Can somebody give me some advise about my HP notebook its very slow??
First thing I'd suggest is to increase your RAM to 2GB (the maximum RAM windows starter can take)
Second, if you can afford to, upgrade to at least Windows 7 Home Premium (this will unthrottle many things and Allow you a maximum of 3 GB RAM)
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/compare?T1=tab20
Netbooks like what you have are not made for speed. About the only thing you can do is upgrade the ram like Nergal pointed out and try to reduce the amount of programs you have running at start up/in the background.
I don't think you can upgrade the RAM in a netbook. Also, I am guessing you won't go for Linux?
Install very minimal and needed softwares, and clear everything from start-up, defrag, the works.
some hp netbooks can be upgraded easily. Under the battery there are these orange buttons. Press them and then pry the bottom off and you can see the ram and change it out.
Slow computer could be:
-Not enough RAM
-Too many background applications running
-Malware / Viruses
-Buggy device drivers
-Badly fragmented file system
-IDE controller using PIO mode.
-Hard drive with bad sectors / dying
Richard S.
Can somebody give me some advise about my HP notebook its very slow??
Sure!
- You have a 5,400 RPM drive. Upgrade to either a 7,200 RPM or an SSD drive for greater speed. 7,200 are 2X faster than 5,400
- You are using HP's version of windows. Obtain a clean (windows, non oem, non starter) disk for greater speed
- Update the ram to the max supported (crucial memory scanner works great, & you can google it)
- If your using 7, be sure to update IE to 9. Run CCleaner. Clear all but the last restore point, then defrag with Defraggler.
- Uncheck all startup items that you don't need. (Can use CCleaner under startup for this). In general, you only need your antivirus program to load.
- If you stick with HP OEM, uninstall all the trial games/office etc. You can always use Open Office if you have to.
- XP does work faster (30% or so) than 7. If all your concerned about is speed, XP SP3 + a good antivirus like AVG may be what you want. Be sure to check your notebook manufacture website for drivers first, to be sure they support XP. You will need at a minimum, Audio/Video/Wifi/Ethernet & in some cases, Hi Def audio drivers. If you are unsure & still want to try it, use something like Drive Image XML to backup your drive, then try XP, so you can clone it back. Or, just be sure you have all your docs/pics backed up to a flash drive or something, & make sure you still have your original setup disk so you can restore it back in case of any problems you encounter while doing any of this.
- Disable indexing service (locate32 works much better & doesn't eat up Harddisk cycles) & the automatic search for printers & network drives on startup
- Under device manager, disable legacyware such as Floppy Disk drives (if you don't use them) & be sure any cd/dvd drive you use is empty (else, windows will check on book to be sure it cannot boot from this/these media). You can disable these as well in device manager (if you don't use them)
- Under device manager, if you have multiple wifi/ethernet connections, you can disable whichever one you don't use.
- For internet browsing, the Opera is one of the faster ones, but some websites don't work in it. Try Google Chrome if you just want speed. If you want the best combination of speed/security/browsing experience (ad block + etc) use Firefox. Firefox is faster than all IE versions except 9. But it may get faster in the future.
- If you use XP, be sure you update WMP to 11, IE to 8, & you can use Royal visual style to improve the looks of XP
- If you can't afford ram, you can use a flash drive as "ram" in 7. If you have a cheap flash drive lying around, you can try it to see if that works. Google how to use a flash drive to improve performance in 7, if you must.
- Be sure your drivers are up to date. Up to date drivers can fix some problems.
- Sometimes, updating the bios can fix certain microcode or problems the motherboard has. Be careful with this. Generally safe to do, but make sure you have a UPS so your notebook doesn't suffer if you have a power outage & weak battery. Don't want it to be interrupted during update. You should always check the manufacturer of your notebook for the bios update on their website. This is the safest place to check.
- Right click My Computer & choose properties. You can turn off advanced visual effects, or even just click "performance" to turn off Aero in 7, & other visual goodies that may slow down your PC. Look for all that say fade in or out, slide, etc. In XP, it is similar, but options are different. Use the classic visual style/look for even better performance
- Disable wallpapers. Older/slower systems can suffer if you put a 5 mb or 15 mb pic or whatever on your desktop. Fastest is just use a color, such as default blue color, or even black desktop
- If you have tons of music, games, pics, etc, offload those to an external drive. Having tons of files on a drive can slow it down.
- Older systems may benefit from 16 bit color, instead of 32 bit. Changing this can help, as well as using a lower resolution.
- Be sure you are running the latest DX. You may be already, but if your not, the most recent can help.
- Check your DMA settings. Right click my computer, properties, under device manager, go to your IDE ATA Atapi controllers. Right click/properties & if you see any of them running in PIO, delete/uninstall that device. Do this for all devices & when you reboot, windows should automatically re-install these & reset them to default DMA access.
- Check your running tasks. Any task you don't need, discard it.
- Using Nirsoft Startup Run, check your BHO. Disable any you don't need.
- Check to be sure you don't have multiple Antiviruses loaded. Example, Symantec + McAfee. In time past, Symantec was better than McAfee, but I am not 100% sure who is king now. AVG free may be lots lighter than Symantec & help your system run faster. Having multiple A/V installed will ruin your sytem if the both detect each other's processes & try to cancel each other out. Actually had that happen years back to someone, & I took McAfee off for them so they could use the machine. They were both detecting each other as a boot time virus & blocking windows from loading. After I removed 1 of them, it resumed working fine.
*** Lastly, but most IMPORTANTLY! Go to the control panel, & set your power options to desktop/performance (instead of conservative laptop setting). This 1 tip can double your speed alone, since flip chips in portable devices tend to run at nearly 1/2 their rated speed when left in this default mode.
* Always have a backup first & foremost before doing anything!
* I believe this is more than enough tips to help you get started in making your machine faster. If this helps, just give a word of thanks.
Thank you!