Thinkpads Forum

hi all

i'm running a t500 with windows 7. 2gb of ram, 160 gb harddrive. when using internet everything is choppy and slow. this occurs as well just using Word, but its not as noticable. its like the computer is kind of hanging every second or two. this happens for 2-3 minutes and then everything runs smoothly again for 3-4 with no hanging and then the cycle repeats.

just bought this computer used and trying to figure out if there's something easy i can do to fix. any ideas?

You need to put in at least 4GB of RAM to have it run properly.
Easy solution, I'd say...
Did you get it with somebody else's OS installed?
If so, wipe the HD and do a fresh install of everything.

pablonice wrote:... just bought this computer used and trying to figure out if there's something easy i can do to fix. any ideas?

Run these software products before spending money :
- MalwareBytes
- SuperAntiSpyware
- TDSSKiller

If your Windows7 is 32-bit, 2GB is good enough for only 2-6 things/browser-tabs running at once.

If your Windows7 is 64-bit, 2GB was the absolute minimum when Win7 came out 5 years ago ... 4GB is a much better size with today's video-intensive websites.

I am running Windows 7 Ultimate on 8GB RAM and it flies!

its 32 bit. And now its been freezing. Every couple of hours and I'm losing work. Being conscious that it can't run a lot at once. I'm just trying to run Word and the internet at the same time which I need for work.

If it is freezing is there anything I can do? Can I lower the load on the system somehow?

I think the person I bought this laptop from made a mistake by putting Windows 7 on it. It should have XP.

pablonice wrote:its 32 bit. And now its been freezing. Every couple of hours and I'm losing work. Being conscious that it can't run a lot at once. I'm just trying to run Word and the internet at the same time which I need for work.

If it is freezing is there anything I can do? Can I lower the load on the system somehow?

At this point I'd suspect your hard drive and/or RAM to be faulty. Run some diagnostic tests such as Memtest86 for RAM and HD Tune for HDD - both are free utilities - and report back.

I think the person I bought this laptop from made a mistake by putting Windows 7 on it. It should have XP.

Windows 7 runs beautifully on these machines, when properly set up. No mistake there.

ajkula66 wrote:
Windows 7 runs beautifully on these machines, when properly set up. No mistake there.

I'll second that. It's a marvelous experience.

2GB of RAM is not enough.

But freezes mean bad hardware. Run http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html to check the temps. If the temps are not high, there is some other, less easily fixable fault. I have an X61s that does this, but I've never succeeded in isolating the flaw. So consider carefully whether money should be spent on improvement.