Help Upgrading presario c500 series notebook - Page 10

You all are a cool lot

cheers ...

Right, Stayed up till 3:30am last night finishing all my software installations and updates.

 

 I would say that the C500 now boots up slower with the 64bit software but is a bit quicker once running so a good upgarde so far.

 

 I have not noticed that the CPU cooling fan is runing any more than it did with the old cpu but am presuming that with the good cleaning it had during the instalation and the IC diamond (I know I used to much) that it is maybe running more efectively.

 

 This morning I cut down a new smart phone screen protector and fitted it to the mouse mat, It does not adhere properly to the whole area rather just the area in the centre that has been smoothed down from use but it does work and is secure so will stop the silver from wearing away over time. You really do not notice it is there unless you look closely and it is smoother than the original finish. I should have done this ages ago as I often have the C500 with me when I am working on a vehicle so I can listen to the UK radio and to check any information that I need.

 

 So thanks to this thread and ebay I now have a vastly improved laptop and it looks like new again.

 

 Now all I need to know is what is the best way to wipe my old hard drive? so I can sell it on.

 

 I was going to do a fresh install of vista and send it out without a product key but would preffer to sell wiped clean.

 

 I can vaguely remeber doing something called f-disk but cannot remember if this is the correct thing to do or how it is done.

 

 Anyway the sun is shining here and I need to go and fix my wifes car and my Jeep.

 

 Looking forward to further interesting posts,

 

 John

You can review some startup processes and services and disable them. This will speed up the start up considerably. And a better simple antivirus software. I personall recommend (and use) MSE.

Unless you burn and slash the hard drive, there is no such thing as wiping it "clean". If you don't need $ why not just using it as an external back up drive?

cheers ...

I already have a 40 gig external hard drive from a previous dead laptop and I do not really use it.

 

 I don't do much on my c500 just access the web etc and store some pictures which are all on my back up hard drive. If it dies I just fix it and do a fresh install of whatever operating system I am running at the time.

 

 My wife also uses a 32gb flash drive to keep a mirror of her important stuff.

 

 Anyway, I want to sell off all the parts that I have replaced including my old vista disc so I can reduce the overall upgrade cost to its minimum and hopefully appease my wife who wanted me to buy a new laptopor tablet instead of upgrading this one.

 

 Remember I will be upgrading at least two more of these so will have many old parts to get rid off including two more 80gb hard drives.

 

 I also know that I will never use any of the parts again so it is either store them until they are obsolete or sell them now and re-coupe something.

 

 Thanks,

 

 John

 

 Loving my "new" C500

I would recommend using Linux to wipe and install it on the drive and sell it as such. When the buyer wipes it out again then you kinda have multiple wipe

cheers ...

Thanks,

 

 I will try that this evening.

 

 It will also be interseting to see how the linux runs on the upgraded C500 even with the slower smaller hard drive.

C500 Fan and QHN,

Sounds like it's going good for you then after the upgrades. Good times!

As for wiping the drive: If it still has Windows on it, you might try loading it back in temporarily and using CCleaner (www.piriform.com). The more recent versions have a "Wipe free space" option which is supposed to make sure there's nothing recoverable in any way on it. All it really takes to over write any data "ghosted" on the drive is to be sure something else was written in its spot.

As far as Linux, you know I've never thought to try on the C500. I prefer having a double-HD for my Linux builds so I don't have to chop and change Windows (sue me, I'm old fashioned). Since the C500 houses only one, that honor has been left to my desktops and occasionally my DV9700. I HAVE run it in VM on occasion, and the T7200 certainly makes that more bearable than even my T5600 did, even though there's not a HUGE performance difference.

Another satisfied customer, as they say. Spread the joy, any C500, C300, and HP G3000 and G5000 units you find. Heheheh

Regards,
O Shadow Fox O

Yet again great advice.

 

 I have been a CC user for the last 5 years and love it, completely forgot it had the 35x drive wiper.

 

 Will go down that route right now while I watch the tennis.

Thought I should provide an update, I LOVE MY NEWLY UPGRADED C500.

 

 Anyway, just sold all my old parts on ebay and took the update cost from $210 down to $100, when you include the fact that I also went from vista to windows 7 and bought some trim pieces that is an excellent outcome.

 

 No wonder HP/Compaq do not advertise modifications and upgrades.

 

 

 Thanks again,

 

 Cheers,

 

 John

Your sig says it all! Great job!

cheers ...

 Meant to add that I also think the speakers have got louder and clearer.

 

 I used to listen to the radio at 100% but now am happy around 65%. At 100% you can feel strong vibrations through the top bezel and mousepad, I don't remember it doing that before and while I was in the bath last night I had it at 90% (instead of the usual 100%) and it was definately filing the room more than usual.

 

 I know that as part of the 64 bit windows 7 updates it installed new sound drivers so maybe that's where the improvement came from.

