Help me! please.

[HEERO YUY]

Ok so my laptop has an intel celeron M chip or something inside. what is that? the motherboard? Well whatever it may be... is there anything i can replace it with to make my laptop faster or better or anything? (my laptop is a gateway and it has windows XP home edition) also how do you get to your motherboards BIOS? and last question is how do you find out your computer specs? well i appreciate the help that anyone has to give.

[runawayprisoner]

Intel Celeron M is the CPU.
You can replace the CPU... though I doubt you can make it go noticeably faster that way.
To get to the motherboard BIOS, you can try to press and hold down either F1, F2, or Del, or maybe F3 when your laptop is booting up.
To find out about your computer specs, go to CPUID and get PC Wizards. That program will provide detailed information about your machine.

[cooliscool]

rofl

[fried_egg]

replacing the cpu to that thing would be way over your head and i wouldnt suggest going into bios, considering that it's not wise to overclock the processor on a laptop.

[Linktothepast]

Don't mess with it at all, unless if you don't care of even destroying it. Laptops are made directly by companies and can't be upgraded by common users, you have to ship them back to the company and even then their upgrading capabilities are small compared to pc counterparts. You clearly don't know much by your writing, so don't mess with anything at all, even the bios. If something goes wrong you will also lose the warranty.

[PCXL-Fan]

If your ever going to get another computer for gaming, make it a desktop. Medium-High to High performance desktops are cheaper than laptops. Also who wants to play on a 15-17 inch screen when you could be playing on a 22-24 inch. Also like Linktothepast said laptops generally are very hard to upgrade compared to desktops. If you ever do learn enough about computers to overclock, you'd never be able to do it well on a laptop as you can't fit a thermaltake ultra-120 into a laptop chassis. Also laptop graphics cards are always inferior and more expensive than desktop counterparts.

[HEERO YUY]

well the thing is i want to learn all this stuff because i REALLY interested in computers... and i can't learn if i don't mess something up right?

Originally Posted by Linktothepast

You clearly don't know much by your writing, so don't mess with anything at all, even the bios.

I really don't know much. but like i said: i want to learn.

[skoreanime]

IMO, if you want to have something better, might as well go for a complete overhaul. By the sound of it, I think you're running on integrated 8MB graphics too .

[HEERO YUY]

well i could always get a new graphics card.

[Linktothepast]

Originally Posted by HEERO YUY

well the thing is i want to learn all this stuff because i REALLY interested in computers... and i can't learn if i don't mess something up right?

I really don't know much. but like i said: i want to learn.

PC's are way better if you want to learn something about the hardware compared to laptops. Laptops are like gadget's that are fixed from the company with little (if not nothing at all) things to do if you are inexperienced. As you can't drive a Formula 1 if you don't even know how to drive a car, learn the basics using a PC first and then go into more advanced stuff. There is no one that can make you an experienced user with a few posts here, and yes people learn by messing around with things. But you should take always into account that if you destroy something you might not have anything at all to mess around with afterwards.

[runawayprisoner]

And messing around with laptops are way harder than messing around with PCs. That and the performance boost doesn't justify messing up anything such as a laptop.

P.S.: Replacing the CPU and RAM seems easy enough... but as you can't even access the BIOS, I doubt you even KNOW what it is, and I doubt you even KNOW how to use Windows or Mac at all. Learn from Windows, then down to DOS, then down to BIOS, and then you can "try" to do hardware moddings. It's not wise to jump into the hardest parts while you don't even understand the simpler parts.

[skoreanime]

Originally Posted by HEERO YUY

well i could always get a new graphics card.

Uhhh, for laptops ? And one that old? I doubt it, I very much doubt it. You can't just swap stuff in and out of laptops like desktops can. Laptops are designed with very specific parts in mind. The only real components you can swap pretty easily and know they will work and fit are hard drives, RAM, CPU (if you buy the correct one) and optical drives.

Seriously, the only way you're going to make that laptop faster is by running the bare minimum applications you need, more RAM (a little more always helps) and a 7200RPM laptop hard drive.

[HEERO YUY]

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

P.S.: Replacing the CPU and RAM seems easy enough... but as you can't even access the BIOS, I doubt you even KNOW what it is, and I doubt you even KNOW how to use Windows or Mac at all.

Well i know how to access the BIOS now. Turn my computer on and press F2 when its booting up. but could you tell me what DOS are? lol. Don't make fun of me or anything. i just wanna learn as much as i can by people telling me and then mess around with my old PC. So there is a slighter chance i'll mess something up. Kinda a neccessary precaution.

[jonc2006]

dos is an old text-based operating system. check out this page, it might give you a better understanding of some of the stuff we are talking about.

btw i dont think its a good idea to fool around with your BIOS unless you really know what your doing, its one thing to mess up your operating system by playing around with the settings, but messing up your BIOS can make your computer useless and it takes much more work to fix if you do something wrong. i doubt you could be able to mess around with your BIOS anyway, the advanced stuff that you can change is usually locked on laptops BIOS and therefore cant be modified.

[HEERO YUY]

well i don't think i'm gonna be fooling around with the BIOS anytime soon... not until i learn alot more about overclocking and more about the BIOS. And thanks for the link to that site.

