Is there a program to tell me what hardware i can upgrade on a old computer

welsh boy

Inactive User
Joined
Sep 7, 2014
Messages
28
Reaction score
1
I have a old dell dimension 3100c computer that I was going to give to my daughter to play games on cbeebies but as it's running xp it's know longer supported. So is there a program I can download to tell me if I can upgrade my hardware so I can buy a different operating system.
 
Download Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor from Official Microsoft Download Center

I am actually picking up a dimension 3100 at the weekend to see if there is anything that can be done to upgrade it. Quick look at wiki shows it has a Intel 915GV chipset which limits it to Pentium 4, Pentium D and Celeron D chips. It does take standard DDR2 memory and has SATA port so an SSD is a possibility.

Do you the specification of your CPU and memory ? (Right click my computer and select properties)

If you remind me, I'll post back to see what is possible.
 
Google this:
windows 7 compatibility checker

Regarding Dell computers, If you know somebody who has a Dell windows 7 disk, you can use it to install your new operating system on your old PC, It won't ask you for the Key on install but will flag up an activation required warning later on. You can put the windows key of your borrowed windows 7 disk and it usually does the trick and activates it.
 
As above i have brought a few ex business dell laptops from ebay.
They have fairly good specs i always go for ones with at least 2gb ram and a processor running above 1.8ghz which most do and then i stick windows 8.1 on them and you end up with a great little laptop for around £70-£80.
 
If it's just for playing games, does it matter? I still have a few PC's running XP, no desire to change as they do their jobs well.
 
If it is just for light web browsing, watching DVD, etc then have a look at Linux. Something like Mint will run on 1GB of RAM with a decent P4. It does not look too different to XP and VLC and Chrome both work fine. My 7 year has it installed on her PC and she has not had any problems.

The only problem I've had was with my old printer but my newer one works fine.
 
I'm late to the party, but this might help others. I'm not aware of a program that will tell you what you can upgrade hardware spec wise of a certain machine. However, if you don't fancy opening up the machine to find out say how many memory slots on the motherboard, how many are populated and how many are free. A good utility to use is Speccy:

https://www.piriform.com/speccy

It's a god send for system builders and a starting block for advising users for hardware upgrades etc

Regards
Goot
 
Dimension 3100c looks like it supports a max of 2GB DDR2 RAM. Assuming it's got a Pentium 4 processor, maxed out with 2GB RAM, even Win7 will run quite smoothly on it for basic tasks with the onboard graphics.

What I would advise is replace the hard drive will a newer 7200rpm or SSD to get the best performance out of the kit (along with maxing out the RAM). Make sure you have the latest BIOS installed and up to system drivers from the manufacturer (ie. Intel, not Dell as they'll likely be out of date) - may also give me a small performance boost.
 
There is an unofficial service pack 4 been put together for XP and you can extendXP Updates to 2019 by simply following these instructions...

Code:
You don't have permission to view the code content. Log in or register now.

Make a backup first just in case there is an update in the future that is not 100% windows XP Compatible.
 
There is an unofficial service pack 4 been put together for XP and you can extendXP Updates to 2019 by simply following these instructions...

Code:
You don't have permission to view the code content. Log in or register now.

Make a backup first just in case there is an update in the future that is not 100% windows XP Compatible.

Yes and no. Basically the change makes XP think its a point-of-sale terminal for which Microsoft released a customised version of XP which has support till 2019. The reason why there is extended support is that XP-POS is designed to work in a really limited environment and not as a general purpose operating system, for example there is no support for IE. Thus Microsoft will only be releases fixes for XP-PoS which it thinks it is vulnerable to.

The recommendation is still to change to a newer version of windows or try and get off windows completely if possible.
 
Back
Top