Upgrade 6 year old Dell!

[rwpritchett]

I hate to say it, but with this low of a budget you can't beat the outlet store at Dell. For $300, you can get a E2160 C2D, 320GB SATA HDD, DL DVD writer, Vista Premium license, 2GB 667 RAM, and of course case, PSU, keyboard and mouse.

I know that if you build/upgrade yourself you can get higher quality parts and the satisfaction of the build but I'm just throwing out another option out there just in case the XP reinstall doesn't work wonders.

Nobody commented on DXRick's observation that you will need to purchase a new Windows license if you do a major upgrade that includes the motherboard. That will eat up ~$100 of your budget alone unless they are willing to try Linux.

 

[rabidbunny]

Ok, I have an old dell dimension 4550 with a p4 2.4ghz. It does have 1-1gb stick and a 256 stick of ram, instead of your 512, but that should do fine for now. A reformat should be just fine. My system came with an os disk only, use that and the motherboard drivers and you should be good to go. It makes a world of difference if you haven't reformatted in at least a year.
That's free right there so give that a shot first.

 

[umich2010]

Hey so I just did a fresh install of XP and it seems to be running quite smoothly. A gig or so of ram might do this beast well, but unfortunately not an option. Thanks for suggesting the reformat though, it worked very well!