[Andrets]

Well, what is in the system and what are you trying to make run faster? If you only have 512 megabytes of memory then another 512 might make it run quite a bit better, to reduce the amount of data being paged to the hard drive. To get the best bang for your buck, you would want to find out where the bottleneck is that is causing it to run slow (which piece of software is running slowly?). What are the specs of the machine? Did it come with Windows XP on it?

You might want to look into getting parts and building your own desktop if you want to learn more about the hardware and also have a more customizable machine. The motherboard has to be compatible with the CPU as well as the other components. Most of the retail motherboards that I have purchased have come with really good instruction manuals detailing what the more common features in the bios do and the applicable options.

[jonc2006]

Originally Posted by HEERO YUY

well i don't think i'm gonna be fooling around with the BIOS anytime soon... not until i learn alot more about overclocking and more about the BIOS. And thanks for the link to that site.

i would keep far away from overclocking for the time being too. heading into that area without knowing what to do is in most cases going to leave you with broken (literally) hardware.

Originally Posted by Andrets

Well, what is in the system and what are you trying to make run faster? If you only have 512 megabytes of memory then another 512 might make it run quite a bit better, to reduce the amount of data being paged to the hard drive. To get the best bang for your buck, you would want to find out where the bottleneck is that is causing it to run slow (which piece of software is running slowly?). What are the specs of the machine? Did it come with Windows XP on it?

You might want to look into getting parts and building your own desktop if you want to learn more about the hardware and also have a more customizable machine. The motherboard has to be compatible with the CPU as well as the other components. Most of the retail motherboards that I have purchased have come with really good instruction manuals detailing what the more common features in the bios do and the applicable options.

ram would probably make his applications or games run smoother and at more consistant framerates. it would run better, but not faster really. you should still keep the page file active regardless of how much ram you have, more ram will mean it wont be used as much but it wont make the page file something that you dont need. one thing to do is to defrag your HD often, and disable any background programs that you dont need, and there are usually quite a few of them that you can disable without screwing up your system. that would free up any ram or cpu power that is being taken away from by those programs and it would allow ones that you do want active to be able to use those resources instead.

[Andrets]

Originally Posted by jonc2006

ram would probably make his applications or games run smoother and at more consistant framerates. it would run better, but not faster really.

If it is currently swapping lots of data to and from the hard drive, it will make it run faster/better. I have dealt with older systems (with XP installed) that only have 128 Megabytes of ram and even adding 64 Megabytes more really makes a difference speed wise- mostly in loading times (this includes making web pages load/render faster in Internet Explorer). If the system has less than 512 Megabytes to one gig of RAM then additional memory may be useful, however I would agree that cleaning up any extra running processes would also help.

Originally Posted by jonc2006

you should still keep the page file active regardless of how much ram you have, more ram will mean it wont be used as much but it wont make the page file something that you dont need.

As I said, more ram (up to the point that it will be utilized) will reduce the amount of data being paged to the hard drive; this would also include a reduction in the frequency of data being paged. The page file would still be necessary for the OS, AFAIK- you can't eliminate it even if you wanted to (minimum size is 2MB- I'm sure it would perform very poorly at just 2MBs; I tend to stick closer to XP's recommended value).

[jonc2006]

Originally Posted by Andrets

If it is currently swapping lots of data to and from the hard drive, it will make it run faster/better. I have dealt with older systems (with XP installed) that only have 128 Megabytes of ram and even adding 64 Megabytes more really makes a difference speed wise- mostly in loading times (this includes making web pages load/render faster in Internet Explorer). If the system has less than 512 Megabytes to one gig of RAM then additional memory may be useful, however I would agree that cleaning up any extra running processes would also help.

As I said, more ram (up to the point that it will be utilized) will reduce the amount of data being paged to the hard drive; this would also include a reduction in the frequency of data being paged. The page file would still be necessary for the OS, AFAIK- you can't eliminate it even if you wanted to (minimum size is 2MB- I'm sure it would perform very poorly at just 2MBs; I tend to stick closer to XP's recommended value).

well yeah loading times of course. hell, i had 1GB of ram on this when i first got bioshock and load times where literally 2 min+, once i added a 2nd GB, loading got cut down to 20-40 seconds. what i ment earlier was that framerates would be more consistant and therefore making the game appear smoother due to the absence of large gaps in between the average framerates of some areas. i could have worded what i said better i guess. anyway, it wouldnt produce an increase in framerates, however it usually keeps rates stable and prevents them from jumping all over the place and having excessive stutter in some areas. vsynce + triple buffering can fix that too to some extent (the framerate consistancy at least since its pretty much creating a cap) but i usually find that backfiring on me so i leave vsync off. another factor that can cause bad performance in some games is the speed of the HD's read/writing abilities. even with a ton of ram some data is still going to be read from the harddrive, so the faster the drive the faster that data can be read and swapped from. ive never really had this produce a really bad limitation on me, but a system with a low amount of ram and that also has frequent use of the pagefile, i could see it making a somewhat noticable performance hit.

[HEERO YUY]

ok so exactly how do you increase your ram? that might be useful to my PC.

Heres some info about my PC... some specs if you prefer:
-Product name: Compaq PC
-Processor type: AMD Duron
-Processor speed: 700/100 MHZ
-Memory size: 64MB
-16480 modem