Breathing life into an old laptop

I have an old ASus laptop L1400

so its very old but still works albeit very slow and batteries don't charge anymore. I was wondering if anyone can help me at least boost it to optimum levels?

and the dvd drive just conked out.

Welcome to techspot

if you could list the specs of the laptop so we can help you better

there are many things you can do to make an old computer faster, the best was would be to upgrade your ram you can use crucial's adviserwww.crucial.com to tell you what type you need also if you dont have any valuable things that you want to keep you could reinstall your operating system to clean out all the crap