Laptop - upgrade or buy new

Lennys_Shinpad

Hi, I wonder if anybody on here could help.

I have a Toshiba Equium L40-17M laptop. It has been great for me but, over the last year has really started to slow down. I have tried all the obvious things like CCleaner, defragging the hard-drive, running anti-malware and reducing the programs on startup. But it still takes about 7 minutes from me turning it on to me being able to surf the internet. That is too long for me.

It has 2GB of RAM (cannot be increased any higher) and a 120GB Hard Drive (which isn't far off full).

I thought about buying a reconditioned laptop for around £300 but I would rather not have to. I then did a bit of searching and found that I could upgrade the hard drive to a solid state one. Would you recommend me doing this? I am also considering whether I should reformat the hard-drive and reinstall the OS. It comes with Vista on it, which I do not like. I was quite happy with the old XP. Does anybody know how I can get a version cheaply?

So really what I want to know is, do you think that a new hard drive and XP would make enough of a difference to the laptop or should I just stump up the dough and buy a new machine? I know the spec isn't amazing but I don't use it for heavy gaming. It is just for surfing the web and a bit of word processing/Excel etc.

Thanks in advance,

Lenny.

4Fingus

A reformat will have a massive improvement and clear whatever is causing the delays. My advice is to turn off all non-microsoft services too, just to check if you have missed anything. Start, Run, MSCONFIG and click ok. Select service and tick the box. Stop the others and see if there's an improvement. You have run all the usual tools but I have noticed on some machines some really poor programs that have 'memory leaks'. Look for these using task manager. They will cause your PC to become unresponsive.

XP will always run faster than Vista. Vista was a real lemon for Microsoft and I would steer well clear. You probably have an OEM license which stays with the machine. (Sticker on the bottom) I also belive that you will have what they call 'downgrade' rights enabling you to offcially use XP.

However, XP is soon to become unsupported and I don't recommend it unless it's a last resort.

If you have the budget, buy an SSD. I can tell you I cloned my laptop from HDD to solid state and improved the performance no end! So much so that I recommend them to everyone!

If you have the budget, a new PC will always be faster as the hardware improves on an almost daily basis but beware the pitfalls of windows 8. I would try and stick to windows 7 for now.

Hope this helps.

Jivesinger

Lennys_Shinpad wrote: »

It has ... a 120GB Hard Drive (which isn't far off full).

How full is it?

A full disk can severely hurt performance.

Even if there's a little space left, if there isn't much then the files get more and more fragmented, and the defrag can't make things better as there isn't enough working space for it to organise the files.

Also the "pagefile" which Windows creates is set by default to be a variable size; unless you changed this, then this file gets more and more fragmented as it grows and shrinks, which can make a big difference to performance.

If you're down to your last few Gb of space, then I suggest looking through the disk to see if you could free up some space. There are utilities (eg. Treesize Free) which can help by showing where most space is used.

Lennys_Shinpad

Thanks very much for your detailed response.

Yes I thought that Vista was a bit of a lemon. I like the idea of going for Windows 7 and an SSD HD. However, I am not too sure if it is worth spending £100 on that when I can get a new laptop for £300. I think I might just buy an old copy of XP for £15 ( http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Windows-XP-Professional-SP3-CD-CoA-License-Key-Service-Pack-3-CD-from-UK-Pro-7-/281065420926?pt=UK_Computing_Software_Software_SR&hash=item4170cdf87e )
and keep the same hard drive. I could see what performance is like after that and take it from there. I know that XP won't be supported soon but, to be honest, I might only be looking at keeping this laptop going for another 12-18 months anyway.

Will see how a reformat and reinstall goes and take it from there.

Cheers,

Lenny.

closed

post a hijackthis log

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

and run

chkdsk c: /F

did it come with vista - if so you need to make sure drivers are available for xp, vista can be made to look like xp, and is a better option

Im_just_careful

I would buy a USB hard disk (or ideally a network attached disk) and move your personal stuff to it. Then clean install XP. That e-bay link looks reasonable.

Lennys_Shinpad

Cheers, yes I know that the memory is an issue. Most of it is music and pictures/videos. I am thinking about buying an external hard drive for all of my media stuff and keeping the hard drive of this machine pretty empty.

This one looks like a good deal:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Slimline-Portable-Hard-Drive/dp/B008PABFX8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361016975&sr=8-1

Lennys_Shinpad

closed wrote: »

post a hijackthis log

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

and run

chkdsk c: /F

did it come with vista - if so you need to make sure drivers are available for xp, vista can be made to look like xp, and is a better option

Cheers, will work my way through this thread.

closed

if you do that, and the external disk fails, you lose the lot

real1314

If you're using 120GB at the moment, are you really expecting to fill a 1TB drive?

You could get a cheap 64GB usb stick for under £30 and put the other £30 away for a new laptop. Or get a smaller drive?