I have a Toshiba Satellite P10 that i'v had about 3 years now. It's a great laptop and I love using it. It has been very well looked after and has served me well.

However, of late it has become increasingly slow in it's performance. Last year I added another 512MB RAM card to it bringing the total to 1GB. I havn't seen any performance inprovements and infact it seems worse than ever lately.

Could anyone suggest some upgrades that might be worth making to improve performance. I'm not worried about having to take it apart and everything so whatever can be upgraded affordably I'll go for.

P.S. One of the main problems (but this my be Hyperthreading related) is that ever since I have had it, the system would sometimes stop responding for 20-30 seconds then just start responding again afterwards. I can't seem to invoke this, so I don't know what causes it, it just happens.

AMD X2 4600+ AM2 w/AC Freezer64
M2N32-Sli Dlx
2x 1GB Corsair XMS DDR2 800
Asus EN7600GT
Enrmx. Lib. 500W
2x 250GB SATA2 7200 16mb
1x 200GB IDE 7200 8mb
2xGDI Blackgold

What can I upgrade in a laptop?

The bottom line is that Laptops are not like desktops.

i_XpUser

I really doubt that it's a hardware problem. Have you done a recent virus scan / spyware scan / defrag of the drives? How many programs are running in the background? What programs are scheduled at Startup? Sounds to me like you need a housecleaning on the system. No amount of RAM or speed of prcessor etc. will compensate for a machine that's all bogged down with unecessary apps etc. Post back and let us know what condition the machine is in. Good Luck...

Keep Smiling
It makes them think you're up to something...

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Oh sorry, I forgot to mention, It's running a fresh install, XP Home(came with it :( ) with latest updates, I thought that was the problem too hence the format and fresh install but it's just as slow as ever. I don't know if it's just me being used to my UBER desktop being lightening fast but it just seems a lot slower than it used to.

First thing i thought of was ok, I'll format, fresh install, no better way of getting rid of al the crap. And I see no performance increase at all.

It takes windows a good second to open, control panel closer to 2 seconds. Internet explorer takes 5-10 seconds just to open google(my homepage) Shutdown is fairly slow taking a couple of minutes, it takes media player 11 about 7-10 seconds from click to be open and ready to play (with no music library except the default windows songs.)

Oh, and my wireless card keeps saying it's still acquiring a network address when it's already connected, and it stays showing that until i repair or whatever.

I also wonder if the Corsair VS 512Mb mem module I added is properly compatible with the toshiba one that's preinstalled. Maybe i can stress test the RAM somehow?

Tell me if I'm just being picky, or better yet, if there is a way i can performance test it to see if it's running like it should.

Thanks

AMD X2 4600+ AM2 w/AC Freezer64
M2N32-Sli Dlx
2x 1GB Corsair XMS DDR2 800
Asus EN7600GT
Enrmx. Lib. 500W
2x 250GB SATA2 7200 16mb
1x 200GB IDE 7200 8mb
2xGDI Blackgold

Some laptops have the ability to switch speeds. I wonder if yours has that capability and is stuck in low speed. There are programs around that will tell you what speed you laptop is running at. Below is one:

http://www.wizard-soft.com/cpuspeed...

Do yourself a favor BACKUP!

Yeh my CPU does switch speeds depending on power mode, I'll check that out now and post the results. Then sleep, I'm up for uni/work/ju jitsu in 4 hours for a 16 hour day. :S I wish i could kick it like my computer can running 24/7.

Anyway .. laptop has booted now so i'll check it out. Infact i'll post results in this message ............

Ok, and the result is 3150.1GHz (it's a Pentium 4 HT 3.2GHz) so it's running at full speed. (almost)

AMD X2 4600+ AM2 w/AC Freezer64
M2N32-Sli Dlx
2x 1GB Corsair XMS DDR2 800
Asus EN7600GT
Enrmx. Lib. 500W
2x 250GB SATA2 7200 16mb
1x 200GB IDE 7200 8mb
2xGDI Blackgold

Hey ham30 - thanks for the link to the CPU Speed Analyzer - it's cool and nice to have in my toolbox :-)

i_XpUser

Hey ham30 - thanks for the link to the CPU Speed Analyzer - it's cool and nice to have in my toolbox :-)

ham30-Yes,I like it too.Just saved a copy works great.

Maybe you guys (XpUser & Street1) are hacking something with that program - and keeping it secret, because I don't really see anything extra ordinary that it does besides giving you your system speed and system properties already does that.

ROTFLOL :-) It's nice to have something beside System Properties - a real-time meter of the CPU speed.

i_XpUser

I agree with you Sabertooth.I just like it
so..........

I have never tried it. I just did a search for 'CPU speed' amd it came up first. :-)

Do yourself a favor BACKUP!