Hi thanks in advance for any advice or assistance.
An elderly parent wants me to add more memory to his old Gateway P5-133 (Model GW2K-Hampton BATC) so it can migrate from Windows 98 to XP Home Edition. The user guide for this PC disappeared a long long time ago.
Where can I get instructions for installing more horsepower in this dinosaur? What is the difference between "RAM" and memory?
What info do I need to collect from the existing system to determine what parts to buy?I know it's got GenuineIntel Pentium® Processor, 32 MB RAM, 86% system resources free, Quantum Fireball ST1.6A (whatever this is).
Is it the kind of project I can realistically do myself? Thanks again. :-)

Thats a 133 processor. XP requires a 233 processor minimum according to Microsoft (yeah right)System Requirements for Windows XP
If it only has 32 megs of ram it wont remotely work. XP likes 256+
Looks like a 1.6 gig hard drive too. XP will gobble up 1.5 gig leaving not much room for anything else

I think I would recommend staying with 98 on this system. Its small & doesnt take a powerful system to run

Post the model number. Its on the front or on a sticker on the back

You can't really do what they want, the processor is too slow to run windows xp, you might find plenty of used ram if you looked in the right places(computer recycling), and the hard drive is too small, about 5 years ago I saw over 100 of those a recycler was paid to haul away from a national lab, they were asking 20$ and couldn't sell them.

If you want to see if the computer is suitable for WinXP then download and run UpgAdv.exe.

With 32 MB RAM you are going to need a lot more. The bare minimum is 256Mb but the more the better.