old dell desktop recycling

[Guy]

right... the small person (aged 7) in the household is wanting a laptop for christmas and frankly that ain't gonna happen! 

i had an idea though to get her in front of a pc (that isn't ours) so she can start to do her schoolwork on it (as they are given internet based learning) and play some games etc

i have an old dell 4500s (circa 2002) that seems to work ok... i haven't used it for a couple of years but it has never been problematic and I have just booted it up and it all seems to function ok

what I want to do is wipe it completely, get rid of all the old programs and saved rubbish on there,  and then install some very basic windows os (as she uses that at school) that is not cluttered and will function with basically a browser etc and any security software (recommendations welcome) that we can lock the desktop down with so she doesn't get any nasty surprises 

its not a world beater when it comes to specs and i think it is carrying about 512mb ram.. used to manage my adobe suite software admirably

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/SYSTEMS/dim4500s/specs.htm#1101572

what might my options be please? cost is an issue so I don't want to be spending out on copies new windows etc.. its currently running xp home edition

would giving it a reformat of some sort be the best option.. i am happy to do this if it clears everything in one hit and gives her a clean pc to muck about with

tia - Guy

[bobbarley]

Just give it a good format, that'll sort it out good and proper, plus ensure any "old" files are removed

[Dolly]

http://www.crucial.com/uk/?cpe=pd_google_uk&ef_id=0VpOa7irsBoAAEZS:20111026175155:s&mpch=ads

scan your system, then stick some more RAM in, i took a 2001 pc from 256mb to 1gig. what a difference, then get a copy of XP assuming you dont have the original CD's and do a fresh install, should be fine after that

[Jay]

Delete the partition when reinstalling Windows, that clears everything even hidden files that you wouldn't know existed and stick around after a format.

Once Windows is reinstalled (I can give you a Dell XP CD or ISO with 99% of the updates so save you time updating it, Free) then install Microsoft's SteadyState (Free) which stops her from altering the PC beyond what you setup., Microsoft's Security Essentials (Free AV, low resource usage) and then PeerBlock to help stop naughtyness getting on the machine.

[The Mighty Elvi]

register with freecycle and beg/look out for a PC.

ebay  has cheap RAM 1G for about £6

[Jay]

Find out how much RAM it has, I've got some DDR kicking about that you can have if your slots aren't full.

PS: use this link, enter the service tag to find all the drivers you'll need.
http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/index.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

Also once you've entered in the service tag, look on the right hand side menu and click "warranty status" this should give you a page where you can find out the system specs.

[Guy]

thanks guys for your feedback and thanks Jay for your input.. will try and do this over the weekend 

i have been to crucial.com before and used to 'collect' spare ram from where I used to work many moons ago so I think it must be more than 512mb... its probably hovering around 1024mb at the moment.. i need to check this out

[Diamond Hell]

RAM is definitely the solution to ensuring it runs along nicely.

And a clean install as already proposed.

If you can get your grubby mitts on Win7 then run that - we've installed it on loads of old kit here and it flies along very very well.

[Guy]

RAM is definitely the solution to ensuring it runs along nicely.

And a clean install as already proposed.

If you can get your grubby mitts on Win7 then run that - we've installed it on loads of old kit here and it flies along very very well.

ideally i would.. but its finding a copy of win7 for nada that is the issue... what is the minimum spec for win7 pleasings? 

[The Mighty Elvi]

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/products/system-requirements


Windows 7 system requirements

If you want to run Windows 7 on your PC, here's what it takes:

1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)

16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)

DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver