HI Everyone, My Toshiba Satelite laptop is of need of an upgrade to
speed performance and was wondering if anybody had any ideas of the best
angle do so.Anyways heres what I got to work with. Toshiba satellite
p205 17" Vista home premium 32bit T5450 Intel CPU 2GB DDR2 PC5300 667
200GB SATA 5200 HD or here it is here 'Toshiba Satellite P205
Review' (http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3901) I have
Mcafee total protection thats about all thats running extra. Just the
usual (laptop) stuff in the taskbar. I was going to up the ram to 4GB
but my computer store told me that this version of Vista will only
recognise 3gb and by changing to 3gb would be playing with the 2gb dual
channel setup, therefore not gaining anything. Is this true? I then
asked about a cpu upgrade and was told that it cant be done. Is this
true? Whats is the best way to speed up this one? Can I upgrade to 64bit
vista or ir that pointless? Should I upgrade ram? Please help!! Cheers
Hanhan


--
hanhan

hanhan wrote:


HI Everyone, My Toshiba Satelite laptop is of need of an upgrade to
speed performance and was wondering if anybody had any ideas of the best
angle do so.Anyways heres what I got to work with. Toshiba satellite
p205 17" Vista home premium 32bit T5450 Intel CPU 2GB DDR2 PC5300 667
200GB SATA 5200 HD or here it is here 'Toshiba Satellite P205
Review' (http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3901) I have
Mcafee total protection thats about all thats running extra. Just the
usual (laptop) stuff in the taskbar. I was going to up the ram to 4GB
but my computer store told me that this version of Vista will only
recognise 3gb and by changing to 3gb would be playing with the 2gb dual
channel setup, therefore not gaining anything. Is this true? I then
asked about a cpu upgrade and was told that it cant be done. Is this
true? Whats is the best way to speed up this one? Can I upgrade to 64bit
vista or ir that pointless? Should I upgrade ram? Please help!! Cheers

The slowness (how slow is "slow"?) is probably not caused by your hardware.
It is probably caused by programs/processes running in the background. They
could be malware or legitimate programs. Unless you're running
processor-intensive programs like Photoshop or AutoCAD, 2GB of RAM is fine
for normal use. Yes, it is true that you can't normally upgrade a laptop's
processor.

1. Uninstall McAfee and replace it with a better, less instrusive,
antivirus. I recommend NOD32 (commercial) or Avast (free). The built-in
Windows Firewall is adequate for most people.

2. Scan for malwa
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/...moving_Malware

3. All OEM machines (HP, Dell, Toshiba, etc.) come with loads of
preinstalled garbage. Toshiba is one of the worst offenders. Streamline
what is running in the background. The free AutoRuns programs is good for
this.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sys...s/default.mspx

4. It is of course possible that your hard drive is failing. It depends on
what you mean by "slow".

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers - Don't Panic!
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/#FAQ

HI Everyone, My Toshiba Satelite laptop is of need of an upgrade to
speed performance and was wondering if anybody had any ideas of the best
angle do so.Anyways heres what I got to work with. Toshiba satellite
p205 17" Vista home premium 32bit T5450 Intel CPU 2GB DDR2 PC5300 667
200GB SATA 5200 HD or here it is here 'Toshiba Satellite P205
Review' (http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3901) I have
Mcafee total protection thats about all thats running extra. Just the
usual (laptop) stuff in the taskbar. I was going to up the ram to 4GB
but my computer store told me that this version of Vista will only
recognise 3gb and by changing to 3gb would be playing with the 2gb dual
channel setup, therefore not gaining anything. Is this true? I then
asked about a cpu upgrade and was told that it cant be done. Is this
true? Whats is the best way to speed up this one? Can I upgrade to 64bit
vista or ir that pointless? Should I upgrade ram? Please help!! Cheers
Hanhan


Regarding ram, it is better to maintain the dual channel configuration. If
you upgrade to 4 gb you will not be able to use all of the 4th gig, but it's
not accurate to say that "Vista (32 bit) will only recognize 3 gb" - my
system is able to use 3.5 gb of the installed 4 gb. It varies depending on
other hardware in the system. There is a definite performance benefit going
from 2 gb to 3/4gb - it's not dramatic but it was clear on my system.

If you want to use a security suite I would recommend Norton Internet
Security 2009. Of all the suites NIS 2009 has the smallest impact on
performance. I know some people hate Norton products, but the 2009 product
line is dramatically improved. You could also switch to just an antivirus
and use the Windows firewall which would impact performance less then the
McAfee software.

If you install Winpatrol (www.winpatrol.com) you will be able to easily see
and control what programs auto-start. You may be surprised to see how much
is loading in the background that you don't need - performance will improve
by disabling all unnecessary items.

Last, defrag the hard disk. Hope this helps!