I'd like to make my current PC faster....

[Ron in Regina]

This is a snap-shot of my Computer.

I update & run AVG and Ad-Aware and Malwarebytes and Spybot Search&Destroy
at least weekly, as well as doing a "C" Drive clean up & Disc Defrag at least weekly.

I also do the "Ctrl+Shift+Del" Delete Browsing History thing to avoid any clutter at
least daily, if not several times (due to personal banking, pass words, etc...).

I would like to (if possible) make my computer noticeably faster. I can double the RAM
from 1.00GB to 2GB's....but will that have any bearing on the speed of my computer?

It's not like my computer is particularly slow or anything, but I'd like to make it faster.
I'm barely competent in its use, and don't even pretend to thoroughly understand its
inner-working, etc...but I do run several different programs simultaneously often, and
more speed doesn't seem like it would be a bad thing.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can increase the speed of this computer?

 

[captain morgan]

My belief (and I am no IT guy) is that the speed will be primarily impacted by the processor that is in place.

Assuming that you keep you HD "clean" and don't have reams of files on it, a new (faster) processor will probably be your best bet.

 

[Ron in Regina]

My belief (and I am no IT guy) is that the speed will be primarily impacted by the processor that is in place.

Assuming that you keep you HD "clean" and don't have reams of files on it, a new (faster) processor will probably be your best bet.

OK....but I was also thinking "cheap" as that's part of who I am. Just being honest.


My Music File is 910MB's in size.
My Pictures File is just over 4GB's in size. (Yeah, I know...that's lots of pic's...)

I can dump them all onto a single 8GB removable Thumb Drive...but I'm only using
maybe 10% of my "C drive" space as it is....so would that make a difference to the
speed of my computer in any noticeable way?

Again.....I have to stress than my computer skills are rudimentary at best, so simple
explanations and suggestions (if that's possible) will be greatly appreciated.

 

[captain morgan]

As long as you have a good amount of C-drive space available, it shouldn't dramatically reduce the computer's speed.

I don't know if there are any quick/cheap fixes for this. I kinda equate it with wanting a faster car... You can get a faster engine or not.

 

[DaSleeper]

Adding some ram won't hurt and it's fairly cheap if you have DDR2 memory' a 3 gherts processor is fast enough, but a dual core is better if you do labour intensive stuff like video editing..
Check out your programs that run on start up under run/msconfig....You might have a program running in the background all day that you are not using.
Check out this web site Windows XP x86 (32-bit) Service Pack 3 Service Configurations by Black Viper

A lot of services can be put on manual or completely of but print the list and keep notes for reference of what you shut down in case you have to restart something later ...good luck
I have a dual core in this new one and four gigs of ram so I didn't have to play with the sevices but out of 26 start up items I have 14 shut down....just make sure that Your AVG, sound card, video card ext are running on start up

 

[Kreskin]

On my old pc I increased the RAM and it helped for a while but things move ahead so fast these days it's hard for a pc to keep up. I needed something better and got a new pc.

I got a quad core with 8GB's RAM. Works like a charm. I can pretty much run every adobe product at the same time without any noticeable difference in speed lol.

 

[Ron in Regina]

Adding some ram won't hurt and it's fairly cheap if you have DDR2 memory' a 3 gherts processor is fast enough, but a dual core is better if you do labour intensive stuff like video editing..
Check out your programs that run on start up under run/msconfig....You might have a program running in the background all day that you are not using.
Check out this web site Windows XP x86 (32-bit) Service Pack 3 Service Configurations by Black Viper

A lot of services can be put on manual or completely of but print the list and keep notes for reference of what you shut down in case you have to restart something later ...good luck
I have a dual core in this new one and four gigs of ram so I didn't have to play with the sevices but out of 26 start up items I have 14 shut down....just make sure that Your AVG, sound card, video card ext are running on start up

Ahhhh.....I've just checked the number of Processes running, and currently there are
56 of them. That's about normal for what I've seen for this computer (in the 50's
anyway). This is something I can play with....

On my old pc I increased the RAM and it helped for a while but things move ahead so fast these days it's hard for a pc to keep up. I needed something better and got a new pc.

I got a quad core with 8GB's RAM. Works like a charm. I can pretty much run every adobe product at the same time without any noticeable difference in speed lol.

Yeah...this PC is still new-ish to me, & though your answer would do the trick, I'd
like to try and work with this one for the immediate future for budgetary reasons.

 

[DaSleeper]

I wouldn't recommend playing with the procsses....the easiest one to go wit is ms config....because let's say you shut down microsoft Office on start up items but later on you want to open a document only opening that document the first time will take a little bit more time...it only means a whole bunch of programs won't be running in the background in case you need them

 

[Ron in Regina]

OK. Sound Advice...

 

[gerryh]

mx out the ram that your motherboard can handle Ron. This will mean more processes can be loaded without having to swap to the hard drive.

 

[Cliffy]

Yup, RAM is the cheapest way to speed that puppy up. You have plenty of everything else.

 

[Ron in Regina]

mx out the ram that your motherboard can handle Ron. This will mean more processes can be loaded without having to swap to the hard drive.

That I can do by switching out the two 512's I'm using, & pluggin in two 1.00GB's of Ram...
I've checked, and that's reasonably inexpensive too.

Whoops...I was thinking of my old computer. Guess I can double
that again with this one:

 

[Bcool]

This is a snap-shot of my Computer.

