My computer is pretty slow. Okay, its a dinosaur (a windows 98 with 64 MB of RAM) when I began playing my new arsenal of games…the games lag a lot. Okay it lags the entire time!!! I would like to know what I could do to free up some space on my computer. As well as freeing up space, I’d like to make my computer run smoother while I’m using it. Please help and thank you.
There’s not much you can do. 256MB of RAM is the minimum for a modern system, with 512MB being required for smooth operation in some cases. Your videocard largely determines performance in games, and the CPU determines how fast it all works together. Eventually, you just have to make a clean break and buy a new system.
You haven’t mentioned your CPU type/speed.
Depends on which games you’re playing. Games released within the last year or so generally specify a system like yours as a minimum requirement, while the recommended system is a whole lot better. The main reason that games are slow on your comp is, as FDISK mentions, a not-so-good video card/chip. The video card largely determines how smooth your games will be.
But a Win98 PC with 64MB RAM isn’t all that bad. Use Ashampoo WinOptimizer Suite and Memory Zipper Plus to tune up your comp.
If possible, get atleast another 64MB of RAM. That’ll speed things up quite a bit. And upgrade to Win98 Second Edition to improve stability a bit.
Well Windows 98 is definitely a dinosaur… but 64 meg of RAM aint bad for it. Out of curiosity, what games are you trying to play? What CPU do you have, and what speed? That shouldn’t be a bad setup for games that came out in the win98 era, unless you’re running a P200. For example, back in the day, Unreal Tournament was quite playable on my Celeron 450, Win98, with 64M ram on an original TNT with 16 Meg of Video ram…
…The key factor being the TNT. And therein lies the problem… today (as with the advent of 3d gaming) you are not only limited by your CPU speed, but you are also limited by your graphics card. You could have the fastest P4 available (3+ GHz), but if your graphics card is crap, it becomes your bottleneck. And a serious bottleneck at that. GPUs (Graphic Process Units) have become pretty much the single factor in gaming experience. That’s not to say that you could drop a Radeon 9700 Pro into a machine running a P200 and expect blindingly smooth framerates, it’s a culmination of CPU speed and GPU speed that provides the best user experience (though I believe it is weighted slightly towards your GPU).
I’d agree with xash in that another 64 meg would help, but if your video card is crap, look into upgrading that…
…or finding a friend who knows something about computers and having him piece together a computer thats actually equipped to play games, for about $300 you can have a pretty good computer to start with and add a good graphics card on to that…
pricewatch.com says about:
case
~$60
motherboard cpu combo
built in sound video lan $111
amd athlon xp 2000
ram
512mb ddr 2700 $49
40gb hd $62
get a good video card ~$100 and youre set… use your old cdrom and cdrw, heck you can even use your old hd if you know how…
I agree with those above – the big bottlenecks are your relatively low RAM and probably a slow/low-RAM video adapter.
One bit of advice – be careful when you purchase your new video card. There’s no need to mortgage the house to get your hands on a good one, but there’s such a thing as going too cheap.
In particular, make sure that the video RAM that is advertised for the card is actually mounted on the card. A customer recently came to me complaining that his hot new video card actually made his entire system slower. The card in question was an Apollo 3DThrill AGP based on the SiS 315 chipset, and boasting a “thrilling” 128 MB of video RAM power. Turned out that the board only had 64 MB of RAM installed, and the software that came with the card included a memory manager program that “borrowed” the other 64 megs from the main system RAM. The system had 512 MB of main RAM installed, so the loss of the “borrowed” RAM wasn’t all that bad, EXCEPT that the memory manager worked through the CPU, tying it in knots. THAT is what slowed everything down. A quick check using MS System Monitor showed 100% kernel usage all the time. In his case, we solved the problem by simply removing the memory manager program, and his system suddenly became a friggin’ ROCKET!!!
I would use 256M, after that you probably wont see much performance change unless you got XP. Get one of those registry defrag & cleaning programs like System Suite 2000. I used it on 98 alot.
Alrighty, a few software things you can buy that are easy to use. It’s obvious you don’t know a lot about computer hardware, but maybe these will help.
Executive Software Diskeeper 7.0
Link: http://www.executive.com/diskeeper/diskeeper.asp
Free Trial: Fully functional for 30 days.
Description: It’ll “reorganize” your data so that everything on your hard disk is cleaner. Trust me, it’ll speed your experience up signifigantly if you’ve had your computer for more than 6 months.
Rating: 8/10. For a defragmenter, there is no better program than this. However, the $50 price tag is hard to justify when other “packages” offer built-in defragments (albeit a little worse) , but come with many other programs to make the buying value a bit higher.
