any laptop genius's?

[aaront903]

so ive been given a cheap oldish netbook and its a bit slow,anyway i can speed it up?its running windows 7 starter?dont know if thats good as more of a phone or tablet person than a laptop guy

any help appreciated

[DiscoDes]

One of the easiest ways to speed up an older laptop is to add more memory which is cheap and easy to do.

You can also disable flashy Windows animations/effects that may help.

Look in your startup and disable and unnecessary software that loads on boot up.

Just do some general housekeeping and run CCCleaner to get rid of crud.

I am no expert but I hope this helps.

[OneDay]

+1 for CCleaner. Get it to clean the registry too.

Malwarebytes is also a useful tool and is free.

[aaront903]

Thanks guys will give it a try

[chykensa]

Defraggler is much better than the supplied MS Defrag tool - it's free and easy to use, and does a much better job.

Also run Spybot Search and Destroy, this may find stuff that the other good software suggested above may not discover. Just remember to restart the pooter between each software run so that the registry picks up the changes each time.

[pyr0]

As well as adding more memory, I'd look into swapping the hard drive for an SSD

[phatfil]

reinstall the o/s as per day 1 there is probably a partition on the disk containing the installation media, google "reinstalling win7 on XXXXXXX" where XXXXX is your laptop name/model and brand. for instructions, probably holding f10 down while u reboot??

that will put the lappy dack to as it was the day it was bought and remove 99% of any user clutter its gathered as well as any dodgy s/w..

follow with a few windows updates to bring the system upto date and you should see a marked improvement..

[vinny41]

do you have make and model number and how much ram it currently has

[aaront903]

It is a msi u180 and next to ram it say ddrlll 1gb, know nothing about that lol

[vinny41]

Here the spec sheet for msi U180 max ram is 2GB and only has 1 DIMM Slot(s) which means if you upgrade the ram to 2gb the current 1GB ram can't be used
laptops.specout.com/l/484/U180

do you just intend to use the netbook for browsing the internet, emails

[aaront903]

Yeah just basic things really, maybe printing a few pics too

[vinny41]

given the current ram, processor and the limitations of the windows starter 7 it is questionable on spending money on upgrading the memory or installing an ssd unless you find those items very cheap
I would run CCCleaner and Malwarebytes to clean the device up and then remove Malwarebytes as it will degraded the performance of your netbook
install a internet security package(firewall/anti virus) choose one that isn't resource hungry and leave it and that
answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_install/windows-7-starter-what-are-the-limitations/422801d5-89de-494d-8cc1-6f4fc21c2ac0?auth=1

[aaront903]

thanks bud.tbh i restored back to factory setting and got rid off all the files future father in law had downloaded and it seems to be alot faster all ready so might not mess with it any more in fear of breaking it haha

[*-SARIN-*]

Jul 31, 2015 11:48:40 GMT pyr0 said:

I'd look into swapping the hard drive for an SSD

This ^^^ is by far the biggest increase in speed that i've ever seen from changing a component in a computer.

[sydsut]

Jul 31, 2015 14:22:09 GMT *-SARIN-* said:

Jul 31, 2015 11:48:40 GMT pyr0 said:

I'd look into swapping the hard drive for an SSD

This ^^^ is by far the biggest increase in speed that i've ever seen from changing a component in a computer.

+1 for this, have a 128gb SSD on my PC for the OS, programs and supporting files and larger HDs for the data files, music collections etc. Keep it clear of clutter and amazing performance.