Yeah, after 4 years reinstall should be in order.

I had old laptop that saw no reinstall ever and when I did it, it gained around 200% in speed. It got worse later again but it was almost miraculous change. It looked like totally useless before and after it it was actually able to do stuff on it.

Also you could maybe try to clean it from dust. It could help too.

Or try to put it in racing car. That should make it faster.

Or paint it red. Or add racing stripes.

The issue, after 4 years is that your Register gets glogged by unneeded entries or inconsistencies, and that your virtual memory space could get corrupted. For the first problem, a fresh reinstall is the solution, but that's an annoyance if you have tons of programs. For the second, you can simply change the virtual memory settings to zeroi, reboot, then put back the desired settings and reboot again. that will get things running.

You also wrote you applied all MS upgrades. well, that's part of the performance issue imho. It's better to put update setings on manual and select what you want to install and what you don't

Something else that could slow down your computer is an oudated program somewhere not responding correctly anymore. I had that years ago with some Epson application suite. Digital camera applications are often neglected as well.

Then antivirus. Some versions are more resource hungry than others. If you suspect that, try another software suite to check if you get better results.

The removal of any potential "bloatware" is what I would have suggested as well.

... Well, right after some obligatory jokes about tying it to a railroad train, or throwing it down a cliff. ( Especially considering your user icon. )

Mobile computers in particular tend to have all sorts of unnecessary crap pre-installed. If you un-install some of it, or turn off auto-start for some of these programs ( via msconfig ) that should help with boot times and overall performance. Completely re-installing Windows is kind of a last resort measure, but might further improve performance.

I've upgraded back and forth between Windows 7 and 10 on three different PCs now, and I can't really say it is quicker (nor really slower, as long as you disable the upload bandwidth usage of Windows Update in Win10) than Windows 7. Maybe the lack of Aero makes some desktop operations quicker, though?

The reason Windows 10 boots up faster is the same reason why Windows 8 boots up faster: Windows 8/8.1/10 use a sort of "hybrid hibernation mode'" to speed up the boot up, ie. they don't really shut down completely. It caused some issues and inconvenience to me, so I disabled it ("fast boot") from the power settings, after which booting Windows 8 or 10 takes about the same time as Windows 7. But at least you can then get to e.g. BIOS/UEFI settings or select your boot device freely. :)

If you want to speed up Windows 7 boot up, I guess you could always put it to hibernation mode (or even just the sleep mode), and not to properly shut it down at all. If the fast boot up time is all that matters to you.


I recall back when Windows 8 came out, there were these persistent claims also on this forum how Windows 8 is generally faster than Windows 7, even making your games run faster. Testing it myself (running both Windows 7 and 8 side by side on the same PC, with the same level of graphics drivers, with PC benchmark programs and games), I found that to be untrue. Windows 7 and 8 gave pretty much the exact same performance for games and benchmarks, only slight variation case by case to either side. Googling for it, the online articles on the subject gave a similar view.

However, when DirectX 12 games come out for Windows 10, those are supposed to run faster than the same games running on DirectX 10 or so....

Windows 10 update should be good for performance, as others have said. Still, the best would be to move to an SSD. You say that your disk is mostly empty, so you won't even need a big SSD (which will be costly). Really, it's a day and night difference when it comes to booting and program launches.

Tried that, but the button was blocked by SHODAN security...

Get a SSD. Really. I have an old (like 8 years old or more) Core 2 Duo, put a SSD in it and it feels like a new computer. If you don't need much space a 128GB SSD would be more than enough and you can get that for under $100. For example something like this

Depending on your needs, you should also consider installing Linux, which ages a lot better, i.e. its performances degradation over times is much much slower than that of windows.

schedule a check disk/CHKDSK on starup,. it's possible your HDD might have corrupt sectors by this time. not sure if that would speed up anything though.

best way to speed up an old pc is still to add RAM or better GPU. but since it's a laptop, a new GPU is out of the question.

^swapping in an SSD could help too, but AFAIK it only speeds up loading times, afterwhich you'll still need more RAM to see speed increases?

No need to ever run defragment, the OS does that automatically. Starting the OS has mostly to do with the startup apps, so you might want to take a look at them - they tend to gather up over time. Access time for mechanical harddrives may also drop before they start failing, not that I want to make you paranoid or something.

Laptops have slow mechanical HDDs regardless (5200rpm very commonly or slower) so an SSD would help a lot for startup times. In fact, for laptops, I'd say an SSD is a priority. They benefit far more than desktops from SSDs.

Switching apps taking long is most often cause by the RAM paging I/O, that is from actual RAM to the HDD. More RAM could help there (8GBs is not a crazy big amount these days, and you're running apps updated for today)

Anti-virus apps tend to slow down the computer as well, so unless you really *really* can't live without them, just uninstall all antivirus apps and rely on Windows Defender. If you use common sense while browsing, that's all you'll ever need. Windows 8 and Windows 10 run faster on old equipment than Windows 7. Those OSs were designed to be run on low-powered tablets specifically.

You might as well upgrade to Windows 10 instead of reinstalling an old OS. That would work. Other than that, consider turning the AV on and off when you need it. Keeping it on slows the machine.

Or add an alien symbol on it?

Seriously, this is probably the single biggest thing you can do to a computer to improve load speeds. Adding some RAM will help operationally, i.e. running things as a lot more can be held in memory rather than on disk. As for GPU, depends what you are running on it thats slow. If its recent games, then of course a new GPU + GRAM will improve render speeds, but older games, and general software will not be improved much by this change.

As others have said, you could try sorting out the current install. Personally I tend to re-install OS every 6-12 months. Windows is a bit notorious on getting clogged up, and whilst its got better its still easier to just re-install. I would suggest sticking with Win 7. I am on Win 8.1 as my 7 key expired, and I preferred 7, have no intention of going to Win10.

At the end of the day though, with computers being so cheap now, it may just be cost effective to buy a new one.

I would now ask the question I'm most puzzled about the answer to.
Why stick to Windows 7?