Detector - Multi Tasking ?

[Bigun]

My machine being old now - Pionex Elite 500 PIII, a Schroeder's machine I ordered set up in Sept. 99 - and have been very satisfied with it which still performs pretty well tho im forever stuck with being on dailup but have a question for you about multi-tasking. It was originally set up with the OS being 98Se but with a problem I had this time last year forced me to do a reformat and what I loaded up then was 2000Pro which did take up more drive space than I thought but im still ok, after a year running it and I still have 36% free space. Where I run into a problem with it now is while running my media player (Musicmatch Jukebox) which seems to really sap the rescources. What more can I do as cheaply as possible to help it out? Right now I have two memory cards in, a 64 and a 156 with one more slot available. Would you suggest me to use two 156's or even three or am I pretty much stuck with what ive got? Oh, and of course buying a new PC really isnt an option right now but might be after the Govt sees fit to send me something in the mail!

[Tee]

ok- I assume you mean a 128 MB chip...? or could it be a 256 mb chip..?

There isn't a 156 that I am aware of.... Either way, yes you should add memory- It's cost effective and you would see a boost in performance.

Pionex is just an intel clone, put together in Denver-I was a dealer for them at one time. They will use standard memory and it would be pretty cheap. You'd probably spend about 10 -20 bucks for a decent memory upgrade from ebay.

My opinion: Throw out the 64mb and populate the two empty slots with matching 128 mb chips giving you a total of 384. That should run lots better than the 192 you currently have and should only cost about $25.

[Bigun]

Thanks for the info Tee I appreciate it! When I mentioned it before, I meant a 156meg plug and play PCI memory card that I had picked up at Staples a couple of years ago but its a bear trying to run anything extra now since I loaded the Win2000 is pretty iffy. I know that if I do get the opprotunity and im able to financially I will get a new PC and still hang on to this one, especially after cleaning it out good it would be a decent non-portable mp3 player!

[Detector]

I'm with ya Bigun I still have a 500mhz machine that runs like a top other than in a few areas like multitasking and multimedia, but I'm still running 98SE on mine.

If you put in a music CD do you have the same performance problem?

Tee's right. Getting rid of the 64mb and replacing it with one that matches your other will help. There is a few tricks that will help your music play better, but really its an issue of the combination of your CPU and OS. Windows 2000 is far more resource hungry that your 98 was, and unless your CPU(processor) is a MMX(MMX technology is designed to accelerate multimedia and communications applications) its going to struggle running most modern multimedia.

Trick one: If you have a favorite play list you could re-sample your songs from 44khz(CD quality) to 16khz(radio quality). Of course you loose some quality but if you music stutters anyway it could be an improvement. There is lots of free software that can be used to re-sample songs.

Trick two: A long forgotten trick to squeeze more speed out of a PC is a RamDrive. The performance issue your having is partly due to the speed of your hard drive. Reading music from your drive to memory then Music Match takes a lot of processor power. You can free up your processor by putting your songs in memory ahead of time allowing it to concentrate more on playing the music.

Setting up a ramdrive in the old Windows was pretty easy because it was a far more common practice 10 years ago, but it still can be done in W2k its just a bit more complicated. Here is a good link explaining how to setup and ramdrive in W2k, but as I said its pretty intense.

http://cyberwizardpit.net/article3.htm

Once you have a ramdrive setup you can copy not only music but any files(documents, movies) to this drive and they will run much faster.

As you can see there is no real simple answer other than upgrading the old PC.

[Bigun]

Thanks for the info Detector! I will be checking out the RamDrive for sure tho im not all that great on any programming if thats whats involved but I will try! Yeah between having MusicMatch running while online and then try to open an .exe file it can either slow the player down for a few moments or make it stutter tho not always so im sure that my first direction will be the memory card increase even tho the last time I had checked, the darn things are getting more expensive it seems which I guess is what ive got to pay for having an antique machine! The heck of it is, its still a good one and I will keep it even if im able to get a new PC. I do wish that I could still be running 98Se which was factory installed originally but for whatever reason when I tried to load it during the reformat, it wasnt getting everything and would have been a real problem and when I was offered the (I soon learned) rescource draining Win2000Pro it wasnt so much of an upgrade really to be worth what I lost in virtual memory or perfomance IMO but the price was within my budget (both then and now) as in free. I just thought of something that ive used maybe twice since I did the reformat and im not sure it will help or not but I do have WinRAR so I could maybe give it a try, see how it works for mp3 files. Also, even tho im not downloading mp3s on any kind of regular basis I do get in the CD burning mode and tho like everything else my HP burner may not be a speed demon but it does work well and as far as playing CD's they go in the SONY system. The sound card and speakers that I have - a 2 + powered sub - sounds pretty good, lots of oooomph (enough for a $50 ticket when still in good ol DC!), but its not quite like the 300W 5.1 SONY. Again I thank both you and Tee for your suggestions!