Optimising Windows 10 for a weak CPU

[Cysero]

I have been trying to resurrect an old Toshiba Satelite T130-11H for basic web browsing. It originally shipped with Windows 7 64 bit, Pentium SU2700, 3GB RAM and a 5400RPM HDD. It ran astoundingly well and had good battery life for many years. Upgrading it to WIndows 10 after first release decreased performance but it was not terrible or unusable. In the past 18 months it did become unusable and has since been replaced by the user. I assumed the HDD had gone bad so I recently put a Samsung 860 EVO in it along with 8GB RAM. It is better than it was but still not running as well as it did with Windows 10 when it was initially installed with the old HDD. Presumably that is because Windows 10 has moved on since it was first released.

 

I was wondering what, if anything can be done to improve performance with this single core 1.3GHz 10 watt CPU. I have installed SSDs in older laptops before even with SATA II and the boot times were vastly better than this Toshiba. Overall responsivenes is quite poor once it boots but it has moments of normality. CPU usage at idle is around 22% and of course anything causes it to spike to specifically 93% CPU usage (never 100%). I acknowledge this CPU should not be used and is on par with the terrible Intel Atoms of that era but there is still a use case for this laptop for basic tasks with its decent battery life (6 hours). No one is intending to game on it or do anything complicated. If not I will be forced to use a bulky HP G5000 with C2D T7400 and dead battery.

 

I have installed most drivers for Windows 7, maximised the space on the SSD for page filing but performance improves very slightly. All this machine really needs to be capable of is browsing the web and loading web pages no more complicated than youtube playing a 720p video but it needs to run a secure up to date OS. What can be done to strip down CPU usage in Windows 10? Is it worth running Windows 10 32 bit to help the CPU?

 

Buy a new computer is not an option ... yet.

[Kilrah]

Did you do a clean reinstall?

[ki8aras]

22 minutes ago, Cysero said:

I have been trying to resurrect an old Toshiba Satelite T130-11H for basic web browsing. It originally shipped with Windows 7 64 bit, Pentium SU2700, 3GB RAM and a 5400RPM HDD. It ran astoundingly well and had good battery life for many years. Upgrading it to WIndows 10 after first release decreased performance but it was not terrible or unusable. In the past 18 months it did become unusable and has since been replaced by the user. I assumed the HDD had gone bad so I recently put a Samsung 860 EVO in it along with 8GB RAM. It is better than it was but still not running as well as it did with Windows 10 when it was initially installed with the old HDD. Presumably that is because Windows 10 has moved on since it was first released.

 

I was wondering what, if anything can be done to improve performance with this single core 1.3GHz 10 watt CPU. I have installed SSDs in older laptops before even with SATA II and the boot times were vastly better than this Toshiba. Overall responsivenes is quite poor once it boots but it has moments of normality. CPU usage at idle is around 22% and of course anything causes it to spike to specifically 93% CPU usage (never 100%). I acknowledge this CPU should not be used and is on par with the terrible Intel Atoms of that era but there is still a use case for this laptop for basic tasks with its decent battery life (6 hours). No one is intending to game on it or do anything complicated. If not I will be forced to use a bulky HP G5000 with C2D T7400 and dead battery.

 

I have installed most drivers for Windows 7, maximised the space on the SSD for page filing but performance improves very slightly. All this machine really needs to be capable of is browsing the web and loading web pages no more complicated than youtube playing a 720p video but it needs to run a secure up to date OS. What can be done to strip down CPU usage in Windows 10? Is it worth running Windows 10 32 bit to help the CPU?

 

Buy a new computer is not an option ... yet.

if its only web browsing youre looking for you could install win 10s

[RageTester]

4 sure Linux would work better... There do exist windows light versions.

8 GB of RAM on something this old? Disable page file then...

Having just 1 core is the bottleneck, and this would even be beaten by Raspberry Pi in single core performance.

 

Disable all services you can, remove everything from autostart, don't keep any files on Desktop, sacrifice visuals for best performance.

If it really does have such a great battery life, you could just put it to sleep in stead of shutting down...

[Radium_Angel]

27 minutes ago, Cysero said:

Buy a new computer is not an option

A few things you can do.

 

Run programs to kill off all of Win10s spying. It will help. (OOShutup10, spybot anti beacon (yes, there is still a free version))

Here are more details

 

https://www.geckoandfly.com/25083/free-tools-disable-stop-windows-spying-tracking-you/

 

Alternative: If you don't much care about such things, run Windows 9.

I much more lightweight OS, looks like Win7, runs much better, sans all of MS's BS they mashed into Win10.

https://www.eastcoast.hosting/Windows9/

 

I have done extensive testing on this, and it's clean, and nice, I use it as my daily driver on my main machine.

 

The major distros of modern Linux are just as bloated and slow as Win10, you'd have to choose carefully if you want to go that route. I can help with that (having installed something on a system older than yours that runs well) if you need, just let me know.

[homeap5]

First of all - you'll not get the same speed as few years ago. Programs become more and more complex. Even browsers. New browsers are using mostly hardware acceleration (GPU). New websites uses more complex scripts. Everything is more demanding than few years ago. Even your sense of speed may be different now than few years ago (you remember that win7 works very fast on hdd, but I don't really believe it's true - it's more like something you want remember).

 

So nothing really you can do. You can disable all kind of protection (even Defender) and that is all you can do. Security vs speed in your case.

[Raptor_Fawr]

5 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

A few things you can do.

 

Run programs to kill off all of Win10s spying. It will help. (OOShutup10, spybot anti beacon (yes, there is still a free version))

Here are more details

 

https://www.geckoandfly.com/25083/free-tools-disable-stop-windows-spying-tracking-you/

 

Alternative: If you don't much care about such things, run Windows 9.

I much more lightweight OS, looks like Win7, runs much better, sans all of MS's BS they mashed into Win10.

https://www.eastcoast.hosting/Windows9/

 

I have done extensive testing on this, and it's clean, and nice, I use it as my daily driver on my main machine.

 

The major distros of modern Linux are just as bloated and slow as Win10, you'd have to choose carefully if you want to go that route. I can help with that (having installed something on a system older than yours that runs well) if you need, just let me know.

This, but as a closing point I'd recommend either lubuntu or puppylinux

[LogicalDrm]

So CPU is 11 years old, single core/single thread. Saying this as previous owner of dual-core 1.8GHz laptop. The CPU power just isn't enough for modern web use. I upgraded laptop in 2015, was running Linux at that point but loading more than 3 tabs at the same time, or loading any tabs besides Youtubes was nope. It worked fine for non-web use. Like watching videos with VLC, for listening music and reading PDFs/comics/using office tools. Web browsing was the main issue. CPU was constantly pinned.

 

Sad to say, but the CPU and any desktop optimized OS is nope. If you would have ARM CPU and mobile OS, things would be different.