Is there any way to speed up a super slow laptop?

[lucysmam]

I have no idea about these things but we have an HP laptop upstairs that's rarely used because it's sooooo slow.

I think the only thing on there is Libre Office and a few files dd1 saved on it rather than to a memory stick during 'Mum School'.

Is there a magic way to speed it up in case we end up needing a second laptop in the next school term/year?

Well, I've tried swearing at mine and that doesn't work....

PickAChew, it doesn't work with this one either! Nor does ping-pong-ing on the keys while it takes three hours to whirr into life

Get CCleaner and scrub the junk files. Then clean the registry. Make sure it's not loading unnecessary stuff on startup. Defrag the drives.

In an ideal world change the hard drive to a solid state hard drive, but this can be tricky.

@DisgraceToTheYChromosome, as you sound knowledgeable, how do I distinguish between necessary and unnecessary stuff in start up? Mine is only a couple of months old, there’s almost nothing on it, is only used for word processing, email and internet browsing, and is agonisingly slow to start up.

We had an old and painfully slow laptop which was destined for the bin. A week or two ago my son loaded a new operating system onto it called Ubuntu, and according to him it now runs at a decent speed. He says just google Ubuntu and its free to download. I'm afraid I can't tell you any more about it as it's all witchcraft to me, but he also put it on our home PC a while ago, alongside Windows, and it's been fine up to now. I don't know if you'd need to remove Windows first, or run it alongside, I suppose it would depend on the size of the memory. HTH

If its an old laptop have you cleaned out the dust from the slots?

If you have a spare USB stick, use it for extra RAM;
www.wikihow.com/Use-Pen-Drive-As-RAM

You can test mobile Ubuntu that will run from a disc.
www.howtogeek.com/128347/5-ways-to-try-out-and-install-ubuntu-on-your-computer/

ubuntu.com/tutorials/try-ubuntu-before-you-install#1-getting-started

You need to install any updates required

You also need to defragment your memory

So the computer uses a file and then puts the new file at the end of the memory
Leaving gaps
Eventually the memory ends up with holes slowing the process down
Imagine it’s 1 hundred square and the first file uses the first 4 squares and then it’s updates and needs 5 squares - leaving a gap

Do a search on the computer

If it's old it could be a hardware thing, build up of dust and old thermal paste causing it to over heat and throttling power.

If it's got a HDD an ssd would speed it up drastically (£50)

Check what's running in background by just ctrl alt del. Uninstall anything you see that you don't use.

Use cc cleaner (free program to download)

may also depend on specs for the usage, a few spreadsheets and teams calls will make my work laptop want to explode.

How old is old? Are we talking two years or ten? In my experience after certain amount of time, a lot of technology will be very slow just because it's out of date. You can update it and change OS's, as well as defrag it and clean out any junk but it won't make a huge amount of long-term difference.

Try a factory reset (you need to save the documents elsewhere first as it will delete them).

If you don't need it to be Windows, you can convert it to a Chromebook which can help. Or Ubuntu as others have suggested.

Agree with hoovering out any dust. And also that if it's more than about 5 years old, it might just struggle to cope with the demands of modern programs, although a simpler OS may help with this.

Make sure when you run it, it's on a flat surface (never anything soft/fluffy like a duvet or sofa) and ideally propped up on two blocks (e.g. DVD cases) with the fan free. You can also get laptop cooling trays which have more fans in them to keep it cool as you work.

It might be possible to upgrade the RAM, if it's fairly old this might be cheap to do.

Ah thank you all, I'll bring it down with me when I go up next and start right from the first suggestion with it.

It's only 3 (maybe 4, but I don't think so) years old. I don't recall it ever actually running well tbh which is why I bought the little one I use.

If its a solid state hard drive, only use the defragmentation tool in windows 10 because it knows the difference between solid state and mechanical drives.