George, i'm not sure how old your pc was, but i just upgraded ( fixed ) my friends old Dell pc ( 2002 ) about 2 wks ago. with the help of Registry Mechanic,can't remember the model,(he was gonna throw it away , blue screen and had to click on F1 to re-boot) all i did was replaced the memory to 2 gb, i could have put 4, replaced the nickel cell bat. and replaced ( cloned ) the hhd from 130 to 250g and blew out all the dust inside , for $150. ( parts ) labor was free
and it's working like a charm..