Toshiba Satellite P500 from 2009 with Vista 32bit - What is my bottleneck?

[Edge2010]

My laptop (TOSHIBA Satellite P500 PSPE8U-04N009) seems to really start whirring on basic apps like Chrome or even Explorer.exe. I think it's gotten worse with time but I've got no proof other than seat of the pants feel.

Here are the specs:

CPU: Intel Core2Duo 2.53mhz
Vid Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650
RAM: 4gb DDR3
OS: Vista 32-bit

It's going on almost 4 years, so I understand things will run a little slow but I'm having basic problems like Explorer.exe having seizures and crashing or a few Chrome tabs (with minimal extensions active) really making it take a while to draw the screen.

It looks like 4GB is the max with Vista 32 bit, so I'm trying to figure out which path I should take:

1) Buy Windows 7 64-bit and upgrade to 8GB of new ram

2) Continue looking for another bottleneck

I'm hesitant to invest $200+ for a new OS and memory until I really know that they're the root of my issues. The video card performs fine for most 3d games but is aging.

Any recommendations on how to go about verifying the bottleneck? I'm sure software integrating with the context menu and whatnot is slowing things down a bit but I'd really like to see if upgrading the ram and OS would even make a difference aside from having a fresh start. I do tend to see memory usage go up with a lot of Chrome use or open tabs in Process Explorer but I'd love to see if I could find a way to see if there are any other larger components that are not performing up to my needs.

 

[kirilmatthew]

A fresh OS install would fix most your problems, its worked wonders for me in the past. I recommend windows 8. Boot times and stuff like IE run so much faster then 7, but up to you!