VERY slow laptop

jimimi

Hello

We have a laptop that's not that old, but it is painfully slow. It is a Dell Inspiron 1525. I have an old Dell Inspiron 6000 that's about 6 years old and it is loads faster than the 1525. Is it just a rubbish laptop, because it was fairly cheap, or is there anything I can do to speed it up. I do the defragment thing quite often, and it has AVG free installed.

Thanks very much

Sam

ETA I don't know an awful lot about computers, so if you explain it to me like you would a child, I would appreciate it

Browntoa

what version of Windows are you using on the 1525 ?? Vista ?

closed

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2436849

Browntoa

how much ram is installed

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000149.htm

take off avg (from add/remove programs and replace with

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

download and run

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

let it remove all it finds

jimimi

Browntoa wrote: »

what version of Windows are you using on the 1525 ?? Vista ?

Yes, it's Windows Vista Home Basic.

Browntoa

vista now needs at least 2gb of ram , probably 3gb to run well , i suspect its only got 1gb

the thread closed posted has some steps to take

jimimi

Browntoa wrote: »

vista now needs at least 2gb of ram , probably 3gb to run well , i suspect its only got 1gb

Yeah you are right it does only have 1GB. It came with Vista installed already though. Mind you we did get it from Currys!

Thanks for the link, I'll have a look at that now.

wdw2003

My daughter has a 2 year old Inspiron 1525 with 2gb and 160gb hard disk. It was always painfully slow and I upgraded recently to 3gb and 320gb hoping for an improvement, but I needn't have bothered as it didn't make a difference. I reckon it's just a pretty poor machine. Apart from that, a hinge has broken completely and the screen is held together with duck tape and needs to be propped against a pillow.

I'm far from convinced spending any more money on your machine would help. My daughter's given up and bought a MacBook Pro.

kabayiri

wdw2003 wrote: »

My daughter has a 2 year old Inspiron 1525 with 2gb and 160gb hard disk. It was always painfully slow and I upgraded recently to 3gb and 320gb hoping for an improvement, but I needn't have bothered as it didn't make a difference. I reckon it's just a pretty poor machine. Apart from that, a hinge has broken completely and the screen is held together with duck tape and needs to be propped against a pillow.

I'm far from convinced spending any more money on your machine would help. My daughter's given up and bought a MacBook Pro.

My mother has the same laptop, with 2.5Gb ram.

Vista works on it fine, but Linux seems better suited. It's a bit more responsive on a modest machine. My mother uses both. I wouldn't throw away a decent working machine.

debitcardmayhem

wdw2003 wrote: »

My daughter has a 2 year old Inspiron 1525 with 2gb and 160gb hard disk. It was always painfully slow and I upgraded recently to 3gb and 320gb hoping for an improvement, but I needn't have bothered as it didn't make a difference. I reckon it's just a pretty poor machine. Apart from that, a hinge has broken completely and the screen is held together with duck tape and needs to be propped against a pillow.

I'm far from convinced spending any more money on your machine would help. My daughter's given up and bought a MacBook Pro.

I take it the pillow is goose down, and now she has a MacBook Pro I hope the next pillow will be wrapped in Gold Lame and secured with Duct Tape

closed

Any machine can be made slow with the wrong software installed, no need to upgrade or replace, just look at what is running at startup, or backup and restore to factory settings. An inspiron 1525 with 1GB doesn't need to be slow.