Advice re slow running laptop please

PHYTHIAN

Hi all, hope one of you savvy people can confirm what I think the problem is.

My daughter has a HiGrade VA250 laptop which she doesn't use any more so she's giving it to her friend. We replaced it because it ran too slow for what she wanted to do.

It comes with pre-installed Vista but with only 512 RAM. I deleted all her old progs etc and only have Avast , Malaware Bytes, Hijack This and Spybot on it but still it runs slow. I've run all of these but nothing untoward shows.

I'm of the opinion that the RAM is way too low for running Vista.
Running a scan via Crucial it shows the max RAM as being 2GB.

Would I better to
1. Increase the RAM to 2GB and keep the Vista
2. Change from Vista to XP/Windows 7 and leave the RAM as is.

Any suggestions?
Thanks

rmg1

I'd upgrade the RAM as far as you (depending on budget) can.
There's also a very good sticky for speeding up computers at the top of this thread which may help.

andrewjf

Almost certainly the RAM is way too low on this machine. Even if you changed to Windows 7 you don't have enough RAM.

Alternatively, consider installing a Linux operating system such as Ubuntu, which is far less RAM hungry than Windows. This will likely resurrect your machine without forking out for more RAM.

helptoyou

Upgrade the RAM to the max if you can afford or at least double it.

I had the same issue on an old machine 4 years ago with the same RAM spec as yourself I doubled it and hey presto sorted.

you should be able to find suitable upgrades on e-bay or amazon.

PHYTHIAN

Thanks for the replies folks.

rmg1, I've been through most of what the sticky says but I'll try what I din't think of myself. TBH I'm becoming more convinced that the RAM is just not up to it. About £30 for 2GB seems a decent price so think thats not too much to pay out to get it performing better. Think I've been dragged into something by my lovely daughter...giving her laptop away FOC and it's ME who's got to get it running right ( 7 hours on the [EMAIL="bl@@@ming"]bl@@@ming[/EMAIL] thing yesterday) and now it looks like I'm paying for the memory too!!!!!!

Andrew, hadn't though of Ubuntu tbh, might delve a bit deeper.

PHYTHIAN

Thanks helptoyou...think you're right m8...extra RAM it is

andrewjf

PHYTHIAN wrote: »

Thanks for the replies folks.

rmg1, I've been through most of what the sticky says but I'll try what I din't think of myself. TBH I'm becoming more convinced that the RAM is just not up to it. About £30 for 2GB seems a decent price so think thats not too much to pay out to get it performing better. Think I've been dragged into something by my lovely daughter...giving her laptop away FOC and it's ME who's got to get it running right ( 7 hours on the bl@@@ming thing yesterday) and now it looks like I'm paying for the memory too!!!!!!

Andrew, hadn't though of Ubuntu tbh, might delve a bit deeper.

It's definitely worth a try, as your system is unusable at the moment.
My work laptop (i5 processor) has a whopping 8GB of RAM, but Windows7 plus apps was chewing up over 90% of this, causing the system to swap, and that hurts performance.
I installed Ubuntu desktop, and haven't looked back. It transformed the machine from sluggish, to speedy.
You can even run Windows apps using a compatibility layer called 'Wine', and even run Windows O/S in Virtualbox VM.

closed

if you're giving it away, just reinstall vista, disable windows defender, add avast free, and wipe free space with ccleaner, then it should run as fast as it did when you bought it.

Having malwarebytes, spybot, and probably lots of accumulated junk from years of use will be using all your ram up, the most effective cure is reinstall windows.

NiftyDigits

Does it have any empty slots? For example 512MB RAM in one slot and another empty? Or is there only one slot?
If it has two slots and one is empty, save your cash and buy a single 1GB of RAM. 1.5GB RAM should be ok.

Then you are looking at £12.30

PHYTHIAN

NiftyDigits wrote: »

Does it have any empty slots? For example 512MB RAM in one slot and another empty? Or is there only one slot?
If it has two slots and one is empty, save your cash and buy a single 1GB of RAM. 1.5GB RAM should be ok.

Then you are looking at £12.30

2 slots. Looked on ebay and its only £16 for the 2GB so might as well get that. Thats the machine done to the max then!

I contemplated just wiping everything before handing it over ( as per closed's post) but know the kid is going to put itunes on it and use it for Facebook games and whatnot and knew 512MB wouldn't be enough. TBHthe parents of my daughter's friend are really genuine people but struggling for cash ( ain't we all!!) , she doesnt work, he's not long been laid off etc so, why not make a kid smile by spending a few quid and a few hours.

Thanks for all your help folks...much appreciated.