# Upgrading Dell Inspiron Laptop



## soccerfan0125 (Jan 16, 2006)

Hey all-

I was wondering if anyone had any advice for how best to upgrade my laptop. It's a couple years old, and I'm sorely in need of a new one, but its just not in the cards right now financially. The biggest problem that I have is that it runs so incredibly s l o w l y whenever I'm doing more than one thing at a time. Running aim, firefox, and listening to itunes? Impossible. My setup is as follows:

Refurbished Dell Inspiron 5160
Running XP Pro Version w/SP2
Mobile Pentium 4 2.80 Ghz
256Mb of RAM
24.3Gb HD with 1.86Gb free
All video and sound controllers are crappy default built in ones.

What would be my best bet to speed things up? I'm relatively computer literate and free of spyware etc. I use AVG virus scanner, spybot, adaware, hijack this, firefox, etc. I have a large external HD, would moving files to that speed things up for me much? Does the fact that its a refurbished replacement that Dell sent me when my other one broke signify that there might be internal incompatibilities that are hindering performance? Any help would be incredibly appreciated. Thank you all so much!


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## hny888 (Jan 16, 2006)

I have an even older Inspiron 2500. Here's a list of what you can do,
hardware wise, put in 512mb of memory.
Download and install the following,
LavaSoft Ad Aware - update latest files, do a scan and clean out the spyware.
Spybot - same as above. Why both? They compliment each other.
JavaSoft Spyblaster and spyWare Guard - give you some level of spyware protection.
Antivirus - like Panda, AVG and the like.

Norton Utilities is good to clean up the junk files which slows down your computer. For me, I only use the utilities, antivirus and firewall, I leave them alone as I prefer AVG.

i2500 is a PIII 1ghz. It works well enough for me as I cannot afford a new one at the moment. The only thing slowing down a pc is the amount of junk inside. Norton also cantains an optimizer.
I am not promoting any of the software above, just something I used to keep my Dell in running smooth.
Thank you.:grin:


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## soccerfan0125 (Jan 16, 2006)

*thanks!*

I've got most of those spyware programs installed, and there's little in the way of useless programs on my computer, so I don't know what would be slowing it down so much.

Do you know what the easiest way to go about installing that 512 of ram would be? I thought that might be the best first bet, but I was unsure how adaptable a laptop is.

Thanks again for your help.


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## Terrister (Apr 18, 2005)

Here are some prices and options for ryour laptop.
http://www.memoryx.net/dein51me3.html


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## crazijoe (Oct 19, 2004)

Installing more memory on an Inspiron 5160 is quite simple. There is a door on the bottom side held in by a single screw. It will uncover both DIMM slots for the memory.


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## Barry_R (Aug 6, 2005)

My wife was complaining about her laptop being slow shortly after installing XP Pro on it. I had a look at it and the hard disk was almost full. I backed up her drive and replaced it with a 60gig drive and now it is back to it's old zippy self.

More memory will definitely help and a fresh install of the OS will probably help too. The older laptops had some real slow drives in them. The new one I put in my wifes laptop is much faster than the old one.


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## JamesO (Mar 30, 2005)

You need at least 512 MB of RAM for XP to play well. Lack of RAM is the single biggest problem I run into daily.

RAM is the single best investement for most machines.

Go to this site and run Check My Computer

www.memoryx.net

Download and run CleanUp as well. This will clean up a lot of drive space.

http://www.stevengould.org/software/cleanup/

Note, you must go into options and uncheck the following:
Delete Newsgroup Cache
Delete Newgroup Subscriptions
Scan local drives for temporary files

The next thing you need to do is check the number of Running Processes, more than 45-50 and you are in trouble. The fewer the better.

AOL trashware takes at least 8 Processes, Weatherbug uses a lot of RAM (30-40 MB as I remember), Norton eats your resources as well.

Ctrl, Alt, Del, Task Manager.

Look at the Performance Tab and tell us how much what the MEM Usage/PF Usage says. Look at the bottom left and tell us how many processes you have, tell use what the average CPU usage indicates.

Your machine specs are decent (except for the lack of RAM) and should run well unless you have trashware and too many processes running.

Defrag the hard drive may also help some. Offloading some of the HD may help, but is not necessary. If you replace the drive, go for a 5400 or 7200 RPM drive, more money, but better response. You probably only have a 4800 RPM drive in the machine now?

JamesO


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## crazijoe (Oct 19, 2004)

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins5160/en/SM/upgrades.htm#wp1105389


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## soccerfan0125 (Jan 16, 2006)

JamesO said:


> You need at least 512 MB of RAM for XP to play well. Lack of RAM is the single biggest problem I run into daily.
> 
> RAM is the single best investement for most machines.
> 
> ...



After running the RAM check, it informed me I have a 256mb module and an empty slot. I'm leaning toward buying a 512mb module to add in to triple the ram, should that be effective?

