getting the most out of a wimpy laptop

  • Thread starter Thread starter beezelbubba
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beezelbubba

beezelbubba

Shitty Buddhist
My wife inherited a Compaq laptop(600 or so mhz celeron,256 meg ram).I suspect the thing is full of spyware that will need cleaning out.It basically is so bogged down that you can't do anything with it.
I want to be able to make it useable for internet,but it seems to be so ram challenged that it can barely handle XP.Are there things that can be turned off and tweaked to make it reasonably functional on 256 megs?
 
Did you format the HD? That might help, but if you already did that, you will just need to find all the running apps, and start shutting unnecessary stuff down. Start with things in the Startup first...Start-Programs-Startup.

Other than that, you have to go to Run, and type msconfig, and do a selective startup. The Taskmanager will show you what all is running right now.
 
- Best is to have it reformatted! It will be new again.
- If you do not have the installation Disk, then;
o Download AdAware and other similar programs and clean spyware.
o Run any program to clean out viruses.
o Uninstall any programs that you will not use.

- 256M Ram is sufficient to do simple chores like typing or web browsing. Anything else, buy another 256 DIM and install.

By the way, you can also get $300 laptops at bestbuy.
 
i had a 500mhz laptop that ran like a champ w/ XP and 256mb.
Problem was as soon as i stuck SP2 on it...THATS when it bogged down drastically!!

I say wipe it..if ya havent already...and just put XP on it w/ no service packs and you should be good. :D
 
Markaholic said:
i had a 500mhz laptop that ran like a champ w/ XP and 256mb.
Problem was as soon as i stuck SP2 on it...THATS when it bogged down drastically!!

I say wipe it..if ya havent already...and just put XP on it w/ no service packs and you should be good. :D
Click to expand...

Agreed. I used to have a 350 Mhz PII laptop w/ 256 MB of RAM that ran great with XP and no Service Packs. Also, a complete wipe is probably the best way to go.
 
sonnylarsen said:
Agreed. I used to have a 350 Mhz PII laptop w/ 256 MB of RAM that ran great with XP and no Service Packs. Also, a complete wipe is probably the best way to go.
Click to expand...
I am prepared to do that,but my wife inherited this from her father,who passed away last week.We'd like to be able to look around the thing,first and save anything she might want.
I've uninstalled sp2,removed a few programs and disabled everything in the startup thing in msconfig.
We'll see!
 
beezelbubba said:
I am prepared to do that,but my wife inherited this from her father,who passed away last week.We'd like to be able to look around the thing,first and save anything she might want.
I've uninstalled sp2,removed a few programs and disabled everything in the startup thing in msconfig.
We'll see!
Click to expand...
Good luck Bro...and condolences to you and Mrs. Beeze.
 
honestly, i think win 98 runs more smoothly on computers under 1ghz.

i think win 98 is a more stable OS over XP too, in general.

but what the hell do i know, i'm a Mac guy.
 
and if you want XP (which is understandable, the better driver support), defintiley stay clear of service packs!
 
I would look for a trimmed win2k or XP (2k would be the better choice IMHO since it has less OS overhead). Check out: http://www.litepc.com/xplite.html, they have stripped down versions of xp and 2k

If you need to salvage anything off of the old machine, just reinstall windows (whatever version you have room for) and have it install into a directory other than C:/windows. That will allow you to access everything even if the orginal OS is jacked and to backup what you want to keep.

Ultimately, you will want to wipe the HD. I would just delete the whole partition during windows setup and let it repart/reformat there (make sure you DO NOT do a quick format)

One thing I would try (even before you wipe) is this:

http://www.dynebolic.org/

Its a linux based audio/video build which should run fine (I have had very good results on a 733 machine). Comes with audacity and all the open source sequencers and editors. Setup is completely idiot proof since it boots completely from the CD (no interaction required, no hard drive required in fact)
 
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Thanks to all.
I uninstalled sp2,eliminated everything from the startup and removed a bunch of crap and the thing is actually quite functional.I'll wait until my wife is satisfied that she has all she needs and then I'll wipe it.
 
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