How can I speed up a laptop?

Lady_K

I've got 756mb ram at the mo but I've just ordered some more to bring it up to 1gb, its:

win xp pro
2.6 gb processor
avast free installed

I have run diskchecker
i use ccleaner and glary utilities
have spybot spywareblaster and adaware
minimum start up programs

Browntoa

probably only the ram ...which you have done

aliEnRIK

If spywareblaster runs runs in 'real time' then its probably best to turn it off and use 'spybot' to SCAN when needed

John_Gray

See http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html, especially the sentence "And unlike other programs, SpywareBlaster does not have to remain running in the background."

Among the programs known to slow down PCs/laptops quite a bit are the TeaTimer component of Spybot and the Resident Shirld component of AVG 8 free (avgrsx.exe).

Run Task Manager and click on the Processes tab, then click twice on the column heading for CPU. This will show the processes which use the highest amount of CPU usage, and you may be able to identify them (perhaps with the help of Google).

Lady_K

I just thought would cleaning it help? I know its never been cleaned since new and its getting on a bit its a p4 processor its a hp nx9010.

I've never opened a laptop to clean it though would you advise this?

I know I've ordered the extra bit of memory to bring it up to max recommended but thats only going to increase it by another 256 memory about so its not going to make a massive difference. Its slower at the start up, it struggles more then but its still slow all the time anyway.

Browntoa

won't speed it up, and theres only really the fan underneath and the outlet vents to clean, good blast of air would do that , top left in the pic

Lady_K

Thankyou thst was a quick and helpfull reply I've never seen inside a laptop. The fan sounds ok anyway so maybe it might be better if I don't touch it.

Igol

Check your drivers are upto date that may help as well.
Belarc do a lovely little tool that'll have a sniff around your computer and tell you what you've got and whats up to date.
www.belarc.com/free_download.html