Right now, with itunes, aim, and firefox going, I've got 34 running processes.

Physical Memory: 261472
Available: 9292
System Cache: 31808

Page File Usage: 412Mb

The HD is 4200 RPM, could that be another culprit?

Thank you so much for all your help, it's greatly appreciated.


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## Barry_R (Aug 6, 2005)

It is clear that if you only have 9292 memory left that you do not have enough ram. You may have more services and system tray programs running than you need.

You can get hard drives that are 5400 or 7200 RPM for laptops. The 4200 RPM drive you have now in combination with all the swapping your Laptop must do because of the lack of free ram is a big performance hit.


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## soccerfan0125 (Jan 16, 2006)

Thank you all so much:

512mb of RAM arrived today, I installed it, and its running markedly better. I really appreciate all your help.

Best of luck, and thanks again.


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## jo-briggs (Jan 29, 2005)

JamesO,

I went to the site www.memoryx.net you suggested, and as soon as I asked it to run a check AVG flagged up a virus, and Microsoft AntiSpyware flagged up a keyboard tracker, I doubt it was a coincidence. I've just spent the last 2 hours running spyware checkers, and a full virus scan.


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## JamesO (Mar 30, 2005)

MemoryX Check My Computer does need to download a small utility to query your motherboard for info. As I recall it may require you to approve the download on XP?

I doubt your problem was anything in the MemoryX download.

I have run Check My Computer 100's of times on machines with AVG and I have never had any problems with the program. I actually run AVG on all of my machines as well.

I buy all my memory from MemoryX for all my customer jobs and never had any issues with the parts and the service has always been great. Even if they may not be the cheapest place, I find they have all the screwy memory for Dell machines in stock and I can deal with a single source for all my needs. I place orders with them almost weekly.

You may not be aware that at times other programs can stir up items dormant on your machine and cause AntiVirus programs to flag them. This happens quite often doing scans of areas on the computer that are not accessed on a regular basis, especially recovery portions on hard drives or other "system" type files that are not used often. AdAware, Spybot and other online scans can sometime trigger things to be flagged by AV programs.

I would also suggest running the online scan from Ewido. This appears to be a fairly useful scan since Trend messed up HouseCall recently.

I appreciate your concern, but I think this was either triggered by the Memory X utility or total coincidence.

JamesO


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## Terrister (Apr 18, 2005)

I run Microsoft antispyware, a different AV and several other security programs on this computer. I went to the site in question and found no spyware or virus alerts. 

I agree with James. I think you have something lurking in your machine. Visit our security forum if you are unable to locate it with the above scans.


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## Sgt_Grim_Reaper (Nov 11, 2004)

I have the Inspiron 5150. The best way to upgrade is maxing out the memory with the fastest supported. I believe yours supportd DDR400 with a maximum of 2GB. So, buy 2-1GB sticks of DDR400 and you will notice a dramatic improvement. Also I believe you can upgrade to a maximum of 3.4Ghz or 3.2Ghz (800Mhz front side bus). Video Maximum is 64MB Geforce Go5200 or ATI something with 64MB. But the ATI had issues better left avoided. Also you may want a 7200RPM 60GB hard drive. Somewhat faster boot times. Audigy also makes a adapter for laptop sound cards. But, by the time you buy all this you could have sold the laptop and bought a newer one with all these features and then some. The 60GB hard drive is around $200 from Dell, 3.2Ghz is around $200-250, and 1GB sticks of laptop memory will run you $150-200 depending on make/manufacturer. The 64MB GeForce is found on Ebay at various prices. Really, all the prices depend on where you get them. And if you are upgrading to a 15 inch display, good luck. Those are the most expensive part.


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## crazijoe (Oct 19, 2004)

Quick note:
The Dell Inspiron 5160 uses the Intel 852GME Chipset. This chipset will support up to 3.46GHz Mobile Pentium 4 Processor operating at 533MHz FSB. This Chipset will not support the standard desktop CPU or 800MHz FSB CPU. The Chipset will also support up to DDR333 memory. While it is possible to use DDR400 memory, it will be downgraded to DDR333 speed.


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## Sgt_Grim_Reaper (Nov 11, 2004)

Well I was close anyway. I could have sworn the 3.46Ghz processor was 800Mhz. And the memory... yah that's what I remember, now that I think about it. I think running DDR400 as DDR333 makes it run cooler or something. If it's anything like my Inspiron 5150 it has heating issues also unrelated to the memory, but processor and video card. HINT: Don't think of it as a "Laptop" because if you use it that way, the vents will be blocked and it can overheat.


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## KieranM (Dec 25, 2007)

You can take it apart and clean the heat sink and fan, and also reset the heat sink to the cpu, it's made a massive difference to the processing speed on my 5160

see
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/forums/index.cfm?action=showthread&threadid=316822&forumid=1


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## speedster123 (Oct 18, 2006)

ancient thread, 1st timer, ad link


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