Page 1 of Distressingly slow laptop. New RAM needed?

Lappy slowing down to depressing levels lately. My internet speed itself is more than adequate for 1080 streaming on the PC & TV, but the laptop has trouble buffering even low-res youtube videos. I've run all the usual checks, defragged for what it's worth, checked the ram via bios, and uninstalled a crapton of programs I haven't used/played in ages

The Ram that's in there at the moment is just a cheap Corsair, but looking to upgrade to 16gb (Crucial). This is what Speccy tells me

(Ignore the bit at the top about 2 slots. There's definitely only one.)






Any tips/advice before I fork out £60?

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Writer`s Release

This item was edited on Saturday, 12th November 2022, 22:17

I'd ignore the fact it's 'cheap' RAM.
What makes you so definite there's only one slot?
I've seen a fair few laptops where one slot is on one side of the mob and another on the other side.
Having said that, 8GB is not 'that' low and should be fine.
For me I'd 100% stick an SSD in it, and not worry too much about the size.  Not sure why it says SSD above.

Ste

was it a cheap laptop? I know some of the newer cheaper one have ram soldered in :(

have you run Crucial's on line memory check tool, or opened it up to see?

I think all the machines in our household are 8gb or less, and seem fine for youtube/roblox etc, I'm pretty sure I'd be told if they weren't.

as Ste says above, SSD is a good shout, black friday coming up will be some great deals, there's been a few recently on hotukdeals, prices come down again recently.

https://admars32.wordpress.com/
https://mobro.co/admars?mc=1

This item was edited on Sunday, 13th November 2022, 08:05

Doesn't it already have an SSD in it?

I wonder if you need to refresh your browser, or make sure it's using hardware acceleration for video playback.


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have you looked in eventvwr to see if there's a problem with the hard drive, or anything else.

run a chkdsk /f/r

https://admars32.wordpress.com/
https://mobro.co/admars?mc=1

It was reasonably priced a few years ago, and I barely do anything above standard browsing with it. Although it can run Portals 1&2 quite well

Quote:
RJS says...
"Doesn't it already have an SSD in it?"
That's what I thought was a bit odd. It's a HDD (one of these) so I was wondering if there's something amiss that would cause it to be misidentified by Speccy

I'm also curious about the reading for the Memory above. Is that normal for DDR4 memory in a laptop, as in all zeroes and a question mark?

Nothing jumping out at me in eventviewer, but like everthing it's so slow at the moment it's like searching through treacle

I'll run a few checks this afternoon (SFC, CHK) but that may take a while. I've bitten the bullet and ordered the extra RAM anyway, but I'll crack the case later and see if there's anything else on the other side of the motherboard

This is why I prefer PCs.
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Writer`s Release

not used speccy before, that's what mine said

https://admars32.wordpress.com/
https://mobro.co/admars?mc=1

Indeed. I find my lack of clocks disturbing...

EDIT: Crucial scanner doesn't seem to be working for some reason, on laptop and PC

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Writer`s Release

This item was edited on Sunday, 13th November 2022, 13:08

It says SSD for some reason but it isn't.
A 1TB SSD would have been a fortune if they even existed back then..
Was all of the memory being used?
At 8GB, I'd definitely have gone the SSD route first but 🤞

Ste

This item was edited on Sunday, 13th November 2022, 13:26

odd, Crucial scanner didn't work here either:

Quote:
System scan resultsScan ID: error We're sorry, this scan is no longer saved in our system. Click here to run a new scan on your system


got a spare 4gb usb stick? download something like lubuntu, try the memtest program that you can boot to to check your memory, and try lubuntu, even if just to see how youtube is, if it's fine you can rule out hardware

or just try
https://www.memtest86.com/




https://admars32.wordpress.com/
https://mobro.co/admars?mc=1

This item was edited on Sunday, 13th November 2022, 13:51