An incredibly slow laptop and I want to speed it up.

[Werne]

Ok, about three days ago my girlfriend brought me a laptop she bought from some girl that works with her, saying it's very slow. Thought she's screwing with me so I fired it up and determined it really is slow. Mind you, by slow I mean that I have a Pentium 1 700MHz CPU, 128MB RAM computer in my garage that works faster. :mellow:

 

Been struggling with it for 3 days now and I just can't get it to work right. And since this is a laptop I'm supposed to sell for 200$ in about 5 days to a guy that wants to use it for browsing, I really need to fix it up and I'd appreciate help guys. I'll explain what I tried and what were the results of that.

 

 

 

So, without further ado...

 

It's a HP Compaq nx6310 Notebook that was bought 5 years ago with pre-installed Windows XP Professional. Has a Intel Centrino Duo T2250 1.73GHz CPU, 533MHz FSB, 512MB DDR2 RAM (488MB usable) and Intel Graphics 950. About 2 years ago I had to repair this same laptop when it's 2GB RAM module died, I ripped it out and put a 512MB one I ripped out of a nx6310 with a hole in it's screen. I remember it worked a whole lot faster back then (not the one with a blown up screen, that one didn't work at all :P).

 

So I took a look, 67% of the C:/ was fragmented (it only had C partition), 99% of it's 80GB HDD full, desktop filled with random crap, a ton of trojans and other viruses hopping around freely, no anti-virus, a horror to say the least. I just put a USB drive in it, booted in Ubuntu Live and wiped the HDD clean with GParted.

 

The laptop has it's own XP disc and a label with the license number underneath so I installed XP thinking this will be easy. Yeah, right. :rolleyes:

 

XP installed, this thing rebooted and it was as slow as a sloth. Deleted unneeded crapware, still slow. Disable a whole lot of auto-run processes, rebooted and it's still slow. Deleted and/or disabled everything I could without crashing Windows, killed every process I could after it rebooted and it's still slow. It's faster than before but still way too slow. XP is also taking up 320MB RAM which goes to over 95% RAM (463MB) when Mozilla fires up, not good. :facepalm:

 

Opened it up, cleaned everything inside and outside it, reassembled, no gain.

 

Thinking how it might be the CPU, I fired up Prime95 and it passed all tests with flying colors, both cores working, temperature within acceptable levels. Connected an external SSD I got last week with WinXP on it, booted off it, still slow. And whatever I tried to start made the CPU jump to 100% immediately, even opening a folder. :psyduck:

 

So I thought it might be the low amount of RAM and CPU power that's killing it. Wiped out XP and replaced it with Lubuntu 12.10 since it has low system requirements, it's faster than it was with XP due to using Linux Swap but it should still work faster than that. Lubuntu takes up 116MB RAM, about 280MB with Mozilla on, jumps to 75% max CPU usage when I start anything. That's much better when it comes to RAM/CPU usage but this thing is still slow. :confused:

 

I went nuts, I need to sell this thing but it refuses to work right. Then I got an idea and I took a new approach, since it doesn't work any better with the new stuff, let's try the ancient stuff. If it won't work with ancient, I'll make sure it doesn't work at all. :armscrossed:

 

So I created a 4GB partition and put Damn Small Linux on it (a 50MB fully-functional OS, minimum requirements are Pentium 200MHz with 16MB RAM). Ran boot repair, booted into DSL through GRUB. My reaction when I tried it was "IT...IS...ALIVE!!!", as in literally.

 

Damn Small Linux works fine, takes up about 21MB RAM, 42MB with Firefox on (while watching an HD video on YouTube) and jumps to 18% max CPU usage. It's even faster than my PC which isn't surprising actually, but I thought it should be pointed out. All drivers supplied by DSL work fine, WLAN works, Bluetooth works (which didn't work in Windows or Lubuntu), everything works fine and it runs fast. :dance:

 

But there's a problem. A "how do I sell a mind-blowingly slow laptop with an ugly looking, teeny-tiny, free, open-source Linux OS for 200$" kind of problem. I'd be lucky to get 10$ and I paid 25$ for it. I'm already in deep s*** when it comes to money and with my girlfriend's birthday coming up, I really don't need this expense nor do I need this laptop. :(

 

So here's my question, does anyone have any clue what so ever as to what might be wrong with this thing and/or what to try in order for it to work faster? Any help is welcome, any at all.

[Phalanx108]

HP Compaq nx6310

There's your problem...

[ziitch]

sounds like the hard drive is near the end of its life - All that fragmentation and low RAM amount would've caused major thrashing to the disk while using XP's page file for additional memory storage.

 

You might try getting a new 2.5" disk/SSD and see if it's any faster. You should have no problem finding one with more space than the current one at a price lower than $50 nowadays.

[Werne]

 

HP Compaq nx6310

There's your problem...

You don't say? http://vz.iminent.com/vz/19d402f0-fe24-4b60-9fbb-f410ec15ca69/2/you-don-t-say-meme.gif

 

sounds like the hard drive is near the end of its life - All that fragmentation and low RAM amount would've caused major thrashing to the disk while using XP's page file for additional memory storage.

I was afraid that might be the problem. *sigh* Why can't Windows just shut down parts of the OS like Linux to reduce the load. :facepalm:

 

Ah well, a new hard drive it is. I think can get an 80GB HDD for it for 10$, I'll rip out it's CD drive to cover the expense, and everyone's happy. I told this guy it doesn't have a CD drive anyway, was too lazy to check. :P

 

I guess laziness pays off in my case. ;D