Win 7 starter performance questions

[stigslim]

Hi peeps, its been a while since i was here last (been relativley trouble free).But i am back none the less so here goes.Win 7, need i say more?.My daughter bagged a netbook from school which runs the said OS and its just soooooooo slow it almost unusable.An ideapad is the netbook running an intel atom with a Gig of RAM but even after a fresh install its clunky to say the least.Just opening the web browser takes at least 30 seconds and that doesnt include the page inside it. Seems a bit much when its pretty much brand new, any ideas?. TIA

[glc]

Upgrade it to 2 gigs ram - it's pretty cheap.

[stigslim]

Its as simple as that?, better give it a go then.Cheers

[strollin]

I don't think you will see a dramatic speed increase by adding more RAM. Look under Task Manager on the Performance tab and see how the memory is being utilized. You'll want to look at Available and Free. Those 2 added together show how much of your RAM can be used. Unless the total of Available and Free is nearly 0, RAM isn't the thing gating the performance.

At the bottom of the tab you'll see "Physical Memory:" which will tell you how much of your RAM is in use. Also look at the CPU usage, if it is constantly at a 20% or better then something is stealing the CPU.

More than likely you have unnecessary items being loaded at Startup that are chewing up your RAM and CPU. Use msconfig or some other tool to stop unnecessary programs from running at Startup and performance should increase.

I have a netbook with only 1.5G of RAM running Win 7 Pro and it only takes 7 seconds to invoke the FireFox browser and open the 1st page. Your daughter's netbook isn't going to win any races but it shouldn't take 30 seconds to load the browser.

By all means bump the RAM up, just don't expect to see a dramatic performance increase if that's all you do.

[stigslim]

Hi peeps, back again. I wacked ane extra Gig of RAM in and saw an average increase in speed. But to no avail its still painfully slow and atempts a repair everytime i reboot, even if i manage to boot into safe mode and do as full install it seems unstable. Is Win 7 really that bad or is there something else going on i cant see. Lost so any pointers are good, cheers.

[jdeb]

What process's are running? Can you take a snapshot or snip (maximized) of the task manager?

[rwest]

This will help, it'll take away all the eye candy but it will help.

Right click 'My computer'/click on 'properties'/select 'system propertes' from the left column/select the advanced tab/under performance click on 'settings'/on the Visual effects tab choose to 'Adjust for best preformance'

[cuzzzzzz]

Hi.. I'm thinking of buying the Toshiba NB505-N508BL netbook, advertised on Amazon.com. It comes with 1GB DDR2 RAM. I'd upgrade to 2GB as suggested by glc and others. The RAM they offer with the netbook is Crucial's DDR3. Is this a mistake, or will it work in the computer if the DDR2 RAM is removed? One of the Amazon reviews of the netbook mentions that you have to be careful about this.

Thanks for any replies,
cuzzzzz

[David M]

DDR2 and DDR3 is not cross compatible. The slots are different along with other differences.

[glc]

According to Crucial, that particular model came 2 different ways - one model has DDR2 and the other model has DDR3. If it has DDR2, you can only replace it with DDR2, and vice versa.

If you buy it, figure out what it has and order a 2gb module direct from Crucial. They list both in the product selector.

[cuzzzzzz]

thanks all

[David M]

Memory - YouTube