Maximum PC

A couple of weeks ago, I went to visit my Dad and work on his Gateway computer that he has had for over nine years. The computer itself is an old Gateway E3600-500C that has an El Paso 2 motherboard with a Pentium 4 1.8 GHz processor and a total of 768 MB of PC 2100 memory in the two memory slots. I updated the BIOS for this motherboard just over five years ago (the latest available from Gateway's support site for this particular motherboard). Anyway, the thing was running slower than it should, so I ran some antispyware applications and found and removed a few pieces of spyware/adware. Then I installed Secunia PSI 2.0 on his computer and found a Yahoo! Toolbar v. 6 that was installed on this computer, so I used RevoUninstaller to remove it completely from his Windows XP Professional Edition OS (RevoUninstaller found 1055 leftover registry entries after using Yahoo! Toolbar's own uninstall program, so I removed those, too!) and everything seemed to be alright.
A couple of days after I left, the computer wouldn't start up, so I arranged to meet him on the road, picked it up from him, and took it home with me. A little detective work revealed that the computer's PSU had given up the ghost, and needed to be replaced. So I removed the PSU and replaced it with a CoolMax 450W PSU, and it fired right up! After starting the computer, I went to Crucial Technologies to see what memory upgrades were available for the motherboard and used the Crucial System Scanner to scan the computer and show me the available memory upgrades for this motherboard. The system scanner came back with memory upgrades of up to 1 GB sticks of PC3200, PC2700, and PC2100 memory. Originally, this board could only hold 1 GB (512 MB in each of the two slots) of system memory total. My question is this: Could a BIOS update that I performed on this computer five years ago actually increase the total memory capacity of the motherboard as well as the speed compatibility? Or should I take the Crucial System Scanner's results with a grain of salt? I have purchased and used memory sticks from Crucial Technologies many times in the past, most of which were purchased using the system scanner tool's results, and have never had a problem. Thanks in advance for any and all replies.

Go to the motherboards bios update site and read what the update fixed. They do a lot of tweaking with the various updates to address issues with the motherboard and the memory could have been one of the issues.

Nasty

I did that, Nasty, but the information there mentioned nothing whatsoever about increasing the total size of the memory in the system to 2 GB. Nonetheless, I went to eBay last week and ordered both a 1 GB kit and a 2 GB kit from the same seller, and received both kits today. I installed the 2 1 GB sticks in the memory slots, and the system recognized both of them. However, the board only has them running at 266 MHz (PC2100) instead of the 400 MHz (PC3200) speed that both modules are capable of. Is there any way to increase the memory bus speed on these modules to their fullest capability?

...should be a setting in the bios to set the speed of the ram.


Nasty

I already checked for that, but this is a "dumbed down" Gateway BIOS that does not allow for adjusting the clock settings for the RAM. Dell does this as well with their BIOSes and, for some reason, will not allow the motherboard to use the SPD settings for running the memory at its stock speed.

You are screwed then...I hate OEM products like Gateway, Dell and the rest of the ilk.

Nasty

Same here, Nasty! That is why I prefer to build my own systems (with the notable exception of laptop computers, that is!), and have not had an OEM computer now for nearly six years (my first computer was an OEM build from Quantex Microsystems back in 1999). Thanks for your input and your helpful replies!