A question of RAM

ermintrude1

Hi,

I’m looking for a bit of advice regarding RAM

Just lately when I’m on the inet and have several window open, things are getting agonisingly slow.

Having done as much housekeeping as I am able; defrag, Ccleaner, file deletion, prog removal and minimised appearance settings, things aren’t much better.

My laptop only has 256mb RAM with an additional paging file of about 288mb

I have spoken to the pc shop who can put me additional RAM in for £60 which should address the issue, however, I am only considering this as a last resort, as the machine is @ 10yrs old and I don’t believe will respond well to surgery.

C drive is 17.5gb with 34% free space
D drive is also 17.5 gb and empty

I have moved one or two larger files across into D drive, but this isn’t helping – I gather that about 10GB of D drive is there for recovery purposes.

Is there any simple way I can dedicate part of D drive to additional paging file space?

I have looked in the help files on disk management, but comprehend too little of the instruction to attempt an adjustment.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

BreamoreBoy

I guess you've got an older OS, as M$ reckon 512M minimum for Vista but reality says you really need at least 1G. Try crucial dot com where there's a tool which checks your machine and recommends appropriate RAM upgrades.

ermintrude1

Thanks for that - when you say 'RAM upgrades' does that mean new hardware or utilising the existing?

AHAR

The computer having to constantly juggle data back and forth between the inadequate amount of RAM and the (in relative terms) very slow hard disk page file is what's causing the poor performance.
For this laptop, more RAM is the only way to achieve any real improvement. The old type of RAM it'll be using can be expensive though. How much were you going to get for your £60?

For most laptops it's easy to fit more yourself. You just unscrew a cover on the base and clip the new stuff in. What's the make/model?

ermintrude1

Thanks for your good explanation of how it works, I can grasp the concept better now.

The £60 was for 1gb, inc a tenner for fitting.
My old girl is an Acer travelmate 2201wlmi

closed

Follow this to get your commit charge down.

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

You can add a page file to any drive, (you have space on C: anyway) but that isn't really the issue, you need to trim your startup items, and choose light antivirus software.

Eliza_2

I've just checked the crucial.com website for my old laptop, and it would be around £15 for 1gb. It's easy as anything to fit, the first time I did it I used a combination of laptop manual and instructions that come with the memory, but it really is a doddle!

Have a go with the scanner on crucial, it does all the work for you and it would take you less than 5 mins to fix, which includes 2 minutes looking for a screwdriver (or is that just me?)

Liz

Hammyman

ermintrude1 wrote: »

Hi,

I’m looking for a bit of advice regarding RAM

Just lately when I’m on the inet and have several window open, things are getting agonisingly slow.

Having done as much housekeeping as I am able; defrag, Ccleaner, file deletion, prog removal and minimised appearance settings, things aren’t much better.

My laptop only has 256mb RAM with an additional paging file of about 288mb

I have spoken to the pc shop who can put me additional RAM in for £60 which should address the issue, however, I am only considering this as a last resort, as the machine is @ 10yrs old and I don’t believe will respond well to surgery.

C drive is 17.5gb with 34% free space
D drive is also 17.5 gb and empty

I have moved one or two larger files across into D drive, but this isn’t helping – I gather that about 10GB of D drive is there for recovery purposes.

Is there any simple way I can dedicate part of D drive to additional paging file space?

I have looked in the help files on disk management, but comprehend too little of the instruction to attempt an adjustment.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Add another 512MB of RAM but ideally 1GB. With a machine that old, memory will be quite pricey compared to the current type of RAM.

Altering the page file will not fix the problem and it won't speed up the system - you'll just have the hard drive thrashing away more.

WhiteChristmas

Microsoft's "minimum requirements" have always been optimistic; if you're multitasking at all, even XP will be sluggish on 256MB.

I'd be inclined to visit eBay, find 512meg (don't pay more than a tenner, you should be able to get it for £5) and see if it makes any difference. Even better, if you find you've got a free memory slot, just get another 256MB which matches your current one; it won't set you back any more than a couple of quid.

Then go and **** through the computer shop's letter box; they're trying to take it, so why disappoint them?

ermintrude1

Thanks to everyone for all the help, I'll do some more research (1 window at a time!) x

ermintrude1

Had to come back to let you know that from the above link info I have just ditched mse anti virus and loaded avast, re set explorer defaults and this baby is rocking and rolling!!!!!!!

Thank you all so much x