Laptop Ram

Sick Boy

Sick Boy

New member
Hi guys, time for my daily question. Ok so I want to upgrade the ram on my wifes laptop, her specs are
Toshiba L500-1z1. it currently has 2gb but can accomidate up to 8bg. From what I have found, it takes DDR3 1066 Mhz, would you guys have any recomendations on how much I sould increase it by and an idea of cost?

The reasone for the upgrade is, out of the 2gb that it has between 1.6 - 1.8gb are already allocated, the sustem is very slow when I am running several office shork sheets like Excell and word, would increasing the ram help a little,

Ok I found this page that says this is a compatable upgrade, so if I understadn this correctly I must look for 204 pin ram, please advcie if this is correct

204 pin ram

Another thing I noticed was the 3g internet was running terrible slow, I then pluged it into the SADA slot ( usb 3 ) I think its a square usb port and its runnign a shit load faster, is it fine if I run my 3g from that port?

Thansk
 
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Hey Sick Boy

Tell me something, the programs that run in the background, are they causing it to be slow.
Some anti viruses like Norton or AVG tend to be high with system resources and cause it to run slower. Something like Avast is a good one as its resources are low and has a very decent protection.
How many programs do run in the background?
Do you defrag the computer?
Do you clean the registry etc using something like CCleaner, that also helps speed up the computer.

Other then that I wouldn't recommend getting anything more then 4gb ram for your laptop. Having 8 gigs will be overkill and a waste of money.
 
I honestly think that there is something wrong with that laptop (maybe too much bloatware) not optimized etc. my 4 year old centrino lappy only runs @ 1.8 with 1.5 gigs of ram and it runs windows 7 with quite a few apps open superfast (and bear in mind that has a very kaaark gma 945 intergrated gfx)

best bet would be to do a clean install of windows and see how it goes
 
Ok thanks for the advice so far,

Ok Simon I am not sure what anti-virus its running I will check that out, as for the backrounds programes, my wife only fun Microsoft office programs, maybe 5 spreed sheets and 3 word documents and most he time she runs google at the same time maybe 5 tabs

Hey Doch-WP I am also thinking some thing must be wrong because its really slow my wifes mom has also got a Toshiba L500 but a much earlier one only running daul core and my wifes one is a i3, but her mothers laptop runs so much quicker and has tons of crap installed on it, so its really wierd

The guy I got it from did a full factory restore but maybe he messed it up so something,

I think the best will be for me to ask if there is anyone who lives in the Northan suburbs of JHB who might be willing to sit down and help me to format and re-install everthing, I think it would be the best cause I have never done this and am a bit clueless so I think if I do it on my own I might make it ever worse whahaha I dont really want to waste money taking it to the computor shop wither cause that way I learn nothing, so if there is anyone who would like to help please let me know there will be a braai and beers for who every helps

Ja if the ram is not crazy expensive I might as well just bomb another 2gb in at the same time taking it up to 4gb in total

Thanks again for all the help so far
Oh WOW just spoke to the guys from PC International and its not nearly as expensive as I had thought for 2gb ran its only R230 and they will install it at not charge
 
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hmm, thought you had done the clean install of windows yourself.
Well just a reminder, remember to back up everything before doing the fresh install.
Try downloading the drivers before formatting as well if you don't have them handy already. I find it easier that way compared to trying to do it afterwards
 
Thanks for the heads up Simon, Ja I got it with the factory restore already done, I would have not clue or idea where to start but I am keen to learn :)

I dont have any of the drivers all I have is the window restore cd that the machine came with

I ran a defrag last night but the where only 5 infected or defragable files so it did not really make that big of a difference :(
 
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Sick Boy said:
Thanks for the heads up Simon, Ja I got it with the factory restore already done, I would have not clue or idea where to start but I am keen to learn :)

I dont have any of the drivers all I have is the window restore cd that the machine came with

I ran a defrag last night but the where only 5 infected or defragable files so it did not really make that big of a difference :(
Click to expand...

