Help. I use an AMD K6 for photo imaging. When I boot up it says it has 64*** something of memory, an extended memory that I think is the same ( too quick to read ),drive C is 1.99gb. Now it says it has run out of memory, the disk is full. As I use one of these machines for imaging, one for the net and one for general text etc it would be nice to just find a way of upgrading the imaging one economicaly ( cheap ). I know I can buy external plug in memory because I have seen them in the photo mags but at £400 + I can buy a new computer for the same. Is there any other way of getting more memory and bolting it in. Any help appreciated thanks.

Greetings

This is a good little scan:

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

Run it on the machine you wish to update & post back the info under the following heads:

Main Circuit Board

Memory Modules

Local Drive Volumes

Hi,
clicked on belarc and wow. need time to digest print out but I'll be back.
cheers.

Pecker, you might also get the information from running the D-A-L.com Online Hardware Scan and posting the log file here - we can take a look at interpret what it says into layman's terms for you.

Please let me explain something very important though. "Memory" and "Disk space" are two completely different things. This is perhaps the most common misunderstanding amongst non-technical users. Allow me to clarify:

"Memory" or Random Access Memory, to give it its full term, is what we abbreviate as "RAM". Your old AMD K6 system has 64 megabytes (64Mb) of RAM. If you get messages in Windows, mainly when you have several programs open, saying things such as "Out of memory - please close some programs to free up some resources", then you need more RAM. Based on the age of your system, I'm guessing you've got Windows 98. Therefore, I'd recommend that you could upgrade from 64Mb to 128Mb or 192Mb RAM. Windows 98 doesn't like more than that.

"Disk space" is the size of your hard disk drive inside your PC and "free disk space" is obviously the amount of your hard disk drive that is unused or free. Your hard disk is being reported as 1.99Gb. This exact size sets alarm bells ringing for me. The chances are that your hard disk is actually bigger than that but that (and this is going to get techy!) it's formatted as a FAT drive, which is limited to 2Gb (or 1.99Gb). If you upgraded it to a FAT32 drive, you might find that it appears to be bigger and gives you more free disk space. If you've got an early Windows 95 version, you can't do this. If you've got Windows 98, then it's a built-in option.

To find out how much hard disk space you've got and how much is free, double-click the My Computer icon on your desktop. Right-click the C: drive and select Properties from the menu. You'll see a pie chart. It will show you how much of the total hard disk space is used and how much is free.

When you look in My Computer, you probably also have an A: drive (floppy disk) and D: drive (CDROM). Do you have any others represented by the same grey icon as the C: drive?

Hi D J Nafey,
I've got 1.99gb on C of which 62mb are free. In my computer I have a,c,d,e (rewriter ). it's on 98 se and running fat32 I think. So what does RAM do and what does the disk space do. I think I have too many high res pics stored on it for its present memory. I really appreciate all this help from total strangers, it's nice to know there are other people out there who don't mind helping someone out.
Pecker

OK, RAM is what you need in order to process everything you've got open at one time. If you just load up Windows 98 and don't do anything with it, you need about 25-50Mb RAM, depending on your configuration. If you then open up a document in Microsoft Word, for example, that might use up another 5Mb of RAM. So now you're using 55Mb - you've only got 9Mb of RAM left to play with. If you then open up Microsoft Photo Editor, that might take up another 3Mb. So now you're using 58Mb of RAM and you've got 6Mb left for other stuff you open. Then, from Microsoft Photo Editor, you look in your "My Documents" folder and find a family photo you took at Christmas. It's a high resolution bitmap file and it's 20Mb in size, for example. You open it up and that takes your total RAM usage up to 78Mb. You've run out, your system starts slowing down and you might get error messages. If you upgraded to 128Mb or 192Mb of RAM inside your PC, you'd still have loads left to open up some more high resolution photos and large documents or programs.

Hard disk space is entirely different. This is NOT "memory". You've got a 1.99Gb C: drive - that's your hard disk. All of your Windows files, programs and data files are all saved on the hard disk. It's just like a modern version of a blank music cassette in a way: If you've got a 90-minute tape and you record 2 songs on it, they probably take up nearly 10 minutes and they are actually saved onto the tape. If you switch off your cassette recorder, the tape isn't wiped and the songs will still be there the next day. But you've only got 80 minutes of free space left on the tape now. A hard disk gets used up just like that by everything that you save (or install) onto it. 1.99 gigabytes (Gb) = 1,990 megabytes (Mb). So the capacity of your hard disk (or, at least, your C: drive) is 1,990Mb. You've used up 1,928Mb and you've got just 62Mb left. As you can see, that's a tiny percentage and it will cause problems when you try to save more data to it because you've pretty much run out of space on the hard disk.

