Improve Performance Dell Inspiron 1545

[richievalenta]

Pentium Dual Core CPU 2.3 GHz
2.00 GB RAM
64-bit

what can i do to improve performance?
my rating is very low 3.4

thank you

 

[hang-the-9]

That's probably just from your video card. That score lists the lowest score out of the tests. And generally that windows performance score is, by far, not the best way to find out if your system is "fast" or not.

Does it feel slow? If it does when? Games? Movies? Just opening documents or programs? Internet? Any of those can have a different reason for being slow.

If you have issues with games, nothing you can do short of buying a laptop with a better video card.

 

[richievalenta]

Programs feel a bit slower then usual, it takes quite a bit to open up a web page or any other program. Windows media center sometimes the screen glitches, but thats it.
Is there any way I can make make my computer open programs/documents up faster

 

[hang-the-9]

Make sure your drivers are up-dated (check online with Dell), you can try to add more RAM to the system, but 2 gig should be plenty.

Do you have anti-virus software installed? Spyware checker? Try to do a full system scan for both. Malwarebytes is a great program for detecting malware. http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

Really the best way to clean up a system is to do a full re-installation of Windows but that requires your programs to be re-installed, your files backed up, quite a bit of work.

 

[richievalenta]

Yes, which drivers should I check for?
I did a anti virus scan with malwarebytes and windows security essentials, nothing came up.

Last thing I would want to do is do a reinstallation, and I would have to order it from dell

That is the recovery disc, right?

 

[hang-the-9]

All the drivers, chipset, audio, video, drive firmware, etc...

For a new setup you'd need a restore disks, which should have come with the system, or you may even have an option to create a set from files on the computer already from Dell. Don't know how they do things. Could be a restore partition right on the drive. Would have to check the user manual.

Also you may want to have someone else check the computer, what you think is slow may not be.

 

[tank]

A very easy way to speed up computers is not to run alot of programs at once.

start -> run -> msconfig

Then select startup tab. You don't need anything checked for your computer to run; however certain programs will need to starup with the comp. So just pick the ones you don't want. click apply and that should help you. Several programs like to run on startup and that can eventually eat away at your performance. How full is your hard drive, maybe a defrag will help it out some.

Hope it helps. Good luck

 

[darens]

Forgive the little bit late reply. Well, upgrading hardware configuration (add RAM, change a new video card, larger-volume HDD etc) can be a fast yet effective way to improve your Dell performance. But that won't be the most economical, as you know you can't always afford to do that.

The fact is, you should take your Dell as a baby and should do some system maintenance job regularly - she/he will return for you So if you don't mind, try this Dell Inspiron speed up tool to give a full diagnose & fix of found problems or issues.

Regards.

 

[Zoron]

You might also be better off if you bump your RAM to at least 4GB, seeing as how you're running 64-bit Windows.

 

[lambshot]

i have the same probelm its just the graphics card can i do anything?

 

[mightymaxio]

Take the Windows experience index with a large grain of salt. You don't need higher than a 5.0 if all your doing is web-surfing. I would say anything above a 3.0 is good enough but with flash videos and HD videos you need a better graphics card.

You can't improve your WEI just from software you would need to actually upgrade the graphics card, but by the time you do that if it's already that low you would be better off saving up to get a better computer than try to improve what is already a bottom of the line setup.