Compaq Presario worth upgrade?

We have this Presario 2100 laptop that has done relatively well if rumor is to be believed. We got it at Best Buy about three years ago and haven't had a great lot of trouble. We use it mainly for word processing and net surfing, with a little gaming, nothing fancy--solitare, Tetrus, minor stuff like that. But now it seems to be feeling its age--slow booting, sometimes won't shut down right, gets pretty hot sometimes even with solitare, various little things. Acts to us like the processor (Celeron 4 M) is maybe getting ready to check out? But we kind of like it overall, which is why we got it in the first place. The question is, is this machine worth putting a new processor in? I saw one that seemed to be reasonably robust for a decent price, (INTEL PENTIUM 4-3.0EGHZ 1MB L2 CACHE PGA478 800MHZ FSB OEM (PRESCOTT CORE: 90nm)) but will this machine handle this particular upgrade, or any Pentium for that matter? We just have a few months left on the extended warranty. Considering its reputation for unreliability, would we be better off trying to get it restored to OEM level and move up when it finally dies? Thanks

 

Just format/do a system restore. I seriously doubt that your laptop will be able to upgrade to the processor you mentioned. That's a desktop pentium processor with a far greater thermal envelope and power requirements than what your laptop was designed for, even if it is pin compatible with your motherboard (which I'm pretty sure it isn't since you have a Celeron 4 M, not a Celeron 4, but I don't know off the top of my head).

 

Well, looks like the Celeron 4 M is a socket 478 after all. So that P4 is pin compatible with your motherboard in the notebook. Still, I don't think you can do the upgrade:

1. It's very difficult, even if theoretically possible, to upgrade the processor in a notebook computer.
2. Despite being pin compatible, the Celeron has a TDP of 30W, and the P4 3.0E has one of 89W, which is triple. I doubt that the cooling system in place can handle that.. your laptop will just melt.

Honestly, I think if your laptop is getting hotter and slower after 3 years of use, its pretty normal and doesn't mean that your processor is about to kick the bucket. Just format and maybe open up your laptop to clean the fans and vents with some compressed air.

 

Yeah, I wouldnt recommend doing that upgrade, the Presscott Pentium 4's are known to run hot even in desktops, so your laptop most certainly wont be able to handle it. Also the chipset and BIOS might no support the new processor. Your Celeron 4 most likely would be runing with a 400MHz bus and the Pentium 4 is running at twice that, so I am fairly certain it wont work with your motherboad. If you do want to upgrade look for older mobile Pentium 4 based on the Northwood cores which have 400 or 533MHz bus.

For such an old system an upgrade might not be a good idea. I would just let it run as long as it can and replace it when it dies. As suggested byquiong a reformat/reinstall of Windows might give you a boost in speeds if you have not done one recently.

 

A faster hard drive will help speed things up as well.

 

Thanks for the comeback. We've done a System Restore several times but is that as deep as a reformat/reinstall? That we haven't done. If that is the case, we can give that a whirl. Plus check out the fast HD and Northwood processor concepts as well. Thanks again.

 

Yea first re install the os using the CD you got with it. I have done this numerous times to my sisters 6 year old pentium 3 desktop and it runs great even with mid level graphic games.

-if it comes to either upgrading or buying a new processer, I probably would reccomend upgrading, everything besides the processer is still old and will limit its abilities. If you dont want to spend a lot on a new laptop desktops are extremely cheap now adays as well. I would bet money that reinstalling the OS will fix it fine, after a few years computers just get all kinds of junk on them that will be cleaned off when you reinstall. Hope this helped you out.