BleepingComputer.com: Dell Inspiron 6400

Hi

Hope i'm in the right forum?

A friend of mine just bought a second hand Dell Inspiron 6400 (refurbished)

he came to me because it waqs too slow. l looked at the Spec and it only has 5oomb RAM but has Vista home basic on it.

I was under the impression for Vista to run smoothly it needs at least 2 GB RAM.

can anyone tell me more?

Many thanks

Geoff

Well...the only thing I can offer is...it's a well-known fact that increasing RAM is the singlemost, simplest thing a user can do to increase performance of a system.

Generally speaking...there is no reason to have less than 2GB of RAM in a system these days.

I can't speak of Vista because I only installed it then uninstalled it but my recommendation for any system running 32-bit Windows...would be 2-4GB of RAM, with 4GB the max for 32-bit Windows.

Another move that users can make to increase efficiency...is to remove installed software from systems made by HP, eMachines, etc. and do a clean install of XP only, leaving all the miscellaneous software that the manufacturer installed...far behind. Of course, many of these users won't be able to do such, since they probably rely on recovery/restore CDs rather than having MS Genuine XP CDs.

Louis

Hi Louis.

Thanks for your reply, l was wondering if someone had sold him a counterfeit OS. Would you know if this machine originally had Win XP Home on it?

I was suprised it had such a low spec on it.

Thanks

Geoff

<<l was wondering if someone had sold him a counterfeit OS.>>

Easy way to find out...go to Windows Update and employ the WGA tool.

<<Would you know if this machine originally had Win XP Home on it?>>

No way and even if it were possible, it would be immaterial.

I'm living proof that anyone with the ability to read and locate drivers...can install any O/S on any system . If Vista is on it and the system works, then there probably are Vista drivers installed...which is all that it takes.

FWIW: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919183

Louis