Kewl pic, Ron. :smile:

I update & run AVG and Ad-Aware and Malwarebytes and Spybot Search&Destroy

at least weekly, as well as doing a "C" Drive clean up & Disc Defrag at least weekly.

I also do the "Ctrl+Shift+Del" Delete Browsing History thing to avoid any clutter at
least daily, if not several times (due to personal banking, pass words, etc...).

All good, except all system protection applications can slow things down a tad, multiple app's may cause noticeable slowdowns depending on what you're doing. Something to be aware of.

We (husband is the IT techy, he happily takes 'em to bits & puts them back together) use Glary Utilities, open source freeware - just Google for info & D/L sites, for daily or more frequent cleanups such as your "Ctrl+Shift+Del" Delete Browsing History thing & lots more. It's fast, efficient and has a small footprint. On this computer I'm using right now which has Windows 7 OS, I use Glary & Microsoft Security Essentials.

I would like to (if possible) make my computer noticeably faster. I can double the RAM

from 1.00GB to 2GB's....but will that have any bearing on the speed of my computer?

It's not like my computer is particularly slow or anything, but I'd like to make it faster.
I'm barely competent in its use, and don't even pretend to thoroughly understand its
inner-working, etc...but I do run several different programs simultaneously often, and
more speed doesn't seem like it would be a bad thing.

RAM ranges in importance according to how you want to use your computer. For instance gamers and serious graphics users want the max RAM they can get. The person who mainly emails and doesn't do a lot of graphical web browsing doesn't need large amounts of RAM usually.

You say you run several programs simultaneously. IMO doing that and having the number of system protection programs those programs would likely cause to run in the background would suggest more RAM would be helpful, yes.

A faster processor would be nice, but that could mean replacing the motherboard, kind of costly.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can increase the speed of this computer?

You've had all kinds of good suggestions, but first why not find out how your computer compares with a full web analysis of it with exactly the same models & configurations, plus suggestions on possible improvements including speed, plus all kinds of info? pcpitstop.com is a very useful place for doing this, we've used it often over the years: PC Pitstop: Free PC Scans and Tune-up Utilities

Just FYI, this laptop is just a few months old, has:
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 3.75 GB
Available Physical Memory 2.61 GB
Total Virtual Memory 7.49 GB
Available Virtual Memory 6.21 GB
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) X2 Dual Core Processor L310, 1200 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)

and I already want to add more! :lol:

 

[Ron in Regina]

Cool....First I'm going to bump up my RAM to 4GB's...& then I play with the suggestions
offered here....and then I'll see where I'm at. My computer isn't really slow (& is much
faster than my old one), but I just felt that it could be faster.

I run those several different protection programs as I cast a large net to compensate for
a lack of knowledge. I end up clicking on different links (to see if they're spammy) on this
Forum before I Ban Spammers. You never know where you'll end up or pick up in that
process. I guess I try and error on the side of caution well into the overkill it seems...

 

[DaSleeper]

Cool....First I'm going to bump up my RAM to 4GB's...& then I play with the suggestions
offered here....and then I'll see where I'm at. My computer isn't really slow (& is much
faster than my old one), but I just felt that it could be faster.

I run those several different protection programs as I cast a large net to compensate for
a lack of knowledge. I end up clicking on different links (to see if they're spammy) on this
Forum before I Ban Spammers. You never know where you'll end up or pick up in that
process. I guess I try and error on the side of caution well into the overkill it seems...

When you investigate one of those links...right click on it and under properties you will get the actual Http address ..
Copy and paste that in the search bar of this web site

Online Link Scan - Virus, Trojan, Adware and Malware Scanner
It will tell you if it is safe...the ip ect.... without much advertising and it's pretty fast...just as usefull as your whizzie stick;-):lol:

 

[Ron in Regina]

When you investigate one of those links...right click on it and under properties you will get the actual Http address ..
Copy and paste that in the search bar of this web site

Online Link Scan - Virus, Trojan, Adware and Malware Scanner
It will tell you if it is safe...the ip ect.... without much advertising and it's pretty fast...just as usefull as your whizzie stick;-):lol:

Hey, that's cool! Didn't see that in the Moderator Manual way back when....

 

[Bcool]

Online spammy & other nasties checking: SonicWALL Internet Security: SonicWALL Internet Security: SonicWALL Content Filtering Service Software Protection

Who is this & are you who you say you are and where do you originate from and is that your real ISP, etc. The tried and true for all list and forum owners & mods IMHO (freeware) - the indomitable Sam Spade. Just Google Sam Spade for more info & D/L sites if of interest.

 

[MHz]

Cool....First I'm going to bump up my RAM to 4GB's...& then I play with the suggestions
offered here....and then I'll see where I'm at. My computer isn't really slow (& is much
faster than my old one), but I just felt that it could be faster.

Since you have 2 open slots you could keep what ram you have and add 1gb stick or two sticks and that would give you a total of 3gb. You might find just adding one stick suits your needs just fine.

Don't want to speed you up too much, after all you are a mod and all that. lol

 

[gerryh]

Since you have 2 open slots you could keep what ram you have and add 1gb stick or two sticks and that would give you a total of 3gb. You might find just adding one stick suits your needs just fine.

Don't want to speed you up too much, after all you are a mod and all that. lol

He could only do that IF the MB supports 2 - 512 and 2 - 1 gig sticks.

 

[Ron in Regina]

He could only do that IF the MB supports 2 - 512 and 2 - 1 gig sticks.

.....& that I don't know..