Hey I just bought a desktop and decided to get a Toshiba laptop with it because we have a wireless router and I thought the laptop would be nifty. But it's so damn slow. It's slower than even my old Windows 98 Gateway pc. I'll let the Dxdiag speak for me.

As you can see it has less rhan 512mb of RAM and it's running Vista of all things. The processor is pretty crap too. The dude who sold it to me said I could "take stuff off of it" to speed it up. What sort of stuff could I turn off to make it run anywhere near an acceptable speed; like services, applications, processes.

If you guys have a way could you explain it in a bit of detail as I'm pretty much a novice when it comes to this stuff.

Many thanks in advance.

Ditch Vista and install XP...

Vista requires much better hardware specs than your Toshiba can provide

Why does Toshiba make such **** computers with Vista? It's not like it was a Dell and I could choose it's operating system. I'm just wondering from a retailing point of view. Don't they realise that a laptop with these specs will run horrendously slow with Vista?

they just want to sound good with the latest windows because it's still the period where people are going "ooh look the new windows, it's it cool" whereas i keep finding myself wanting xp back

they want to give you the latest thing because it's what people think they want and they want to save money by using inadequate hardware

I have repaired so many Toshiba laptops. Their tech support sucks and so do their products...

You have to be so careful in choosing the proper CPU, video, memory and motherboards when it comes to Vista running smoothly. I would think computer manufacturers would know this... Maybe they don't care

take it back and get store credit on another laptop;
"Your recommendation is unacceptable for my intended usage"

this machine has way too much DirectX configured for a laptop --
which is hardly the system for gaming

1) get at least 512mb ram and 60gb HD
2) a processor of 2+ ghz if you want Vista

Well Joe, I would disagree, he or she should get...

1024MB - 1GB DDR or DDR2 or better
80GB to 160GB HDD
AMD X2 or Intel
Dual Core 1.7GHz should be okay 2.0GHz will use more battery then you have to op from 6 cell to 12 cell battery that will make the laptop heavier.

Also don't forget about the video you want PCI-Express 16x also be aware a lot of these new lower price laptops uses shared memory from your RAM. So it if says 128 or 256MB DDR it's taking it from 1GB of RAM. If you can get a laptop with 2GB of RAM buy it and 160GB HDD too.

The dude who sold it to me said I should search for some Windows Vista tweaks and the like online and turn on indexing and something. I'll try that stuff before I attempt to get rid of it for a better model.

SPEEDXP but really you can only tweak so much... You might not see much improvement.

TweakXP

Tweak Now PowerPack 2006 is what I use, I really don't use on a daily bases it just a bunch of tweak tools that can improve Windows. Turn features that have been disabled. Registr cleaner and defrager things like Memory Cache Recover.

In my opinion, it's a mistake to apply performance 'tweeks' to a system with new issues --
the slowdowns should be solved first and tweeks applied after the system is returned
to normal/acceptible behavior

True... But not all the time... Tweaks that I use are only for the L2, NTFS, putting the Kerninal in upper memory range.

that's fine, but changing one variable at a time is a great practice to acquire when debugging systems

Hey, guys.

I changed some settings to make it run at an acceptable rate.

If anyone is searching the forum and finds this thread and has a similar set up, specification-wise, then hopefully the following will help.




1: In the Windows Search Box under start type "SystemPropertiesPerformance" and hit Enter. Under the Visual Effects tab hit "Adjust for Best Performance".



2: In Control Panel hit "Classical view" in the left sidebar and double click on "Personalisation" and hit "Display Settings". Alternatively, right-click on the Desktop and hit "Personalisation" at the bottom of the drop-down menu. Then lower your resolution.

My laptop has some intel chipset graphics card and so the default resolution of 1280x1024 was a definate no-no. I lowered it to 1024x768. I could have lowered it further to 800x600 but I'm used to 1024x768 on my old HP Desktop and it suited me fine, anyway.
Press "Apply" and select "Yes" when it asks if you want to keep these settings.



3: In the aforementioned Windows Search box in the start menu type "msconfig".
Select "Selective Startup" in the "General" tab and in the "Startup" tab select "Disable All". Then in the "Services tab" check "Hide all Microsoft Services" and uncheck the boxes of all the services that are left when the Microsoft Services are hidden. Press Apply and if a prompt comes up suggesting you Restart just press "Restart Later".
Finally Under the "Tools" tab select "Disable UAC" (User Account Control) and press Launch. If the prompt comes up again press "Restart". If not, just manually restart your laptop via the Start menu.

When you are done with the restart select the box at the bottom left of the window that comes up telling you you have performed a Selective Startup. This will shut it up so it doesn't appear everytime you start windows.
If you are missing several programs that would usually start up that you miss, either tell it to startup when Windows logs on via the program's internal Settings/Options/Preferences, or by editing the "System Configuration"(msconfig) "Startup" and "Services" tabs. Get to it by the previously mentioned method of searching for "msconfig" in the Start Menu.




Anyways, that's what I did. Pretty simple stuff but it worked. While 350MB of my 502MB of RAM is still being hogged by Vista and the annoying things that came with my laptop like Norton Antivirus it starts alot faster and smoother. I think I am going to uninstall Norton as well and get AVG Free Edition.

Download url for AVG Free Edition v7.5 (RootKit Remover, Anti-Virus and Spyware programs):
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/5390/us/frt/0



Some questions I would like to ask you guys.

The guy who sold it to me said to turn on "Indexing". Is this done through the "Computer -> C:/ -> Properties" window or is it done in the "Control Panel -> Index Options" window? Either way could some please explain how to "turn it on"?
He also mentioned IP6. I googled IP6 and I found some called IPv6 for Windows Vista. Did he mean to install it or turn it on or off? If you know the answers to either of these questions it would be cool if you could help me. The laptop still isn't too fast.