Old Laptop Upgrade

[FenixFan08]

Well i just bought an old laptop from my friend and I bought 2 gigs of ram for it. Its an hp and runs win XP SP2. And there is a couple problem...

First, I have 2 sticks of 512 ram in it and it says I only Have 256 in my system setup under control panel. I just ordered my 2 gigs so I will try that when it comes in. Just any suggestions.

Second, It runs really slow when you power it on, so I went to my task manager and saw that it was of course the svchost.exe. I then looked up trying to fix that and currently in the process but still any suggestions would be nice. But my question is, will reinstalling windows or reformatting help get rid of that?

Thanks

Fenix

 

[vampist]

Well i just bought an old laptop from my friend and I bought 2 gigs of ram for it. Its an hp and runs win XP SP2. And there is a couple problem...

First, I have 2 sticks of 512 ram in it and it says I only Have 256 in my system setup under control panel. I just ordered my 2 gigs so I will try that when it comes in. Just any suggestions.

Second, It runs really slow when you power it on, so I went to my task manager and saw that it was of course the svchost.exe. I then looked up trying to fix that and currently in the process but still any suggestions would be nice. But my question is, will reinstalling windows or reformatting help get rid of that?

Thanks

Fenix

Well svchost.exe are windows process for running .dll files, so I'm not sure what you could possibly do to fix that. There are many of them, so your computer doesn't crash if one fails.

For the ram issue, just take out the cmos battery, the computer battery, and the power cord for 2 minutes. Then reinsert all three and start up.

How many processors do you have? Windows xp doesn't see two or more processors on start up right away. So changing the settings in msconfig can help that.
Also setting the bios to fast detect, fast boot. Can help.

 

[FenixFan08]

The svchost I find taking up all the memory, I just end the process then everything seems to be working fine. I just kind of wanted to just get rid of that whole one in general. I just didnt want to get rid of something I need. I will try the memory thing tonight. (At work now) I use a mac so Im not to fond with Windows. I am giving this computer to my cousin and just want it to run nice for internet and chatting and stuff. Thanks