Windows 7 Starter- Very Slow
 

Hello

I have Dell Netbook, not very old, running W7 Starter. Atom 1.67 Ghz; 1Gb RAM.

It is sooo slow. I thought it was all about my broadband speed, which IS slow, because of my distance from the exchange.

Opening Word to do a new document: 22 seconds. I can often type faster than the letters come up in a search engine etc. navigating libraries and documents is slow too.

McAfee not giving any warnings. Office 2007, by the way.

Any ideas folks? Thanks.

CG

PS broadband at 2.3 mb on my iphone at time of posting

My son has the same Netbook and I noticed it was ababysmally slow after he started using it. Not that one should expect blinding speeds out of an Atom processor.

here are some things you can do to help speed things up.

1. more RAM. Buy more memory. Max it out if you can
2. Defrag. Defrag the hard drive. From my own experience, Windows computers all come highly fragmented straight out of the box. Once you defrag the hard drive, schedule the software to do it automagically once per week.
3. McAfee will definitely slow you down. There are other solutions which aren't as intrusive.
4. Re-index the Registry. CCleaner will do that for you and it's free. Download it, install it and run it. Regularly.

1Gig RAM is probably your problem. I have an Acer i3 running at 1.6 Ghz with 4 Gig of RAM and Windows 7. It is an entry level machine at $600, but I cannot fault it.

I agree with the comments re RAM. Increase to 3GB or more
McAfee is a memory and system resources hog. On a machine thats already inherently slow (with that processor) McAfee is a liability
Replace it with something less demanding - Avast works quite well
Avira and Microsoft Security Essentials are also both low resource options

I don't know the model number but some dell Atom netbooks only take a maximum of 2Gigs DDR2 ram.

really?
definitely worth knowing! Thanks

2Gb is fine as a minimum on Windows 7. You don't NEED 3Gb for it to run most things reasonably. Especially when using Starter.

Mike,

On the other hand, more RAM never hurt anybody... and since RAM is cheap as chips these days, the cost difference between 2GB and 4GB will hardly break the bank.

Anything to prevent paging !

Thanks everyone- RAM for the first course then, followed by Minus McAfee which is up for renewal. Ta.

CG

It's still Windows, so it will need housekeeping regularly.

CC Cleaner
Defrag
Remove unwanted programs + any bloatware the Dell installed from new
Run MS config & work out what you do & do not want to run at startup, last time my toshiba lappy slowed up noticeably, I found something like 20 odd programs all helping themselves at startup from Acronis true image to adobe reader. If you don't need them, kick them out.

Thanks. Much shorter words, please, fellas (gals)- non-geek here.

Next daft question: What is the simplest way to upgrade RAM? ie, where can I just walk in and expect to have it loaded up NOW-ish?

De-frag: mine says it's doing it routinely on a rota. Is that ok? 4% fragmented it says at present.

CG

What exact model is it? Then we'll be able to tell you what RAM to buy & how simple it is to do yourself if you feel the urge. Or whether it's a two minute job at the store or a come back later.

Le P,

Good point. At work now, so will do that later. Ta.

CG

Also go to the Crucial RAM site they will tell you exactly what you need by either entering the model details or by letting them scan your computer.

IIRC the chances are that the memory is soldered into place. My Dell Netbook had 1Gb and is not upgradeable without a fight.

Other models were specified with larger RAM and were built by Dell to that configuration,

Soldering the RAM is so old school !

In these days of the fight to the bottom in terms of price points, anything that will save costs is generally scrapped from the production line and soldering RAM is almost certainly one of them for the majority of manufacturers.