]Norton Systemworks 2003
Link: http://www.symantec.com/sabu/sysworks/basic/
Free Trial: None
Description: Fixes many of the problems Windows accumulate. This is the “must buy” It comes with a defragmenter. It comes with a set of utilities to “fix” many of the problems in Windows (this is essential), and an award-winning antivirus software with a year of free updates.
Rating: 10/10. GET THIS. NOW. For $70 with a $30 rebate, you will find no better program on the market. And, if I haven’t said it enough, buy this program before your computer dies.
wow! Thanks for all the help! And I’m downloading the ashampoo and the systweak! 
THANK YOU ALL! I will soon be looking into my friends brother (makes and works with comps for a living) business. Ill ask him to make me a reliable computer and get the necessary things it’ll need.
Check eBay for cheap video cards. I got my Geforce 4 64MB Ti4200 for about $130. BTW, don’t buy an MX Geforce 4. They suck in comparison to the Geforce 3 Ti s. Oh, and it would help if you had an AGP slot. It’s right next to the PCI slots. PCI video cards generally run slower than AGP ones.
A quick eBay search brought me to this [http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3011698540&category=187] Buy It Now for about $95.
Minor hijack:
I recently bought a P4, 2.0GHz w/128 MB RAM, which I run on Windows XP. I expected to be able to simultaneously run several applications in a smooth fashion (word processing, surfing the Net, listening to mp3’s), yet whenever I turn on the music, shifting to a new application or opening a new file on a currently running app. gets painfully slow.
I was wondering whether XP demands more RAM, or should I simply defrag my HD. I’ve also been told that saving lots of files or shortcuts on the desktop may adversely affect overall system performance.
Any ideas/suggestions as to what should I do to make my system run more smoothly?
Cheers,
quasar
quasar
You’d be surprised. Hit Ctrl+Alt+Del to get to the system monitor, click the tab processes and see what’s ranning, even when you have no programs working. Internet Explorer at this very page uses up 18MB of ram.
What really kills you, are things loaded in the system tray. Check those. ICQ, when you’re offline will suck up 8 MB. Kazaa, when passive, uses 17 MB. It all adds up.
I started with my P4 and 256 ram. Too little, so I bought 256 more. Now things run smoothly. I’ve also checked what’s starting when I boot the thing. It’s not anly programs in the Auto Start folder, but things in the registry too.
Google for “reg cleaner” for excellent freeware which can help you clean your computer in a safe way.
If you do get a new video card, I highly reccomend buying from Nvidia or ATI, as everyone else’s cards just don’t offer the same performance for the dollar. The ATI Radeon 8500 or 9100 (same card, they just renamed the thing) offer good performance in any of today’s games for under a hundred bucks. Also, get more RAM. RAM is cheap these days, you can pick up 128 meg stick for less than $20, or spend a bit more and get a 256 meg stick.
“P4, 2.0GHz w/128 MB RAM”
A dell? After loading all the stuff, you’d only have 25 megs free. This is why its so slow, get 512Megs, its cheap these days, about $55 & up.
quasar, here’s your prescription:
First, set a System Restore point from Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Restore. Keep setting a System Restore point after installing each application. This way, if anything messes up, you can always go back to where you were.
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Get Windows XP Service Pack 1. Now. Click on the Windows Update option in your Start/All Programs. If you can’t locate this, let me know.
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Install and run Ashampoo WinOptimizer Suite.
Clean everything up. Especially the Start Up and Registry. -
Install and run Memory Zipper Plus.
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Install and run Power Defrag.
This will take over an hour, maybe more, depending on your hard disk size. Be patient. It’s way faster than the built in defragger. -
Install and run Tweak XP
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Install and run X-Teq X-Setup
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Install and run BootVis from Microsoft
Optimizes your Boot Up speed.
You should now be sailing. If you have problems at any step, post back here. All the programs above are either free or fully functional trials.
I DO NOT RECOMMEND ashampoo or memory zipper plus…i just recently recovered from it! It made my computer run really slow…froze and gave me a blue screen each time I loaded up windows. SO please don’t make the same mistake I made. Thank You and pardon me for being rude.
That’s because you probably incorrectly deleted critical registry entries using options recommended by Ashampoo only for expert users or people familiar with the registry. Ashampoo automatically backs up every change it makes, and restoring a modified registry is a one-step process using the restore option.
I strongly recommend Ashampoo.
Memory Zipper Plus also, used incorrectly, can cause problems. If you’re unsure of the options offered in the Memory Zipper Plus settings, avoid using it. This does not mean it’s ineffective when used correctly.
And, as always, back up your system state before attempting to use any such application.
Play older games 
Be careful with this tool. I ran it on a Compaq that was using Drive Space drive compression, and Power Defrag destroyed the File Allocation Table. The hard drive had to be formatted and system restored.