Grindingly Slow Laptop!

Been tearing my hair out with my partner's laptop - it's so damn slow! It's a bog standard affair, Vista, 1GB RAM, freebie laptop on a 3 contract. It should be better than my old (XP) laptop was, but it isn't - even opening a new window in windows explorer seems to make it struggle.

It's running Vista - would changing it to XP speed it up a bit? Was thinking I could get a cheap OEM disc. Should I install XP alongside Vista, as the laptop wasn't supplied with a Vista disc?

We have tried a factory restore on the laptop by the way, and turning off unnecessary animations and graphics etc...

1gig of RAM double the RAM if I were you. Visit the crucial memory website, use there online scanner and it picks the correct RAM for you, couldn't be easier to do.

My laptop was only 512 RAM - it worked 'acceptably' even editing video for youtube. That's why I was thinking changing the OS on my partner's Vista laptop might help.

I'll have a look at that site, but even if I knew how much extra RAM it needs, I don't have a clue how to get it into the laptop... Do I just 'ram' it in?

The laptop is generally only used for internet (facebook) and playing music videos etc...

I'd try Ubuntu or Xubuntu before XP and 7 after that. 1GB is not enough for Vista and Vista is slow compared to both 7 and XP.

Bret

Deffo up the RAM then delete temporary internet files and and files in the user profiletemp directory

It's brilliant isn't it... all those 2GB laptops sold with Vista performed worse than 512MB ones sold with XP a few years earlier. A 1GB laptop ain't got a chance

Ideally don't want to open up the computer, but will look into it... Please bear in mind this laptop is only used for the most basic of functions I was thinking 1GB of RAM would be enough for XP, and all it would take would be buying a disc for 15.00 or so....

The best XP laptops were the ones sold as "Vista Ready". They were adequately specified to run XP and I really hope most people binned the Vista "upgrade" offer!

You have a few problems:

1 - Vista is a resource hog and will constantly read/write to the hard drive slowing down everything. Get rid of Vista. Windows 7 is better than XP by miles and performs really well. It appears to be a resource hog when you look at usage but it is very efficient at managing memory. Much better than XP and Vista.

2 - 1GB RAM is very poor, 2GB of RAM is ok for most things but 4GB is better.

Use a clean OEM no frills install, NOT restore to factory settings as that will still be full of cr@p.

You cannot fix Vista because of the way it is designed. Avoid like the plague. I have not had a single good Vista experience.

1 GB is plenty for XP and possibly Win 7. I've got a Toshiba Satelite with 1GB and it came with XP and a free Vista upgrade which I never bothered with. I rarely use it but it's not slow.

There is a way of getting Vista to use a USB stick as memory for small files, but it only shows an improvement in speed with 512K of memory.

The main problem with slow computers is usually AV software. I just run Comodo firewall.

If the drivers are available Windows 98SE would absolutely fly!!

Sorry to state the obvious, but what antivirus are you running and when did you last defragment the hard drive?

Algi

My old XP laptop was 512MB and eclipsed this one in terms of speed - I even ran PS on it which I wouldn't contemplate on this heap of s***! Even just going into 'Control Panel' to change the performance settings is an excruciatingly slow experience! Would you leave Vista in situ - in case I inadvertently cause problems with drivers etc - and create a dual OS system, or should I just start from scratch with a full XP install?

Greynolds

It's running Avast (had no problems with this on previous laptop) and I did defrag it a few weeks ago. I also reinstalled the OS a couple of months ago with the built in recovery tool.

With most laptops the ram is easy accessible by removing one screw, so most of the time it's not a big deal.

I forgot the name of that but Win 7 has that as well but it's not really for files it's there to help start up programs faster.
Ready boost, that's the name.
You can also use fast SD card if you've a SD reader.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_boost

Lots of laptops have PCMCIA and express card slots. You can buy memory cards for these and allocate them to ready boost.

look for "express card ssd" on ebay. 4GB for £25 ish.

The best thing to do is ditch Vista - as others have said it's extremely resource hungry. Windows 7 is a better alternative and as others have suggested, Readyboost is a great idea. Check first if the thumbdrive is Readyboost compatable, but in my experience it's worth doing, especially if you don't want to open the laptop.

Great suggestion by Doug - getting a PCMCIA card reader and using a memory card. Less intrusive this way (no USB sticking out at all times which could be akward).