I know someone who needs a new graphics card. I don't know what
motherboard they have or whether they have an agp slot. What's the
easliest way of asking them in an e-mail to find out if they have an
AGP slot, without opening the machine or downloading any tools?

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Clarification of Question by chrisp2004-ga on 02 Feb 2004 02:54 PST

Kind of didn't make it clear, they don't know very much about
computers and live a distance away from me!

chrisp2004 -

If it was a particular brand of computer (i.e. Dell, Gateway 2000),
you could look up the individual specs on their site and find out what
motherboard it is.

Furthermore, you could use a Diagnostic program like PC Mark 2004
(http://www.futuremark.com/products/pcmark04/) or SiSoftware Sandra
(the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant)-
(http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/index.html?dir=&location=pinformation&langx=en&a=).

Hopefully, this helps

Hi Chris,

I'd back what mudslush has suggested.

If your friend knows very little about computers, you're probably not
going to have much luck getting them to work out what motherboard they
have.

It would be far easier to get them to tell you the make, model and
serial number as this is likely to be on a sticker on the computer
itself.

With that information you can go to the website of Dell, HP, Compaq,
Toshiba or whichever manufacturer and get a list of all the components
in the machine.

Best of luck!

Poe

Does your friend have any of the product documents (like manuals of
the package or the parts)? They usually mention what parts the system
has.

Ask him (or her) of many time the computer have... If it have more
than 5 years it will be possible to not have agp slot.

Other form (if they don't have the motherboard manual) is opening the
system properties (My pc -> properties -> Hardware -> System -in win
95/98/Me/NT - ; My pc -> properties -> Hardware -> System Devices ->
-win 2K/.NET/XP). If there is a AGP/PCI Controller, the computer have
agp.

Sorry for my english terms, my Windows is in Spanish and i translate it :).

have them open it up and check. its not hard.