Is my old laptop too old?

kitschkitty

3 years ago my ex bought me an "Acer Aspire V5-431 Laptop, Intel Pentium 987 1.5GHz, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, 14" LED, DVDRW, Intel HD, Webcam, Windows 8 64bit"

For 2 years it worked really well, but unfortunately this year it's been slowing down, and when I finally gave in to Windows 10 it's pretty much slowed to a snail's pace.
I'm not at all techie, but it is defragged, doesn't have many files stored on it and I deleted all programme I know were safe to get rid of.

I know I can factory reset it (sadly then though I'll lose Photoshop as my ex had the disks). So basically is there any (other) way to get it back to being fast enough to use for web browsing or has it really passed its prime and do I need a new laptop?

If so what are the best sub £300 budget machines out there these days for fast web browsing and office use.

Thanks for your time.

Sharon87

Have you run adware and malware checks? Might be that slowing down your computer. Also run virus scanner, what virus software do you have? Some of them have been known to slow down computers.

robin58

If you have a computer recovery disc( a disc you should have created when you got the computer) you could just reload the system onto a brand new internal hard drive.

This will give you a new install with Windows 8.

As for the Photo Shop you can keep the old drive and swap the drives when you wish to use it. The old drive still will work but will still be slow than compared to the new drive.

To be honest all Windows versions are great at first but they all slow down over time.

As for old laptops, I am writing this on a laptop which is at least 6 years old with half the ram of yours with a 60gb drive.

I have renewed the internal drive once. I still occasionally swap with my old drive get get old things off it.

NiftyDigits

Which version of Photoshop?

I think older version may be free.

https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/kb/creative-suite-2-activation-end-life.html
http://www.redmondpie.com/download-adobe-photoshop-cs2-for-free-legally-while-you-still-can/

Either way, there should be a way to download and activate the version that you have., on a new install once you furnish more details.

Your laptop is definitely not too old. The processor is not particularly powerful, but nothing that would hold it back from everyday tasks.
The usual recommendation in this case is to back up your Product keys and run a clean install of the OS to a newly fitted SSD.
Here is someone who did just that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsqVAsGII2w


But unfortunately, the design of your particular machine is not at all friendly.for when it comes to swapping drives. Often it's a five minute job, involving removing four screws, swapping the drive and replacing the screws.

Yours involves perhaps 25 screws and taking half of the thing apart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdWN4AAduGc

So a clean install(including a possible reset of Windows 10) to the existing HDD will be less fiddly for you, but then you'll need to back up all of your product keys and data before proceeding.
The result will be a much improved user experience, though not on a par with the fitting of an SSD.

getmore4less

Might be worth running hardware diagnostics on the disk

a defrag and a dskchk might not see all the problems

I had read error that were cause serious slowdowns and short but annoying hangs

Have you checked there is nothing eating CPU with taskmanager(all processes).

Le_Kirk

Which version of Photoshop? I know that Elements 9 does not carry the serial number anywhere that I can find (except on the original DVD and packaging) but CS6 has it under Help, System Info then scroll down and look for Serial number.