I am not a computer buff......

[karnevil]

Lets make that point again,I am not a computer buff!
My Acer 2410 Travelmate laptop runs pretty slow and i keep getting a message that disc C is running low on space.It has two discs on it.It has a 40 GB HDD and 256 MB RAM.I am always doing the clean disc opperation.
I have been told if I upgrade the RAM,and it will take up to 2GB,it will work faster.And I am reasonably confident that i can do this myself easily enough.
But whilst i was looking for the DDR2 soDIMM memory modules(I will need 2X1 GB) I found 80GB hard drives.
Now these will fit straight in apparently but...........................How will I get my operating system (Windows XP) onto it?
So is it worth doin?The HDD is £60.00
Would some kind soul,if they were near me do it for beer money?
or could I send it to some kind soul(again for Beer money)?...................

Err does this make sense?

 

[cookie]

your existing hard drive would be taken out & slaved to a desktop pc, where the data could be copied, a new hard drive would cloned from that.

256MB is really only just adequate to get XP running. 1GB ok, but 2GB would be nice.

 

[karnevil]

So it would be worth doing would it?The Ram I could do myself im sure but the other stuff i think would be beyond me!I have just spent 3 hours trying to sort out an SD card reader,give up with it now LOL

 

[cookie]

dunno much about laptops, so i don't know if yours is worth bothering about. maybe if someone would do it for beer money as you suggest.

i don't live in wales

 

[wessie]

I was looking for the spec of your laptop to see if upgrading it is a good idea. I came across this http://www.ciao.co.uk/Acer_TravelMate_2410__Review_5622943 which says the 40GB drive is split into 2 partitions.

You mention having 2 drives (as this is what would appear in Windows Explorer). Have you filled both partitions, or is one sitting empty? If you have a free partition then transfer your music & porn collection to this. Leave the primary partition for programs.

Threre's an excellent utility that will clear loads of crap from your system. It's not unusual for the first run to clear 2-4 gigabytes of archived crap.
http://www.ccleaner.com/

 

[TJ]

Ram

Lets make that point again,I am not a computer buff!
My Acer 2410 Travelmate laptop runs pretty slow and i keep getting a message that disc C is running low on space.It has two discs on it.It has a 40 GB HDD and 256 MB RAM.I am always doing the clean disc opperation.
I have been told if I upgrade the RAM,and it will take up to 2GB,it will work faster.And I am reasonably confident that i can do this myself easily enough.
But whilst i was looking for the DDR2 soDIMM memory modules(I will need 2X1 GB) I found 80GB hard drives.
Now these will fit straight in apparently but...........................How will I get my operating system (Windows XP) onto it?
So is it worth doin?The HDD is £60.00
Would some kind soul,if they were near me do it for beer money?
or could I send it to some kind soul(again for Beer money)?...................

Err does this make sense?

Karnevil,

It will take you all of 10mins to change your memory. Did it for my Dad not so long ago same laptop. As said below the hard drive is partitioned.

Have you had a look here for memory, very good prices.

HTH

 

[karnevil]

I was looking for the spec of your laptop to see if upgrading it is a good idea. I came across this http://www.ciao.co.uk/Acer_TravelMate_2410__Review_5622943 which says the 40GB drive is split into 2 partitions.

You mention having 2 drives (as this is what would appear in Windows Explorer). Have you filled both partitions, or is one sitting empty? If you have a free partition then transfer your music & porn collection to this. Leave the primary partition for programs.

Threre's an excellent utility that will clear loads of crap from your system. It's not unusual for the first run to clear 2-4 gigabytes of archived crap.
http://www.ccleaner.com/

I have tried to keep my Photo's Music and Garmin to the D drive but some stuff just will not seem to move to the D drive.
I managed to to do a system recovery the other day to restore the factory settings but the files and programs and stuff on the drives still seem to be all over the place.
I would really like it to be back to how it was the day i bought it and let me start again.I do not really understand what alot of the files are I do not know if i need then,are supposed to be there or if I have downloaded em by accident(Told you i was no buff).
I keep getting a message comming up saying the disc space on C is low and to clean it up.I do this and shortly after i get the message again.I try to move files from C to D but i dont seem to make any difference.Once I have copied from one from C to D I check i check it is in D correctly then delete it from C I am very obviousley doin summat wrong i guess but dont know what.

Problem is I tok it to a computer shop where i got my desktop from and they just messed it up really so i do not know who to trust to do any work on it again.As far as I am concered taking it to them was £50.00 wasted as the adwae was still on it when i got it back and there is now no password to enter when i start it up.Anyone can now just start the thing and get to my files but no point takin it back they do not know what they are doin.
i had hoped that if i put in the bigger hard drive and re-installed the Windows XP I could just start again.

 

[Womble]

A quick word to the wise. Before you do anything that can potentially overwrite or change big areas of your hard disk, make sure that you back up all the personal information that you can. Buy yourself a cheap external hard disk caddy and copy your files onto that.

A couple of tips here - always think carefully before you do anything, some of the commands can have far-reaching effects.
Defragment your hard drives. If it all goes pear-shaped, it's a LOT easier to stitch it back together if the files are all in one place.
Finally, if you think that you have done something silly and everything has disappeared - DO NOT try and reinstall anything, reformat disks or anything, until you have talked to some friendly geeks. The more that you try and fix things at this point, the less the chances are of sorting it out. Obviously, if you have a backup, you won't be half as concerned at this point anyway.

Once you have sorted the computer out, keep doing backups to that external caddy - there is always the chance of disk failure or of accidentally deleting something.

 

[bustupbiker]

You Have a PM.....

Lets make that point again,I am not a computer buff!
My Acer 2410 Travelmate laptop runs pretty slow and i keep getting a message that disc C is running low on space.It has two discs on it.It has a 40 GB HDD and 256 MB RAM.I am always doing the clean disc opperation.
I have been told if I upgrade the RAM,and it will take up to 2GB,it will work faster.And I am reasonably confident that i can do this myself easily enough.
But whilst i was looking for the DDR2 soDIMM memory modules(I will need 2X1 GB) I found 80GB hard drives.
Now these will fit straight in apparently but...........................How will I get my operating system (Windows XP) onto it?
So is it worth doin?The HDD is £60.00
Would some kind soul,if they were near me do it for beer money?
or could I send it to some kind soul(again for Beer money)?...................

Err does this make sense?