RAM upgrade on old Laptop

[nowuncme]

Hi, my dad gave me an old Toshiba hp compaq dv9288ea,running Windows Vista 32bit with 2x1 gb ddr2
It was in a bit of a mess so I reinstalled Windows 7 64 bit and the drivers, but as I am novice I have now realised that 2gb of ram is not sufficient for 64bit Windows 7.

Is it possible to upgrade to 4gb of ram even tho the it says 2gb is the maximum capacity on the manufacturers website, is there a way?

 

[Laptop_Nerd]

Hi,

You are correct when you say that it's only upgradeable up to 2GB. The problem if you're to upgrade it to 4GB is it may not be recognize by the laptop and it will require more power since more RAM means it needs more power.

Here's the specs sheet of your laptop for reference.
http/h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=c00849161

 

[Alex192]

nope if the motherboard doesn't support more than 2Gb of ram then you could not put more than that

 

[nowuncme]

Thanks for the reply

So I take it I should not be installing a 64 bit on this system but rather a 32bit version? As the 64 bit is using so much of the ram and cpu usage!

RAM usage at 90%
CPU usage at 50%
at idle with 64 bit win 7!

 

[ffg7]

check your processes as I don't think windows is using all that ram & cpu.

 

[nowuncme]

svchost.exe seems to be the culprit! It's using like 700,456k in memory usage in Task Manager

 

[ffg7]

my hp g60 laptop running win7 64bit ultimate with 4 gigs of ram & a intel dual core 2.2ghz with ontrack easy recovery professional 11.5 in the background is using around 20% cpu & 41% ram.

 

[nowuncme]

I know this laptop is quite old now and and low spec compared to my gaming rig but I would like to think its still ok for light use like internet browsing. It just feels sluggish and slow.

 

[ffg7]

do you still have the original 2x160 gig hard drives in it?

 

[nowuncme]

Yes

 

[ffg7]

what is your budget if you have 1?

 

[nowuncme]

I'd say £200 -£350 should get something decent right?

 

[ffg7]

if you still want to use & upgrade that laptop then I suggest installing a 60 to 120gig ssd drive into drive bay "a" with win7 32bit & a 7200 rpm hard drive of whatever size you want in drive bay "b".

 

[nowuncme]

My dad said that laptop cost him £1200 when he bought it, but that must have been 10+ years ago. So it was probably a good machine back then but...well things age new stuff comes out all the time so its kind of hard to keep up with it all.

I will ask him if he wants to upgrade with ssd as I know they are fast as I have a 250gb samsung evo in my pc ( tho i did suggest to him before to just get a new laptop )

 

[nowuncme]

Thanks for the advice and thanks for your time

 

[ffg7]

the laptop is about 8yrs old or less being vista came out January 2007

 

[nowuncme]

ahh ok well feels like 10 years

 

[ffg7]

I know, tell me about it.