Introduction - Attempting to tuneup a budget HP Notebook

[Windows7Trainee]

I feel obligated to intro myself since I moderate a forum and know how spammers and trollers don't bother to do that. Hope I'm observing forum protocol or not providing too much info at one time.

Got an HP G56-WM129 on Black Friday 2010. Know it's a budget computer, yet outperforms four prior Windows xp machines. I've already read some of the threads here to speed thing up by reducing the services booting up, deleting Windows updates, turning off Aero and the high graphics, etc.

My objective is to have this notebook running as fast and as stable as possible.

• Notebook - 15.6 inch, 1366 x 768 (common)
• WiFi (standard)
• DVD drive (standard)
• 3 USB ports, one of them USB 2.0
• 3 GB RAM (DDR2) - upgradeable to 6 GB
• Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit
• Intel Celeron 900 CPU - 2.2 GHz
• 250 GB disk - 97 GB used
• Added 16 GB flashdrive with 4 GB Readyboost
• 500 GB external USB harddrive

Windows Experience: 3.3

• CPU: 4.4
• RAM: 5.1
• Graphics: 3.3
• Gaming Graphics: 3.3
• Hard disk: 5.9

Run:

• System Mechanic Pro
• CCleaner
• Defraggler
• COMODO internet security
• SpeedFan - CPU is 106F to 130F

Aside from general tuning advise, is ReadyBoost going to help me? Would replacing the harddrive on this budget notebook with an SSD make sense?

 

[mgp1964]

It really boils down to what you want to do with this machine. If it is just for networking like surfing the web, watching youtube and doing emails then I would not worry to much about it.
With the cost factor of SSD drives I would say no because the main drain of your system is the graphics and there is nothing you can do about that.

 

[Windows7Trainee]

Need to add I will occasionally run MS SQL Server 2008 - just a small sandbox - not a huge DB.

 

[zigzag3143]

I feel obligated to intro myself since I moderate a forum and know how spammers and trollers don't bother to do that. Hope I'm observing forum protocol or not providing too much info at one time.

Got an HP G56-WM129 on Black Friday 2010. Know it's a budget computer, yet outperforms four prior Windows xp machines. I've already read some of the threads here to speed thing up by reducing the services booting up, deleting Windows updates, turning off Aero and the high graphics, etc.

My objective is to have this notebook running as fast and as stable as possible.

• Notebook - 15.6 inch, 1366 x 768 (common)
• WiFi (standard)
• DVD drive (standard)
• 3 USB ports, one of them USB 2.0
• 3 GB RAM (DDR2) - upgradeable to 6 GB (biggest improvement here of course)
• Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit
• Intel Celeron 900 CPU - 2.2 GHz
• 250 GB disk - 97 GB used
• Added 16 GB flashdrive with 4 GB Readyboost
• 500 GB external USB harddrive

Windows Experience: 3.3

• CPU: 4.4
• RAM: 5.1
• Graphics: 3.3
• Gaming Graphics: 3.3
• Hard disk: 5.9

Run:

• System Mechanic Pro
• CCleaner
• Defraggler
• COMODO internet security
• SpeedFan - CPU is 106F to 130F

Aside from general tuning advise, is ReadyBoost going to help me? Would replacing the harddrive on this budget notebook with an SSD make sense?

OK
Aside from the ram you can do a lot to slim down the OS.

First You dont need System mechanic Pro (or otherwise), Defraggler, and I would replace Comodo (heavy resource user) with Microsoft Security essentials.

MSE also causes less BSOD's than Comodo.

Readyboost is faster the a mechanical HD but slower than the ram above. Get that first.

GO to blackviper.com, here you will find a wealth of information on services you can cut, delay, etc.

Your current HD is WEI 5.9 but your graphics (built in?) are 3.3 . You will get the most bang for your buck in RAM. If it is a laptop the ram is relatively cheap these days.

Good luck and let us know if we can help

Ken

 

[ignatzatsonic]

You might get a little boost by going to control panel/system/advanced system settings and poking the settings button in the performance area. Then choose "adjust for best performance".

I'd avoid System Mechanic Pro and I'd be careful with CCleaner---I definitely would not use its registry cleaning function. Even if it "works", I wouldn't expect registry cleaning to have a measurable impact.

I wouldn't expect Defraggler to make a measurable difference as compared to Windows own defrag app.

I wouldn't expect miracles from anything you do.

An SSD would knock your boot times down to maybe 30 or 35 seconds. You decide if that is worthwhile.

An SSD would cause programs and files to open slightly quicker. You might not think that is worth the expense.

If you do heavy-duty intensive tasks with this machine, you are going to be limited by the CPU and/or graphics and there is not much you can do about that.

You say you want "stable". That points to as few doo-dads as possible.

I don't know about Readyboost.

 

[Windows7Trainee]

Thank you for the input so far.

While System Mechanic Pro has Internet Security - I went to COMODO after a bad experience with SMP.

First of all, SMP's scan's are very slow compared to other products. Then when I was attacked, I still got infected.

______________________________________

This may be off-topic or reveal how I'm hurting myself. My main browser is Chrome and all too familiar with it not getting along with Shockwave Flash. I may be bringing trouble upon myself by having three dozen tabs, probably allowing Flash to crowd out the memory.

 

[Infinite]

Well, my Netbook boots really quick with a SATA HD, 1GB RAM.

