How To Test Your Computer’s Memory
I have two older Dell towers. One is a Dell Inspiron 531 with 2 GB RAM. The other is a Dell Inspiron 530 with 1 GB RAM. They both take DDR 2 RAM and I realized I had a bunch of 1 GB DDR2 RAM […]
PC Computer Hardware
Articles about PC computer hardware
How To Fix Diskette Drive 0 Seek Failure
I was given a Dell Inspiron-530 Desktop. A Vista Home Basic, Intel Celeron CPU 450 @ 2.20 GHz, 288GB hard drive and 1GB RAM. It was an old desktop owned by a late neighbour. When I turned it on, it would give an error message:
Reviving A Dead Printer
A couple of days ago I thought my printer was a goner. I have a Canon Pixma MX492 and I tried to print something but I got the error message suggesting my printer wasn’t on. I assumed it was because I could see the little
Changing A Hard Drive In HP Notebook 15
When it comes to family members and some friends, I’m where old computers go to their last resting place. So I either fix them and make them work again or dissect them for parts. I recently received an HP Notebook – 15-bs023ca that looked like
Thinking Of Buying A New PC? Buyer Beware!
The expectation is that if you purchase a brand new Windows 10 laptop with good specs it will be upgradeable to Windows 11. However, that isn’t necessarily so — read on to learn why. Many retailers are currently advertising some nice laptops at tempting prices
How To Add Bluetooth To Your TV
Cut The Cord Adding a Bluetooth transmitter and receiver is a great way to upgrade an older TV or a newer one not fitted with Bluetooth. Living in a condo or an apartment often means listening to your favorite movies in a subdued volume so
How Much RAM Is Enough?
I’ve been reading Jim Canfield’s terrific Purchasing Your 2022 Computer series of articles with interest but noticed some confusion in readers’ comments regarding the amount of RAM required. Posing the question “how much RAM is enough” is akin to asking “how long is a piece
Purchasing That 2022 Computer – Final Installment
Buying That 2022 Computer The premise of this series was to hopefully make it easier for anyone looking to buy a new PC. Because the process is usually made difficult with all of the variables presented, in the example below, I am only going to
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DDR5 SDRAM And My Dream
The newest evolution in RAM has recently been released to the public. Like any new electronic component release, the prices will stay high for a while but for an initial release, they are more affordable than I would have guessed. With memory manufacturers like Crucial
Benchmark: NVMe Drive vs SSD
I thought it might be an interesting exercise to pit an NVMe drive against a Solid State Drive (SSD) to see just how much difference there is between the two in terms of speed. In the blue corner, we have an Intel Optane NVMe and
Purchasing Your 2022 Computer – Storage
Everything You Need To Know About Storage Solid State Drives (SSD) have been one of the biggest improvements to computer performance in recent years. Unlike traditional analog HDDs that have spinning disks, SSDs have no moving parts, they are faster and more reliable. So why
Purchasing Your 2022 Computer – Memory
A Computer’s Memory Isn’t What It Used To Be RAM (Random Access Memory) has come a long way since the home computer was released. My first computer had 4K of memory. My current computer has 32GB of ram. Laid out in numbers, that’s 4 000,
Purchasing Your 2022 Computer – The CPU – Part 2
Inside A CPU There are several types of CPUs available for today’s computers. The most common are Intel’s from Celeron, to the Core Series i3 or i7. AMD’s Ryzen series are similar in type and function to Intel’s Core Series. One common factor you should
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Gateway Desktop Freezing Up, Rebooting, BSOD
The last couple of days my Gateway desktop has been acting up. The screen freezes and then the fan starts getting noisier. So when I managed to reboot it, I went to the Event Manager and clicked on Administrative Events. And behold the long list