to disk interferance"...i'm dating myself.  in any case, if a crash has occured, your system would probably be completely dead.  it generally stops all disk function because the read heads have actually collided with the disk causing physical damage that cannot be repaired.
this type of damage stops the system from booting at all.  i hope, and doubt, that a head crash is the problem.  keep me posted.

joe

Whats up with this?!?!?
I said to take it to where you had it fixed on Thursday, January 13 2000 - 08:12AM PST then you give the points to kahguy who said the same thing on Friday, January 14 2000 - 06:29AM PST

you said take it to where i had it fixed but kahguy give much more opinion and recommendation than yours. i think he deserve to take that points.