I have an old pc in the loft which i'd like to try and bring up to scratch as my laptop is proving far from dependable!

It's about 5 years old with a via mvp4 chipset and cyrix processor but it never worked properly. i bought it from a company online without o/s as i already had my own copy of windows 98 and once everything's loaded the sound crackles and it basically runs like it's got arthritis. for this reason, the modem never worked properly and couldn't hold a connection.

Questions I have - and this is where I'd like some advice if poss! - does anyone know if...

1) What the issues could be with the existing chipset. someone once suggested mainboard drivers and although i have tried running the cds that came with it the problem still exists. I'm loading windows, then running the driver cds - is that right or should i be doing something else???

2) To make it a viable alternative to the laptop i'd need to replace the chipset and cpu. what sort of setup should i be looking at, in terms of bits and where should i source 'em

3) should i just give up and buy a refurbished machine off e-bay??? I'm not looking to spend a fortune but need something that's internet/e-mail/office capable.

Cheers!

You can buy a brand new PC with TFT monitor from PC World for less than £400 that should be more than adequate.

To upgrade the current PC will mean, new motherboard, cpu, ram, graphics card and maybe HD so its not really economical.

Hi

Old PCs cost more in time than they will ever be worth. My honest opinion would be to get a cheap ready built system from Aria or similar. They do an Office system for around £220 iirc.

Chris

edit: You could of course just build a new PC from scratch. A case with PSU will go from around £15, Motherboard, processor, etc, would probably come in at a little under £200. Dont try and use your old PC power supply. It will almost definately not be up to the job.

You can buy a brand new PC with TFT monitor from PC World for less than

You really really don't want to be installing win 98 or Windows Mellenium Edition on a any pc if you can avoid it. You could pick up a machine for £150 easily capable of running XP or even Windows 2000 if XP isn't in your budget.

As already said you can pick up a decent new machine from PCworld for £400 with XP pre-installed. Incidentaly don't expect to get the XP installation disks with it though. It's not a problem though. The installation files if you are lucky will be installed on a hidden partition on the hard drive which is far from ideal so you can make a copy of someone else's disk and use that provided it's the same version of XP as yours. If you do that then it's all legal as long as you have a licence sticker on the computer base unit.

The best thing you could do with the old PC is throw it away, there will be nothing of any use in it any longer.

That said Building your own PC can be a lot of fun,BUT it can also cause you a lot of grief - if you dont install something just so you can spend hours tracking the fault.

You've said that you don't want to spend loads -- if this is the case, then building your own is probably not a good idea - you can buy ready built PC's for much less - and if its important to you to have reliability then maybe one of the PC deals that PCWorld are doing would be ideal.

If your still wanting to build your own - then I would suggest something like the following spec:

Good quality case -- with 120mm fans(run quiter)

AMD processor -- maybe Athlon 64 3200

At least 512mb Memory(1Gb would be better)

At Least 80Gb Hard Drive

Do NOT use on-board Graphics

Would suggest PCi-Express Motherboard for future compatability

Sound card optional

Power Supply of at Least 450W

There are loads of places that do all this stuff below are just a few :

www.overclockers.co.uk

Overclockers are good source of components - have used them loads.

www.scan.co.uk

Scan have good deals "Today Only" & "Mixit Bundles" worth a look

www.ebuyer.co.uk

Ebuyer very well known,quite a few off here have bought from them

www.dabs.com

Can be expensive but very large stocks

www.komplett.co.uk

Komplett offer self build PC kits -- might be ideal

O/S isn't an issue - already have full version of xp (paid for) and a copy of ubuntu linux that i'd probably try, just to be different!!

Thanks for those pointers - appreciate it and will investigate those sites today!!