Advice on speeding up an old laptop?

[NibbledLeaf]

Hi, so i have a Dell Inspiron 1525 and it's about 5 years old now. It just seems to be slow at everything and i doubt that my dead battery has much to do with that. I can't play even the most basic of games with the least system requirement with more than 50 fps (at best, averages around 30 when idle) and the games lag even though all graphics are on minium quality. So does anyone have any advice on what i can do to make my laptop faster? Or should i just save up for a new computer?

I'm honestly not sure how to find out all of my system information without taking it apart and looking at the labels/numbers on the hardware which i dont want to do because i've never taken apart a laptop before only desktops and i dont know if it will still run :-P

Here's what i did find:
Windows Experience Index is 3.1
Processor: Intel Core2 Duo CPU T5800 @ 2.00GHz 2.00 GHz (I dont know what this last bit is)
RAM: Was 2GB but my father upgraded it to 4GB a year or so ago
System type: 32-bit OS
C Drive has 13.1GB free of 220GB
D Drive has 4.93GB free of 9.99GB

Any help would be great, thank you. Also are there any really fun games that dont need a very good computer? If you want more specs then please tell me how to find them... :)

Oh, and it's currently running Windows 7.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Start saving. Nothing you can do with this and generally there is very limited amount of upgrades you can do to laptops appart from adding little memory.

[NibbledLeaf]

Okay then. Thanks. Any good games i can play in the mean time?

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Nothing u can do. Laptops just do not last as long for someone who's looking to play games on it, especially as newer games become available over the course the laptops' age. Once it reaches around 3 years old, it's basically stuck playing older stuff. For one the specs are far from what will be needed down the road and also u have to consider that pretty much no further drivers are available, which also handi-caps it to a certain extent.

I don't really see what you ever planned to play on it, even when it was new. Being that it has an Intel GPU, I can't see that ever really able to play much in the way of DirectX/OpenGL games.

If you consider a new laptop in the future, don't make that mistake. Get one with a decent CPU, and either Radeon/NVIDIA GPU if you plan to buy a laptop for gaming purposes.

If you have the cash down the road, you can buy/build a much better desktop then u can when compared to a laptop of the same price. I would highly consider the "build your own desktop" option for gaming. A laptop such as yours still has it's uses, but they are very basic at best. For work and school though, and light web use; it should be fine for those types of things.

[NibbledLeaf]

Okay, thanks for the advice. I've been looking into building my own desktop for a while now (admittedly i wouldn't be able to move it as easily, however my laptop has to always be plugged in anyhow :P) however i dont think i have the hardware skill required to know what good, whats bad and what goes where. I'm taking a course at school next year in which we will make our own circut boards and program them for robots that i hope will help my understanding. I didn't realise that there was such a difference between Intel and Radeon/NVIDIA... It wasn't so much a mistake as an unforseen outcome :) it was a present from my parents and i only just started playing video games a year or so ago. (I know, i grew up a poor, deprived life :P)

P.s. I've had trouble with google chrome crashing lately. Does this old computer thing have anything to do with it?

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Just look up your laptop model online and buy a replacement battery for it.

As far as programs crashing. Hard to say without knowing more. Check the Windows Logs in Event Viewer.

As the logs can shed some light on the problem.

Try updating Chrome (or other Browsers and your Windows OS) to the latest versions / updates.

For Windows Updates, use the built in Windows Updates service.

If you have trouble updating Chrome (or other browser, like Firefox) from within the browser itself, go to the homepage for it and re-install the latest version. Which in turn will just update your browser without wiping any personal data from it.

[Veristä mössöä]

SSD-drive would give you significant boost and it's also easy to install.

[NibbledLeaf]

Thanks for the advice Bad-Motha. I'll look into it. Fairly certain i have the latest version but you never know.
I'm afriad that, as i said above, im not overly sure when it comes to hardware in a laptop, ontelo. Sure a SSD would be faster than a HDD but surely there isn't much point in installing one in an outdated laptop other than prolonging it's demise?

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Pretty much, SSD in 5 years old laptop is just throwing away money.

[junkygamer]

games - nothing will help now.
everyday use - at least 4GB and an SSD. Good SSD will serve you in the next laptop too, consider that.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Yea an SSD can't hurt, just be sure it is a decent SATA III SSD; like Corsair, Samsung, or Crucial. Even though your current laptop won't use it's full potential, you could just clone current HDD to SSD or do clean OS install on SSD, either way should work. Then save the HDD and store it away in safe place.

Then if u build a desktop or get another laptop later on, put the SSD in the newer system and clean format it with the OS of that new system. Then put the old HDD back in the laptop.

[rotNdude]

The first thing I would do with that laptop is free up some space on the C drive. You are presently at 94% utilized and Microsoft recommends staying at or below 85%.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

^That is very true too.

Cause without leaving at least 15% free space, you can't even defrag the drive properly. But overall the bottom line here is that a drive will slow greatly when it is this full.

[NibbledLeaf]

Sorry, i went to sleep. Yeah after seeing that i only had 13GB left i deleted about 30GB of rubbish from a few years ago :P I will definately look into the SSD, particluary for the desktop i will hopefully build but for now i'm not that bothered about the boot time etc. Probably sould defrag it again too - thanks for reminding me :D