Upgrading Dell Inspiron 6400

[Helbels]

Hi there

First post on here, so be gentle.

I've got a Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop which is only running 1GB ram and has a puny hard drive (43.8 GB on the C Drive and another 10GB on the D Drive). It's running Windows Vista (yeuch) so I could really do with more RAM.

I'd like to upgrade both the RAM and the Hard Drive really, but I have never changed components on a computer before (let alone a laptop) so don't know where to start.

Is it hard? Could an inexperienced person do it? Or am I just better to bite the bullet and take to a computer store for them to fix?

Thanks

[Animenia]

Swapping harddrives and RAM is very basic and anybody can do it.
However in a laptop everything is crammed together so it's real tight so just make sure you don't bump into anything while you have the case open

As for Dell they have some great service manuals on their website.
I went ahead and looked up your model and here's a guide on how to remove your harddrive.

And here's a guide on how to remove a memory module...

Hope these help

Upgrading memory is extremely easy. Unplug power source, remove battery, open
hatch on bottom, remove memory, add new memory, etc.

Replacing a hard drive is easy, too. It's just that getting all the software
onto the new drive can be somewhat daunting even with supposed world-class
cloning software such as Ghost, which Symantec acquired and managed to mung up.

.... Ben Myers

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:58:47 -0600, Helbels <Helbels.35lm0a@no.email.invalid>
wrote:

>
>Hi there
>
>First post on here, so be gentle.
>
>I've got a Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop which is only running 1GB ram and
>has a puny hard drive (43.8 GB on the C Drive and another 10GB on the D
>Drive). It's running Windows Vista (yeuch) so I could really do with
>more RAM.
>
>I'd like to upgrade both the RAM and the Hard Drive really, but I have
>never changed components on a computer before (let alone a laptop) so
>don't know where to start.
>
>Is it hard? Could an inexperienced person do it? Or am I just better
>to bite the bullet and take to a computer store for them to fix?
>
>Thanks
>

[Helbels]

Just wanted to say Thanks for responding to me - with your help I have changed my RAM (and how easy was it to do - I was amazed!). Given your comments about the problems with transferring data from one HD to another, I'm gonna give that a miss for now and will just buy an external hard drive if I get to the point where I need one.