Trying to get an old Dell Laptop up to a usable speed.

[Calavera]

I put this in Null cause it is just me rambling about an old computer I'm messing with. I didn't feel it was really worth being in a main thread.

Anyways, I've got this old Dell Inspiron 1545 Laptop laying around. It has a Intel Celeron 900 @ 2.2ghz and 3gb of ram. I know it is old but I figured it would be able to run Windows 7 and play youtube videos good enough. I've tried both Windows 7 and Windows 10 and both are super slow, basically unusable. This is odd since it came with Windows Vista Basic originally. If Vista ran on it then 7 shouldn't be a problem. The original owner told me at one point the HDD died and a friend replaced it with an extra they had. The current drive is a 5400rpm 80gb drive. I ran CrystalDiskMark on it and got these results.




Now I'm no expert when it comes to HDD speeds but would this be slow enough to make the system sluggish?

Somehow I didn't realize until yesterday that my extra SDD I have from when I upgraded my PC last year would pop right in. So I put it in and it booted to the Win10 installation I had on it. I didn't expect it to run decently because it was an install from my old PC. I was able to run CrystalDiskMark on it and go these results.



So I'm gonna wipe the drive and put a fresh Windows 7 install on the SDD and see how it performs. What do you think? Do you think it will see a big improvement in performance?

I've also been messing around with different Linux distros to see if I could find one that runs good on it. So far out of all the OSes I've tried Linux Slax was the best by far. It could run the web browser and play youtube videos with no problem at all.

[Ocelot]

Rub your penis on it.

[Calavera]

Rub your penis on it.

I've tried that but the only thing that happened was that I got 120 volts right through the ole johnson due to the janky electrical taped power plug.

[Ocelot]

Try rubbing Zoidberg's then.

((I wish I could help you bud! Not good with hardware issues.))

[ian]

Mix 3 parts cheeter blood with 1 part tiger blood and smear it onto the top of the CPU in lieu of thermal paste.
Be sure to reattach the cooler before it dries.

Then take some of the remaining solution and lightly brush it onto the memory socket pins.
DO NOT apply directly to the ram sticks themselves this will undo ALL the other work.
RAM should be seated while it is still somewhat wet, but don't turn on the computer till it's dry.

The last part is the most critical.
You are going to light 6 candles between the hours of 5-7 PM (LOCAL TIME) and start playing the best of Enya on CD ONLY at a soft to moderate volume.
The curtains should be drawn closed and then by candlelight remove the SSD.

Hold the SSD with the SATA connectors facing the ceiling and then use the remaining blood solution to massage the upper half of the drive.

Imagine it was YOU getting a shoulder rub at this point. How you imagine the perfect shoulder rub would be is EXACTLY how you should massage the blood into the drive.

When either the first candle burns out or the Enya CD stops or loops back to the first track is when the drive is ready for reinsertion.

Insert the drive, and change CD. you will be playing Seal as you Seal the computer back up (any Seal song works, but I prefer crazy or Kiss from a rose)
Make sure not to start sealing the computer before the track is playing, and be sure to finish before the track ends.

Now you just have to wait for the rest of the candles to burn out, and you can turn on your now lightning fast computer.

[Calavera]

So I installed Windows 7 on the SSD(Not SDD as I kept typing in the first post) and the difference was night and day. What was almost unusable before is now quick and snappy. I installed Firefox but ended up going with the Chromium browser as it seems to use much less resources. Youtube worked OK but 480p is about the max it can handle and even then you get some dropped frames

I haven't used Youtube without AdBlockPlus for probably 10 years, but on the laptop I didn't have any ad blockers installed at first. All I can say is WOW! I don't know if I'd be able to watch youtube that much with as many ads as it has. Not only are there usually 2 ads at the start of a video but also randomly throughout the video. It would be so irritating to use youtube like this. At this point Adblock and Sponsorblock are pretty much required for youtube viewing. I only learned about Sponsorblock recently and it is amazing. It is so nice to have it automatically skip the in-video sponsor ads instead of having to skip them manually. Linus Tech Tips is so much better with it installed.

Anyways back to the laptop. Since Windows 7 was running so much better I thought eh what the heck, lets try Windows 10. One the first boot after installation it wasn't looking great but after it did all the initial stuff it actually runs fairly well. I again when with Chromium and am getting basically the same performance as I did with 7.

So by adding that SSD I was able to bring some life back into this 11 year old laptop. Now to mess around with it for a little bit then unplug it and sit it on a shelf in my backroom and forget I even have it. Then in a few years I'll pull it out and mess around with it again!

[melancholy]

Be sure to bump this topic again when you put Windows 12 on it.

[Calavera]

Be sure to bump this topic again when you put Windows 12 on it.

That is impossible since Windows 10 is the last version of Windows Microsoft is making!