so my GF got a laptop off someone. 256mb ram, 1.6ghz processor, 40gb hdd. that kind of spec. had XP on it but sometimes it would just freeze up and be unusable for ages. i mean sometimes it would take about 10 mins or more to get to a working desktop. other times it would be usable and fairly speedy.
i wiped it clean and it was great from fresh, till i started putting stuff on it lol. it runs a lot better now, and on bootup its fine, but sometimes it will have over 100mb ram free, then all off a sudden the hdd will go crazy and the ram will be 0-10mb free, and the computer will barely be usable, then it sorts its self out in like 10 mins.
found a program to run a ram and HDD test (although it wasnt memtest, so not sure how good it was) and it said there was no problems.
not looking to spend any money on this, i was just wondering if its a case of an old crappy computer, or something more hardware related? ive used other pc's with this spec and they havent just randomly started to go slow unless under pressure. any ideas on how to generally speed it up? disabled some services and things but i want it as fast as can be.
i wiped it clean and it was great from fresh, till i started putting stuff on it lol. it runs a lot better now, and on bootup its fine, but sometimes it will have over 100mb ram free, then all off a sudden the hdd will go crazy and the ram will be 0-10mb free, and the computer will barely be usable, then it sorts its self out in like 10 mins.
found a program to run a ram and HDD test (although it wasnt memtest, so not sure how good it was) and it said there was no problems.
not looking to spend any money on this, i was just wondering if its a case of an old crappy computer, or something more hardware related? ive used other pc's with this spec and they havent just randomly started to go slow unless under pressure. any ideas on how to generally speed it up? disabled some services and things but i want it as fast as can be.