Just Starting... Please Help

Currently I own a dell.

I added a stick of DDR RAM and a 200GB Maxtor Hard drive and a pioneer DVD Burner. I have a pentium chip. I am also being given a tower. I am interested in learning how to build a new computer with these components. Because I have a smaller dell tower (the one that is meant to be horizontal) I have been told that it might not be possible to use my existing mother board. I had problems originally installing the new hard drive because it did not want to recognize all 200GB, yet they were all recognized in my friend's computer. It was not until it was partitioned four times that its full capacity was recognized.

If anyone has any tips or advice on which companies or models to avoid or where to start that would be great.

Hope everyone had a good long weekend.

Kelly Kathryn

What's the model number of your Dell?