[anarxaki]

I have a HP Compaq 6830s (NA746ES) laptop. It's mainly used for internet surfing and AutoCAD. It never had any serious problems, except the CPU fan that had to be replaced last year. Every year or so I take it to the service for cleaning. It never had any heavy program installing or uninstalling, except the newer Office. Nevertheless, every two years I usually do a format from scratch, not recovery.

Lately it started slowing down. The browser is constantly using more than 60% of CPU and RAM, facebook is freezing and the folders take too much time to open or copy/paste small files. I thought it's time to put it to sleep but when I checked out the new laptop models, I saw they still have dual core processors @2.5GHz and 4/8GB RAM. That made me think that I don't know the actual reason my laptop is slowing down and/or the criteria to choose a new one.

So, what do you suggest? Buy a new one or fix this one?

 

Specs

Processor: Intel® Dual Core T3400 2.16GHz 2.17GHz

Memory (replaced) : 2+2GB DDR2 667

HDD: 320 GB (5400 rpm)

Video Processor: ATI Radeon HD3430 256MB

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1

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Hi,

 

Replacing the HDD with an SSD can give a new live to the machine. If you are working with big projects on Autocad probably upgrading to 8GB of ram can help.

 

First I would try the SSD if you are not satisfied it can be used on another machine.

[SleepyDude]

Hi,

 

Replacing the HDD with an SSD can give a new live to the machine. If you are working with big projects on Autocad probably upgrading to 8GB of ram can help.

 

First I would try the SSD if you are not satisfied it can be used on another machine.

[anarxaki]

Well, a SSD would be a great solution since it'll cost me only a fragment of the money I was planning on spending on a new laptop. And, thinking ahead, it will widen my search criteria, in case I indeed need a new one.

I'll let you know if it fixed things. It might take me some weeks, but I promise to come back and commend this thread.

Thank you!

[SleepyDude]

Ok, take your time.

[anarxaki]

Hey guys, sorry for being so late in updating but many things went wrong.
The main problem was that neither of the two most popular disk cloning programs were able to complete the task. So I had to start from scratch.
After a clean install and by the way replacing the existing mouse, I am happy to say that the laptop is as good as new. CPU and RAM usage fell under 50%, facebook runs smoothly.

 

Thanks for your advice!

[SleepyDude]

Hi,

 

Thanks for the update. So did you install an SSD?

[anarxaki]

Oops, sorry, I didn't make it clear.
Yeap, I installed the SSD. I was hoping to clone the previous disk, since it wasn't long since my last format, but it failed. So I installed Win from scratch.

[SleepyDude]

No problem

 

Maybe the original HDD have some problem! I always have trouble cloning a bad HDD using most tools.

[anarxaki]

Since you brought it up... I'm almost sure it had something to do with the silly partitions. I don't remember what was I thinking when I first set up that laptop, but I found out that the disk had: 100MB unallocated space - Drive C - another 100MB unallocated space - Drive D - some more 100MB - Drive E - 100MB unallocated. (I should have kept a screenshot for the laughs of it.)

Reflect couldn't even complete the cloning, it gave me some error code and AOMEI said that the clone was complete but it did not work when I swept the disks. Windows couldn't load, neither Repair could fix it.
I spent days trying many different things, like cloning the whole mess of partitions or deleting/expanding/allocating those 100MB parts through Computer Management, but I couldn't get rid of the first 100MB. In the end it was just easier and faster to install Windows from scratch. And, yeah!, this time I did not create any silly partitions.

 

[SleepyDude]

Yep sometimes partitions can get messy.