My Dell 5150 Desktop (3.25 years old) is freezing upon startup.

[Uppie1414]

Help!

My Dell 5150 work computer is freezing up. At times, the PC would slow and you could really hear the fans burning up in the PC.

I started it just now in startup mode (on my laptop now), and I noticed it has pc533mhz ddr2 non ECC RAM:

1x 1gb, 1x 1gb, 1x 256gb, 1x 256gb.

2 things--what should I do to get my PC working (it lets me in sometimes, I just backed up the files)

--what RAM should I get to upgrade this to help? Anything else?

It's a p4 3.0ghz. I'm getting a new pc soon, but what can I do to get this back?

Thanks
Dane

 

[Athena]

Now that you've backed up everything you need,you probably want to run the system diagnostics and identify any failing hardware.

If the hardware checks out, you might want to just use the restore partition to wipe the machine and start clean.

You want to be sure to install any BIOS and firmware updates before you start

As far as memory is concerned, the 5150 uses PC2100 memory but I don't know what the maximum is.

 

[Slowlearner]

Go through the trouble shooting procedure:

http://support.dell.com/suppor...5150/en/sm/tshoot1.htm


I just checked a Dell 5150 at work and it has DDR2 PC2-5300 as per Crucial's scan. However before you add memory etc, you need to run the usual maint. checks - run antispyware, get updates, run hd chkdsk.