Upgrading/fixing old laptop

[FoxTheLegend]

Hello. I have a very poor friend who has a very old cheap laptop which runs very poorly and overheats. I wish to fix it up for him. I want some tips from you.

It's the lenovo NITU1 laptop with GL40 chipset, 1gb ram, pentium t4500 2.3GHz running windows 7 32bit (don't know which one). The performance of the laptop is completely horrific as it lags in simple tasks such as opening a folder, while no processes are running (he kills everything from task manager). The possibility of a virus is very small since he rarely has an internet connection. He used to play terraria with me just fine but now it barely runs at 7 fps when overheating.

So the plan is to clean the laptop, change the thermal paste (I have a good one from a previous build), give him a cooling pad I don't need anymore. And then I was considering replacing the hdd with a cheap 120gb ssd. I think that his old stock overused hdd is the core source of the lagging. Finally, I had previously attempted to upgrade the RAM from 1gb to 2gb or 4gb (I had 2x2gb ddr3 lying around) but it turned out that the speeds (1333mhz) were to fast for it to handle so it froze and had artifacts. I cant afford a ram upgrade if I can find such a slow module online either way so we are stuck with 1GB. Now the biggest question is, should I install windows 7 or windows 10 on his computer. It is said that memory optimization is better in 10. I am also considering linux, but it needs to run some specific applications so I do not know. Thank you for your time

[EarthWormJM2]

I would say start with the SSD before putting Win 10 on there. (obviously a good cleaning and new thermal paste will help as well). See how it runs, then if its still bad, try Win 10. The SSD should help immensely with normal tasks, you could even use part of the SSD as a RAMdisk if you can't find anymore RAM for his aging laptop. Its not as fast as RAM and will reduce the life of the SSD, but it's there exactly for your use case. 

[Spaceman_Wil]

I hate to say it, but it definitely sounds like that laptop has hit it's lifetime. The only real solution is to get save and get something better, but that doesn't sound like it is an option. As EarthWormJM2 pointed out, an SSD will help, but a lot of your issues lie with the overheating, older CPU, and lack of RAM. Unfortunately some things can't be fixed or Upgraded.

[FoxTheLegend]

Thank you for your responses. I will probably start with the SSD when I can.

[Dah budget gamer666]

You can downclock the ram to get atleast 4GB ram working.

Also 64 bit Windows 7 is better and faster than 32 bit. You can get the ram working on 64Bit Windows 7.

Install the SSD, download Windows 7 64Bit and upgrade the ram to 4GB.

Also a cooling pad wont do anything for the laptop. Open up the laptop and clean the cooler, change the thermal paste. 

When you did all these thing what i mentioned to you, install the integrated graphics, chipset and other drivers.

This will make the laptop run like new.

I hope you will do this.

 

 

[Spaceman_Wil]

11 minutes ago, Dah budget gamer666 said:

You can downclock the ram to get atleast 4GB ram working.

Also 64 bit Windows 7 is better and faster than 32 bit. You can get the ram working on 64Bit Windows 7.

Install the SSD, download Windows 7 64Bit and upgrade the ram to 4GB.

Also a cooling pad wont do anything for the laptop. Open up the laptop and clean the cooler, change the thermal paste. 

When you did all these thing what i mentioned to you, install the integrated graphics, chipset and other drivers.

This will make the laptop run like new.

I hope you will do this.

 

 

Downclocking the ram is a great idea

[Dah budget gamer666]

1 minute ago, Spaceman_Wil said:

Downclocking the ram is a great idea

Yeah but i think if he install 64Bit Windows 7 he doesnt need to downclock the ram since the BIOS is most likely blocked.

Still there are plenty software's to downclock the ram with locked BIOS.

[FoxTheLegend]

46 minutes ago, Dah budget gamer666 said:

You can downclock the ram to get atleast 4GB ram working.

Also 64 bit Windows 7 is better and faster than 32 bit. You can get the ram working on 64Bit Windows 7.

Install the SSD, download Windows 7 64Bit and upgrade the ram to 4GB.

Also a cooling pad wont do anything for the laptop. Open up the laptop and clean the cooler, change the thermal paste. 

When you did all these thing what i mentioned to you, install the integrated graphics, chipset and other drivers.

This will make the laptop run like new.

I hope you will do this.

 

 

Yes I did consider this but there was no way I could get it done. The BIOS has no such option, and Windows was not functional when inserting the RAM. Perhaps you know of some tool I can boot into?  