 

 Anyway I am sure it is louder and clearer than before and that makes me even happier with my C500.

 

 My cousin will be round in the next few days and he still has a standard C500 (well except 2gb of ram) so I will check to see if mine really is louder. He never uses his speakers so it should be a good comparison.

 

 Although it is his only computer he does not use his C500 very much (still looks like new) so it will be interesting to see what he makes of my upgraded one.

 

 I will post his comments.

 

 Cheers,

 

 John

Hey guys,

Glad you're enjoying it so much! They really are wonderful machines when you put a little love into them.

I especially love the fact that it's now a "sleeper." The label says Celeron and Vista Basic, the machine screams Core 2 Duo, 2 GHz, and Windows 7 64-bit. And with that 12-cell battery and the brightness down, 5-6 hours is not unheard of.

Maybe your cousin will get jealous and want an upgrade to match. Heheh

Regards,
O Shadow Fox O

hey,

i have read through this whole thread, i have the C500 with the 445605-001 motherboard does this mean it can support a T5500? i just want to double check before purchasing it! :)
 

Paul 

Edited by macarule - 3/10/12 at 12:56am

Looking like it to me, but OShadowFoxO would confirm for you also

cheers ...

Hi Macarule,

Welcome to the forum!

In answer to your question: 445605-001 should be able to run a C2D T5500.

If you already have one, it should just be a drop in replacement basically. If you're looking at buying one, you should be fine. I would suggest shopping around a bit though and seeing if you can find a T5600 (1.83 GHz vs. 1.67 and the T5600 has Virtualization tech.) or even a T7200. Either should work in 445605-001.

Just bear in mind that you will be limited to 2 GB of RAM no matter what. If you want to go higher, you need to nab board 441695-001.

Also by way of update for some since I haven't been on in a bit...

Ran a DVD cleaning disc through my C500 and DV9700 DVD drives, they're back to working like new. Had no idea a dirty drive could cause issues that badly. The point of this is?

I installed the Windows 8 Consumer Preview on my C500 after popping a 128 GB SSD in my DV9700 and moving the old 120 spindle drive to the C500. Win8 seems to purr on the C500 so far, I haven't noticed any issues or hassles (apart from MS OBVIOUSLY believing that regular computers will be totally replaced by touch screen stuff). The WEI rating (for those who care about them) is almost identical to the system's Win7 rating (the CPU dropped .1).

I love these old systems that still kick proper amounts of rear with a little attention. Heheh

Regards,
O Shadow Fox O

picked up a T5600 for $30, should get it in 3-4 days :) will let you know how it goes 

 Well my cousin finally brought his standard c500 round yesterday and it really was not a fair test.

 

 He has Norton running on it and it seems to be chronically slowing it down.

 

 My upgraded c500 started, I input the password (which his doesn't have) and was on line surfing while his was still at the windows is starting screen.

 

 He will be dropping it off next week to see if I can get it to work faster before upgrading or replacing it as I do not remember my old c500 being that slow although I never had Norton on it.

 

 Think I wil remove all of the Compaq programmes while I have it and see if that makes any difference.

 

 Then temporarily remove Norton and install and run another anti-virus like AVG, I expect that will really improve it.

 

 Other than that I will do a fresh install of vista and see how it goes from there.

 

 It also took an age to shut down

 

 John

Good move. Cleaning up the system environment first

cheers ...

Welcome back C500 fan,

That sounds like a plan. Norton is... Yeah. I remove that as quickly as I can whenever I find it.

I do use AVG myself and have generally been very pleased, though lately it's been starting to annoy me with popups and the like. There are other free anti-virus programs out there, though, so if AVG doesn't strike you well enough there are other choices.

I'd also try SpyBot and CCleaner as we've noted before. Even with only my Celeron M 430, my C500 was never HORRIBLY sluggish even in Vista, so it sounds like cleanup may be all it needs. It was slower, but not unbearably so.

All that being said... Depending on what motherboard he has in it, it may not be overly expensive to do an upgrade.

Let us know how it turns out!

Regards,
O Shadow Fox O

Shadowfox,

 

 I used to use spybot but moved to AVG around 4 years ago as I found the spybot had missed a few viuruses and coupled with CCleaner I find it works very well. I do agree, the latest version is a pain with all the pop ups and advertising.

 

 It keeps telling me internet explorer is using over 255mb of memory, guess what I have five tabs open!!

 

 Unfortunately my cousin has had the Norton since he got the machine and believes that it is the only thing that is capable of keeping the bad people gaining access to his machine and keeps his life intact. Good advertising in my view.

 

 It was the first thing I took off the C500 when I purchased it and it does make a great difference after you het it fully removed.

 

 Unfortunately I am assuming that his C500 has the same motherboard that mine had given that they were bought in the same store at the same time (the day vista was launched in the US)

 

 Still he does not have much stuff on it so I will probably do a fresh install of vista and then remove all the HP bumf.