Will reinstalling Win7 speed up a slow laptop?

[Kelemvor]

So my wife has had Windows 7 on it since I got a free copy of Win 7 ultimate from a Houseparty thing way back when. I know with XP I'd reinstall it every year or two and would see a huge speed improvement.

However, I keep hearing that you don't need to do this with Windows 7 and that it just doesn't slow down.

So I'm wondering if wiping a HDD clean and installing Windows 7 on it will increase the speed of my laptop or not. Has anyone done this? Even just having it clean without all the software that's been installed on it over the years might help speed it up a bit if nothing else.

 

[corkyg]

It very well might. The consensus in this forum is that it will improve your performance. Switching to a SSD would probably do a lot more.

 

[lxskllr]

Even just having it clean without all the software that's been installed on it over the years might help speed it up a bit if nothing else.

^^^ This is what makes it faster, even with XP. Performance degrades as you add software. Reinstalling won't accomplish much if you end up with the same software loadout at the end.

 

[Kelemvor]

Switching to a SSD would probably do a lot more.

Probably better off to buy a new laptop if that's what it would take. It's an older Celeron M 430 or something like that.

 

[lxskllr]

Probably better off to buy a new laptop if that's what it would take. It's an older Celeron M 430 or something like that.

You can move an SSD around though. Try it, and if it isn't acceptable, you can put it in a different machine. That's a 'free' upgrade. You aren't locking yourself into one unit like you would with a faster, but obsolete cpu.

 

[happysmiles]

Reinstall then use Ultimate Windows Tweaker and disable a lot of crap and then CC cleaner THEN do a boot time defrag with Defragger.

usually does wonders for me

 

[gmaster456]

I haven't had to reinstall Windows due to performance issues on any of my machines, you can try it. That being said, I too would try out an SSD. I would say it's worth it. Even on a single core machine.

 

[Gooberlx2]

I've had my original Windows 7 install running on what used to be my primary desktop (now relegated to file server duties) for ~2.5 years now. Much software has been installed, uninstalled, and reinstalled in that time. I've noticed no substantial change in performance.

As others have mentioned, if you're just going to end up with the same software loadout as before, it may not make any difference.

However, my machine also runs a RAID0, Q6600 and 8GB ram. An older machine with an old single-core, single-threaded celery CPU, probably a slow HDD, and probably limited RAM was never really cut out for an ideal Win7 experience, imo.

 

[VirtualLarry]

However, my machine also runs a RAID0, Q6600 and 8GB ram. An older machine with an old single-core, single-threaded celery CPU, probably a slow HDD, and probably limited RAM was never really cut out for an ideal Win7 experience, imo.

This, mostly. My main two machines are Q9300 @ 3.0, 8GB DDR2-800, and a gaming graphics card. Oh, and some SSDs. (Some cheap 30GB ones I picked up some time ago, before the big "SSD price collapse" that seems to be happening now.)

I've not noticed any performance degradation on those machines.

Then again, I used to own a lower-end 15.6 laptop with AMD TF-20 (1.6Ghz single-core) and Win7 64-bit Home Premium, and even without an SSD, it was pretty usable.

The experience is def. better with a quad-core though.

 

[notposting]

Yeah, you would be better off going through your list of programs, dump the junk.
Check startup list (msconfig), stop junk from running.
Switch to MSE for AV purposes.
Give it a good defragging.

Outside of that, you're looking at needing hardware improvements to make any real changes I think. I just did all of this on an old Thinkpad R60, running XP and it made a good improvement. Mind you, this is an XP installation thats from sometime like 2004-2006 on a crappy 60GB laptop drive of the era (Core Duo though!).

 

[HeXen]

I think the major issue is the registry. However on Linux, i've installed a lot of crap, some of it unncessary as i'm pretty new to it all. But so far, it has not hindered its performance one bit.

^^^ This is what makes it faster, even with XP. Performance degrades as you add software. Reinstalling won't accomplish much if you end up with the same software loadout at the end.

There are also others too. Some updates/patches slow down Windows and so do some drivers. Some drivers install a bunch of extra software too.
Unpatched windows with solid drivers on SSD is screaming. Though obviously i can't recommend anyone leave it unpatched.