Help ! How do I make my old laptop faster ?

[Oleonius]

Hi,

Recently, my grandfather died and the only thing he left us is a old ASUS laptop that he had. The computer have a Pentium B950 @ 2.1 GHz, 4 GB of RAM, a 200 GB HDD and Windows 7 Premium OS.

The computer is very slow and even open the configuration panel takes like 5 minutes. I said to my mother that this computer is too slow for me to use it at school but she keep saying that this laptop is very important to her and she wants to keep it.

Which upgrades or things could I do to make it faster ?

 

[USAFRet]

Save to another location any critical data on it,and start with a full reinstall of the OS and applications.

 

[Oleonius]

Save to another location any critical data on it,and start with a full reinstall of the OS and applications.

I don't have any CD to reinstall the OS. Is there a way to do it with a software, since it's a ASUS laptop ?

Otherwise, do you think that adding 4 GB of RAM and replacing the hard drive with a SSD would be good too ?

 

[USAFRet]

Save to another location any critical data on it,and start with a full reinstall of the OS and applications.

I don't have any CD to reinstall the OS. Is there a way to do it with a software, since it's a ASUS laptop ?

Otherwise, do you think that adding 4 GB of RAM and replacing the hard drive with a SSD would be good too ?

You can download the official Windows 7 ISO here:
http/www.w7forums.com/threads/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-image-downloads.12325/

Activate with the key printed on the bottom of the laptop.

Adding another 4GB of RAM won't really help much, depending on what it is used for.
I'd guess that there is too much junk trying to run in the background. That's why I suggested just a full reinstall. Wipe everything and start over.

 

[Oleonius]

And what about reinstall the OS + replace the HDD for an SSD ?

What 240 GB SSD would you recommend to upgrade a laptop ?

 

[USAFRet]

And what about reinstall the OS + replace the HDD for an SSD ?

What 240 GB SSD would you recommend to upgrade a laptop ?

Depending on what it is used for, an SSD would be a good upgrade.
Which one? Samsung 840 EVO.

 

[jaguarskx]

Generally speaking for typical usage the Pentium B950 should provide good performance. The reason why it is slow is likely because Win 7 is corrupted, which is why USAFRet recommended a re-install of Windows.

Before you actually do a reinstall you should let your mother go through the laptop to see if there any files your grandfather has on the laptop that she would like to save. Back those file up by either burning it to a DVD or to an external hard drive. When you re-install Win 7 it will basically erase everything on the C: Drive. If there is a D: drive on the laptop, then any cherished files should be saved there because re-installing Windows will only wipe the data on the C: drive.

A SSD will not make the laptop more powerful, but it will make more responsive which in a sense is somewhat similar. Because it read / write speeds on SSD are much higher than hard drives, the laptop should boot / shutdown faster and programs will launch / close quicker. It will not let you play games like Battlefield 4, but I assume you already figured out that for yourself.

Adding another 4GB of RAM can boost performance a little bit, but it will not be like day and night difference. If the laptop currently only has 1 stick of 4GB RAM, then adding a second stick (assume there is an available free RAM slot), then generally speaking you can get around 10% - 15% overall performance boost. Also, if you tend to have lots of programs opened and/or have lots of tabs opened in an internet browser then having a total of 8GB of RAM can help since Windows will not need to read and write lots of data to the PageFile.