20-40 seconds .

If you are interested in speeding up your notebook, check these 2 tutorials:
99 ways to Make Your Computer Blazingly Fast

I would avoid 2, 10, 11, and 12 from this. And maybe 25 if you make many PC mistakes.

Most of the features on that guide work for Windows 7 but are designed for Windows XP.

And here:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/11728-optimize-windows-7-a.html

For an Anti-Virus, use a light-weight combo of MSE and Malwarebytes Free.

Oh and PS, don't use those so called Registry Cleaners:
TuneUp Utilities
AdvanceSystemCare
SystemMechanic
RegCure

and so on.

Many ad's and websites say they are good, but they do more harm than good. Even I have experience

If you do use a Registry Cleaner, use CCleaner, but only if you know what your doing. Personally I use it for uninstalling, cleaning files, and configuring the Startup, and removing deleted data every 6 months.

Upgrade your Hardware further; for example an SSD.

 

[gregrocker]

At 3gb RAM I'd reinstall 32 bit or upgrade the RAM to at least 4gb. A clean reinstall is often best on HP's anyway since they have the worst load of bloatware of any model. Reinstalling Windows 7

Follow these tips to Clean up factory bloatware.

This is not XP. Win7 is a perfectly balanced, featherlight, instantaneous, state of the art OS which needs no second guessing - just adequate hardware and a perfect install.

You'll get no performance boost by turning off Services which hasn't been needed since Vista was bloatware. There's also nothing to gain by turning off Aero, although Visual Effects can be edited of sliding, fading and dragging intact on low resource machines.

All Important and Optional Windows Updates should all be installed for security and performance reasons.

System Mechanic and other compound tweaking suites will always come back to bite you in Win7, which is already as lean as an OS can be. Other than the optimizing tips in the link above, at most I'd use CCleaner disk and Registry tab followed by a good defragger like Puran which gets at System files during it's boot scan.

Comodo is not recommended by anyone here where we helped shake out the bugs in the OS until there were none, yet still see Comodo issues. We almost all recommend Microsoft Security Essentials or Avast with the Win7 FIrewall, and the Malwarebytes scanner on demand.


​

 

[Windows7Trainee]

Thanks to everyone for their input.

This how my HP G56-W129 notebook is booting now

• boot to choosing user - 18 seconds
• boot to loading user - 28 seconds
• boot to wifi connect - 60 seconds

I did not keep great records before the tune up, but this is about half the time prior to upgrading to 8 GB RAM, an SSD, the tweaks suggested, moving a lot of unused/seldom used data to an external hard drive.

COMODO was replaced with MSE - have not touched the recovery partition on my hard drive (now SSD.) Now that I have an SSD, I have less need for Defraggler, as defrag utilities are harmful to SSDs.

Got the 16 GB flash drive refunded....Windows 7 disables Readyboost if you install an SSD, and somehow my SanDisk went into a write protect.

 

[gregrocker]

The additional WiFi connect startup time of 30 seconds looks suspciously like HP's bloated connection manager is still involved, since it commonly delays startup by that much time.

It's best to uninstall that crapware, or to turn it off enter Preferences and check the box to allow another connection manager.

In almost every case there are better versions of these useless factory utilties built into Win7.

However in some rare cases like that of Samsung you will lose some functionality of the cam and touchpad without the factory installed software as that which they've posted on their website is not full-featured, they don't care, and prove it by having a performing parody troupe as "tech support."

 

[Infinite]

Hi, did you use my links?

Secondly, I would remove all the HP Bloatware like Greg Suggested or remove them from MSconfig's startup tab.

 

[Windows7Trainee]

Infinite, I have read 99 Ways to Speed up your computer, but need to read Optimize Win 7 more.

Greg, While I did uninstall the HP wireless app and as far as I know took out the HP folders with their apps, it's quite possible some of their stuff remains. In fact, my SSD has four partitions?....Drive C, Drive D (recovery), a small system partition, a small HP partition.

I login as "Chuck", but the important thing to know is my stuff there is 40-45 GB, so that might slow the boot time.

 

[gregrocker]

Your System partition should be marked System Active in Disk management for it to be functioning as System partition.

The Recovery partition can be kept if it still works. Cue it up by tapping it's function key at boot to see if it works and what options it offers: .HP Recover Windows 7 Operating System Using HP Recovery - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

If it doesn't work you can delete it using free Partition Wizard bootable CD then Resize C into the deleted space. Hopefully you made the Recovery Disks as a backup - if not you can still try now: HP Recov DIsks - make another set
Creating a Recovery Disk on a USB Flash Disk - HP technical support (Finland - English)

The other small HP OEM partition is to run Diagnostics from boot. You can also try to cue that up to see if these tests for HD and memory will run, but if not recovering that HD space is fine since we use tests here which are better for those anyway.

If you are at the point where you want to recover all the HD space from HP you might also consider doing a clean reinstall at some point to shrug off all of the factory bloatware residue, as this is always a superior install especially if you follow these steps to get a perfect factory OEM reinstall: Reinstalling Windows 7.

As advised earlier with 3gb RAM I would be running 32 bit anyway.

Here is the ISO to burn to DVD or write to flash stick using Windows 7 USB-DVD Download Tool:
Win7 Home Premium x86 SP1 English Official ISO download
Win7 Home Premium x64 SP1 English Official ISO download