There are a few things you can do to resolve your low amounts of RAM and hard disk space but, at the end of the day, you may find it easiest and certainly most effective to just go out and buy a new PC. Any new PC will have more RAM and hard disk space than your old one.

I'll assume that's not an option for the moment though and look at how you can improve what you've got. I've very intigued about your drive letters - you've got:

A: drive - this is your floppy disk drive
C: drive - this is your hard disk drive
E: drive - this is your CD-writer drive

But you've also got a D: drive. What's this? Do you have 2 CD drives in the front of your PC? If not, then the D: drive might actually be another part of your hard disk that you didn't realise you could use. If you go into My Computer or Windows Explorer and look at your D: drive, does it have the same icon as the C: drive or the same/similar icon as the E: drive? What happens if you double-click on the D: drive?

Hi DJNafey,
I'm afraid that D is another cd. After your excellent description of what does what I think possibly it's C that's low. I do put some images onto cd which frees up a bit of space on C but imaging programmes themselves are quite large and then I may dowload 170 high res jpeg off one camera and almost the same but slightly lower res off another. The Canon and Fuji camera down load programmes contain image editing and album software and then I run Photoshop 7, Elements 2 and Photo impact xl. I've just got too much on it really. In your opinion, what do I need if I buy a new one. When I bought these ( I have 3 ) they were top of the range but don't seem to have coped for very long ( 6 / 7 years, or is that a long time? ) before needing replacement. I use one for imaging, one for the net and one on word and office etc. They do overlap in as much as the net one has some pics on it and the relevant programmes etc.
Pecker.

That's a shame. If your D: drive turned out to be another part of your hard disk, we could have moved all your pictures or "My Documents" folder to that one and then your C: drive would have had more space.

I expect there's a reason that makes sense to you but you haven't said why you've got 3 PCs for different purposes. Any new PC should handle all of these tasks admirably on just one system. Any new PC is likely to be running Windows XP, which needs quite a lot more memory than Windows 98. I would recommend that you look for one with 512Mb RAM as this will allow the system to open large picture files better. A dedicated graphics card with 64Mb (or more) of its own memory will also handle graphics very well indeed. As for storage space, a 40Gb (or bigger) hard disk should give you all the capacity you need without having to archive your pictures onto CD to free up space on the hard disk. Also bear in mind that a new PC must have a modem inside it if you're connecting to the Internet through dial-up, rather than broadband. This must seem like an immense jump from what you've got now but I can assure you that this isn't at all unusual in a new PC - I've had all of these levels of RAM, graphics and hard disk space in my PC for 2 or 3 years and I don't even do anything particularly demanding on it.

If you have 3 PCs because you've got them in different rooms of the house, maybe a laptop would be appropriate so that you can move it to wherever you want it.

Six or seven years is about the average for a PC to last before it becomes relatively useless so I think you've done rather well out of it. Most people would change their PC (or at least upgrade part of it) more often than that.

The kind of level of new PC that I've been talking about would probably cost you about £500 and that will include a nice 17" TFT flat panel monitor and a CD-writer. Even a flashy laptop like this would only set you back about £700-£800.

The alternative, of course, is that you could upgrade your existing system. Replacing your existing memory (it's not worth keeping) with 512Mb RAM will cost you in the region of £50 for parts. It's about the easiest thing that you can change in a PC and, as long as you buy the right part and take care against the dangers of static electricity whilst you've got the PC opened up, there's rarely any problems or complications with fitting. Alternatively, a computer engineer should charge you whatever their minimum labour rate is - probably about £30.

A new 40Gb hard disk (that's about the smallest you can buy now!) will also cost you in the region of about £50. Fitting it is easy for a techy to do but there's a strict procedure to go through in order to get it to work. We could explain it to you but it's not difficult for a novice to get a step wrong or get a little confused. A computer engineer should again charge their minimum labour rate as it's an easy job for them and, additionally, you could also get them to copy all of your files to the new hard disk so that you get the benefit of the new drive being faster than your old one. In any case, you'd want to copy all of your existing pictures etc onto the new drive so that they're all in the same place (and you still need to free up some space on the C: drive to make Windows run a bit better anyway).

Hope that helps