My family owns a Compaq Presario 5000, which came with either 64 or 96
MB of RAM. Recently, I upgraded the RAM to 512 MB. It seems to be
running better, but I'm wondering if there's anything I need to do to
take optimal advantage of the new RAM. Do I need to tell the system to
reconfigure itself somehow, or has it done all that automatically?

I'll save you $2.00 and tell you that you do not need to configure
your computer to take advantage of your new RAM.  Keep in mind that
system speed is controlled by a number of different variables such as
Processor Speed, Hard Drive Speed/Seek Time/Data Transfer Rate, RAM
Speed, and the fragmentation of your hard drive.

Unrelated to your RAM, if you have not recently defragmented your Hard
Drive I would suggest doing so, as it will lead it an additional
performance increase.

There are a few things that can be done to optimize your system, but
they aren't specific to the fact that you added memory.

A lot depends on your operating system also. Assuming you are in
Windows 95,98, or Millenium, you can:

Set your virtual memory to a minimum and maximum of 500 MB or 768 MB.
This saves the time the system spends resizing the swap file.

Fix your disk cache at 32 MB. This saves the time that Windows spends
using virtual memory when it doesn't need to.

Switch your primary configuration to Network Server, which speeds up
disk access.

Eliminate unwanted startup applications. This gives a faster startup,
and a more stable system, as there are more free resources.

Enable both IDE channels.

Disable searching for new floppy drives.

defragment the hard drive. Preferably with Norton Speed Disk.

Clean your registry with Norton Win Doctor and System Optimization
Wizard.

Use a utility to reconfigure your internet access settings for better
speed.

Use Download Accelerator Plus for much faster file download speeds.

There are thousands of other minor tweaks that can be done. You get to
a point where you could change 100 things to get a tenth of a percent
speed increase.

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