The advice from gbhall boils down to "if it aint broke don't fix it" and is good. Extra ram is a worthwhile upgrade but only if you are happy that the computer is running properly. The proviso is ensuring that you get exactly the right type to match your set up. It's an upgrade you can do in minutes.

A point that was mentioned back in post 8 Re: Sata drivers and running the hard drive is IDE mode.

Sata drivers need to be integrated into the OS disc or installed with a floppy disc during the XP installation using the F6 key very early in the installation process.

Having your SATA hard drive running as it should would without doubt speed up your system.

I reckon that Mark56 has spotted the underlying problem.

The video card is on a PCI-E channel, the drivers are listed for that in device manager, would I need the regular PCI drivers too?

There is no information on the erthenet adapter in device manager at all.

Yeah i think ive done just about everything with this computer now anyway. :

Its deffinately DDR-1 (PC3200) ram my computer needs, im not sure its worth the upgrade, since im not sure if extra RAM will effect the computers peformance with audio production software, it takes very little RAM and a load of CPU. ANd its about £30 a gig stick.

Is that what the RAID controller driver is for? Theres no option in the BIOS to change it to and from SATA/IDE mode so i wasnt aware.

My dad built the computer a while ago, i dont have any of the original disks or what not for it.

It's a bit hard to explain, but if you try to install XP on a more recent computer with a SATA hard drive, which is what you replaced the original with, the OS won't install. It stops when it can't find the necessary SATA drivers on the XP installation disk. There's three options:

1 Download and install the missing drivers on a floppy disk and the XP installation will proceed..
2 Make a new Windows XP disk by "streaming" or including the missing drivers.
3 Use a virtual OS set up like VMware Player which runs XP inside a later operating system.

I do realise that you have no Windows XP disk though. You've got round the lack of SATA drivers by running the hard drive in emulation mode but now need to install the correct drivers to get your system up to speed. That shouldn't be too difficult. Hopefully, this is a useful summary of the position. You know as much about computers as most of us beckyjc so I hope that my comments don't come across in the wrong way.

You don't need a RAID controller, this is for a RAID set up normally used on servers with multiple drives.

Where have you looked in the Bios for the SATA set up. You should find the settings under "Integrated Peripherals" and then look under "IDE function set up". You should have "Serial-ATA controller" in the list which will be disabled. Bios layout varies so yours may be slightly different.

From this link you can get the SATA-RAID driver for your motherboard. It is listed under IDE. The RAID element in the name is misleading but this is the correct driver to enable your drive in SATA mode. In the link select WinXP from the drop down list.

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_Socket_939/A8NSLI_Deluxe/#download

You need to download the driver to your desktop and then extract the contents.

In Device Manager you will see Storage Controller, Expand it and find SATA controller, right click and then select Update. Go through the screens, do not allow windows to search and choose have disc and select to find from a specific location. Point it to the extracted file and install it. Then reboot into the Bios, Integrated Peripherals, IDE Function Set Up, Serial-ATA Controller and enable it. Reboot and that's it.

If you have any doubts during this process, abort it, as getting the installation wrong may stop your PC booting.