[FoxTheLegend]

1 minute ago, FoxTheLegend said:

Yes I did consider this but there was no way I could get it done. The BIOS has no such option, and Windows was not functional when inserting the RAM. Perhaps you know of some tool I can boot into?  

Wait, are you saying that if I install 64 bit first and then put the RAM, it may work? and from there I will downclock? 

But as far as I know I cannot install 64bit on a machine with 1gb ram

 

[Dah budget gamer666]

Here are Windows 7 specs:

1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

 

Since those numbers arent always true, here is a video about windows 7 64Bit running on 1GB ram: 

 

 

Give it a try, 32Bit is limited to max 4GB ram and uses only 3GB ram of it. 64Bit windows has no ram limitations.

Edited June 21, 2018 by Dah budget gamer666

[FoxTheLegend]

2 minutes ago, Dah budget gamer666 said:

Here are Windows 7 specs:

1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

 

Since those numbers arent always true, here is a video about windows 7 64Bit running on 1GB ram: 

 

 

Give it a try, 32Bit is limited to max 4GB ram and uses only 3GB ram of. 64Bit windows has no ram limitations.

I hope it works. Are you suggesting that windows will be functional if I install more ram and it is in 64bit ? I thought that was strictly a hardware related issue. If that's not what you meant, how am I supposed to overclock it? 

You see I have to be certain about this kind of stuff because he lives far away and it's a one time operation 

[Dah budget gamer666]

The max supported ram for his laptop is 4GB 1066mhz, some claim 8GB ram.

As for speeds the max supported ram speeds are 1066mhz, if you install a 1333mhz ram it will automatically downclock to 800mhz since the CPU has 800FSB. Just get a SSD, install Windows 7 64Bit and download all the drivers. When you done this place other 3GB ram on it. After that clean up the laptop cooler, re-apply the termal paste. 

ALSO MAKE SURE THAT YOU'VE INSTALLED THE LATEST BIOS VERSION ON THE LAPTOP.

Edited June 21, 2018 by Dah budget gamer666

[Dah budget gamer666]

Here is some proof:

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-B-and-G-Series-Notebooks/Which-memory-type-can-i-upgrade-for-a-Lenovo-G550-memory-specs/td-p/3919125

 

The laptop is Lenovo G550, right?

What happens when you install the 4GB ram on the laptop? Do you see something on the screen, or is the screen just black?

[FoxTheLegend]

16 minutes ago, Dah budget gamer666 said:

Here is some proof:

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-B-and-G-Series-Notebooks/Which-memory-type-can-i-upgrade-for-a-Lenovo-G550-memory-specs/td-p/3919125

 

The laptop is Lenovo G550, right?

What happens when you install the 4GB ram on the laptop? Do you see something on the screen, or is the screen just black?

I don't remember perfectly, but depending on how I set up the memory (which combinations old+new or only old ) the laptop would either not boot, or boot but the screen would be "shaking" like it was having a seizure and there would be white artifacts. So you are suggesting that this problem would not occur if I had 64bit ? 

Automatic downclocking seems reasonable to me, but it either didn't do it or something else went wrong. The RAM has been tested (and one of the two is actually used in my laptop right now) 

[FoxTheLegend]

4 minutes ago, FoxTheLegend said:

I don't remember perfectly, but depending on how I set up the memory (which combinations old+new or only old ) the laptop would either not boot, or boot but the screen would be "shaking" like it was having a seizure and there would be white artifacts. So you are suggesting that this problem would not occur if I had 64bit ? 

Automatic downclocking seems reasonable to me, but it either didn't do it or something else went wrong. The RAM has been tested (and one of the two is actually used in my laptop right now) 

Yes its the G550

Yes I did not update the bios and I should do that 

[FoxTheLegend]

On 6/21/2018 at 7:07 PM, Dah budget gamer666 said:

Here is some proof:

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-B-and-G-Series-Notebooks/Which-memory-type-can-i-upgrade-for-a-Lenovo-G550-memory-specs/td-p/3919125

 

The laptop is Lenovo G550, right?

What happens when you install the 4GB ram on the laptop? Do you see something on the screen, or is the screen just black?

Long time has passed, just wanted to let you know and everyone thanks for the help.

everything worked out surprisingly good. Downlocking wasn't a problem, simply one of the memory slots on laptop were broken. I spared a single 4gb Stick. Popped the ssd. Installed win7 64bit. His laptop is literally as smooth as my pc now except for games

Thanks again

[FoxTheLegend]

And changed paste ofc

[Dah budget gamer666]

LOL just the memory slots on laptop was broken?

Well you fixed your friends laptop, he must be very grateful to you