Which defragger do you use. I highly recommend defraggler as it is a lot more thorough then the windows variants.
In order to install windows you just put the dvd in, change the boot order to read from the dvd drive if the laptop doesn't pick it up first when booting up.
Select to run from dvd and choose to format the C:
Install windows
Install Drivers
Install programs and you are a for away
 
This might not be of any use, but this is what happened to me when my laptop became really slow. My games which used to run at 50+ fps dropped to 4-10fps...

My 1st suspect was spyware/adware/virusses, but after several scans I did not find anything. Even after a format & re-install of windows it was still running slow.

Anyway, long story short...my laptop was running extremely hot and I bought a laptop-stand thingy to improve the air-flow. I've done this cause someone told me the warmer the laptop is running the less juice you'll get out of your CPU because it is trying to cool it self down. How true this is, I've got no idea.
The stand did not work, so I decided to open the laptop. I used a air-compressor to clean all dust etc (was barely noticeable) from it and surely enough my fps shot back up with my next reboot. ;)

Anyway, surely ram will help if u got 2gb, but as mentioned above, more than 4gb will be a waist. Just thought I'd share the above, cause RAM in my situation was not the solution.
 
Ja so what I think is going to work out the best is just to take the laptop to PC Ineternational, they will supply and install 2gb ram for R227 which I dont really think is a bad price, and then while it's there I am just going to take the restore CD that came with the machine and ask them to do a full formate and re-install, I am sure with the increase to 4gb ram and the full format and re-install the speed issue should be resolved, I will also advice them on whats going on with the machine and I am sure they will be able to advice and help,

I will let you guys know how it turns out
 
Restoring te laptop to the factory defaults won't solve the issue
If an i3 Laptop is running too slow it is more than likely something that came pre installed on the laptop that is cuasing this
Open up your Task Manager (Prompt to show processes from all users)
Open up what you would normally have open and check what is eating your resources

Go to your Control Panel and Uninstall everything that is related to AVG / Norton as well as any other Bloatware you can identofy
Reboot your machine, and retest
 
Hey Xero, your a life saver I will have a look at that first tonight, I might not even have to get the extra ram then, so that would be a huge bonus, so you agree that it's not normal for a 2g, i3 machine to be so slow at running basic Microsoft office.
 
Nope
The performance levels of an i3 Core Laptop with 2 GB's of RAM shoudl be well above that of any dual core based laptop
Something is eating your resources
Check for something called the Windows Audio Service as well, had a laptop inflate the page file handling that and causing the whole laptop to slow down
 
dizz16 said:
This might not be of any use, but this is what happened to me when my laptop became really slow. My games which used to run at 50+ fps dropped to 4-10fps...

My 1st suspect was spyware/adware/virusses, but after several scans I did not find anything. Even after a format & re-install of windows it was still running slow.

Anyway, long story short...my laptop was running extremely hot and I bought a laptop-stand thingy to improve the air-flow. I've done this cause someone told me the warmer the laptop is running the less juice you'll get out of your CPU because it is trying to cool it self down. How true this is, I've got no idea.
The stand did not work, so I decided to open the laptop. I used a air-compressor to clean all dust etc (was barely noticeable) from it and surely enough my fps shot back up with my next reboot. ;)

Anyway, surely ram will help if u got 2gb, but as mentioned above, more than 4gb will be a waist. Just thought I'd share the above, cause RAM in my situation was not the solution.
Click to expand...

Sorry to Hijack the thread but dizz16, my laptop does something similar. I will be playing a game and it'll be running perfectly smoothly and then all of a sudden it'll lag terribly for a couple of minutes (like 1 frame a second) and then after that its perfectly fine. This then repeats itself every 15min or so. Doesnt always happen though. I checked the resource manager and removed unnesscary processes etc.

I've had the laptop for 2years and have never cleaned it from dust-so do you think its likely to be the reason? Suppose its worth a try :)
 
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