Slow Laptop ? What to do When Your Laptop is Running Slow

If you have a slow laptop you need to be realistic when trying to get more performance from it.

A slow running laptop can have its performance increased in two distinct ways, either by hardware or software.

Hardware

RAM
With just about any 32bit version of Windows, be it XP, Vista or 7 today we need between 2 & 3gb or RAM to get the most from it.

Having small amounts of RAM will mean that your computer will have to use more hard drive space as RAM (temporary storage) when required, which is much slower.

Hard drives
Adding another hard drive can actually make a slow laptop slower unless you know what to look for, this means knowing which hard drive your computer currently has, then Googling it to see the specs.

For example if your current hard drive has a spin speed of 5400rpm and a cache of 2mb, upgrading to one with a 7200rpm spin speed and cache of 8mb should make a difference.

Before going out and buying another hard drive or increasing the RAM you really need to know where the problem or bottleneck lies with your laptop.

We can see this from task manager, CTRL + ALT + DEL task manager then you can see how much RAM your laptop is currently using

Software
There is lots of software on the market aimed at enhancing the performance of just about any slow laptop computer, but what do these products actually do or need to do.

Registry
Every change you make to your computer makes a change to the Windows registry, this in turn makes it larger and bloated thus attributing to making a slow running laptop.

Hard drive defragmentation
Fragmentation is one of the biggest causes of a slow running laptop. Fragmentation is basically broken down files, for example when you save a file to your hard drive it may be stored in 2 or 3 locations meaning it can take 2 or 3 times as long to load a file.

When we defragment a hard drive it moves files around and stores them in one place as a single file.

Window comes with its own built in defragmenter, but its not the best in my opinion, to access it just run All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter.

Other defragmenting applications include Aus Logics or Disk Keeper.

Malware
Ensure your computer has up to date antivirus and antispyware software installed and frequent scans are run, not only can malware cause a slow running laptop but also damage software.

Set Windows for performance over looks
Most computer have the graphic options set to 32bit color lowering this to 16bit helps speed things up a little and has virtually no impact on the way images look.

Generally Windows is allowed to decide on which Windows screen effects to enable or disable, in most cases it turns everything on, which does make everything look polished, but this does have an impact on its performance, especially on lower power computers.

Go to Control Panel - System - Advanced - Performance Settings - From here choose Adjust for best performance, if you want to retain most of the Windows look select the bottom two options, Use drop shadows and Use visual styles

Cleaning up temp files
The sheer volume of temporary files that gets generated can be a big reason that a laptop is running slow.

To delete temporary files right click on your C drive from Computer or My Computer - Properties - General tab - Disk Cleanup, if this has not been run for a long time it can free up a lot of space and make a big difference to slow laptop computer.

As you can see above there is a lot to cleaning up a and improving the speed of a slow running laptop for more information checkout some other our other articles such as recreating Windows profiles, disabling unused hardware, setting up a custom page file.

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