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bmullenix · Member Joined: 27 Feb 2007 Posts: 1

I am trying to do a few simple upgrades on my nephew's old Gateway and have run into several problems. First I reloaded Windows 98SE and got everything working but the sound. According to him the sound was working before I wiped the hard drive and restored the system. The Hardware Device shows that the sound devices are working properly but there still isn't any sound. I even installed a PCI sound card and still can't get the sound to work. Yes, I did check the Mute button because I've made that mistake before. If anybody has any suggestions, I would sure give them a try.

My second problem came when I tried to upgrade the ram. It came with 64 mb of ram. I pulled that and put in a stick of 512 mb that I took out of a working machine. According to Gateway's site, this machine can be upgraded to 512 mb. When I tried to boot with the new ram, the Gateway logo page appeared and then the screen was black and didn't do anything else. Does anyone know if Gateway machines require something special as far as ram? The stick I took out said PC100 and I think the new stick is PC133 but I've never had a problem before with using either one. The 512 stick is taller than the the 64 stick but the connections look identical.

I had planned to put the new ram, a larger hard drive and a PCI video card in this machine but before I buy any parts for it, I need to solve my current problems. I know he would be better off giving up on this old machine but he really can't afford to buy a new PC right now and all he does is surf the internet with it.

Any help would be appreciated.

Ben Myers · Guest

I forget exactly what the Essential 500S is, but I'll guess that it is a Pentium
3 or Celeron system with a Socket 370 for the processor, because you said it
takes a max of 512MB of memory.

For the sound, and the overall proper operation of the rest of the system, the
motherboard chipset drivers need to be installed first, then the audio drivers
downloaded from the Gateway web site. No need to have a separate sound card.
if the on-board sound is working.

The system probably has an Intel 810-series chipset, which will not accept a
single 512MB memory module, only a pair of 256MB to get to the max of 512MB.
PC133 ought to work just as well as PC100 as long as the memory is low density
(usually 16 chips per memory stick). The memory does not need to be special,
only garden variety commodity memory.

Gateway's web site continues to be pretty good, and you should be able to find
more specific data and software downloads there for your system. However, when
I looked, I could not find a specific "Essential 500S" model. The system
serial number tagged on the computer can help you find what you need on the
Gateway site... Ben Myers

On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 12:47:55 -0000, no@spam.invalid (bmullenix) wrote: