How can I spruce up this laptop and make it run faster?

[Kankleator]

I just got a crappy laptop from a friend and I want to fix it up a bit so I can give it to my mom. Its a Sony Vaio, heres the specs

65gb HDD
1gb ram
dxdiag wont show the processor
intel graphics chip

I dont need it to do anything special, I just want it to browse the web efficiently. Right now it takes hours to use the internet. I cleaned out files, uninstalled unnecessary things, ran malwarebytes and removed a couple viruses and I installed bit defender since its an easy to run antivirus. Its a little faster now but still really slow. I would prefer to re install windows 7 but I don't have the disk. Any tips on what I can do to make it faster?

 

[Freeedom]

Ccleaner is quite good for freeing up space.

 

[ss202sl]

more RAM

 

[grmnlxndr]

If you got that laptop, try first reinstalling the OS, and installing only what you need. And also, more ram will be more than welcome.
Does it have the windows sticker? you can reinstall the os with that key, but you have to find a compatible disk or disk image.

 

[giantbucket]

my first inclination would be to install Xubuntu instead of Win7 or Win8, but that's only if (a) you're ok with that, and (b) you have the Win7 key sticker somewhere just in case you ever need to re-install Win7 properly.

 

[photonboy]

Options:

1) Restore backup image and reinstall drivers etc
- probably won't help much but hard to say

2) Buy an SSD and clone HDD to it
(Machrium Reflect Free and would need a USB SATA device to attach SSD temporarily, or attach the HDD and SSD to a desktop PC and clone that way)

$50 for 120GB SSD: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/kingston-internal-hard-drive-sv300s37a120g

3) More RAM is a must (be certain of what is supported for capacity). Use pcpartpicker.
- at least 2GB

4) FREE Upgrade to Windows 10 after it comes out.

*Upgrading to W10 will probably make a noticeable difference from what I've been reading.

Conclusion:
What is making your device SLOW is a few things. When you bootup your Hard Drive is probably slowing things down a lot (vs a new HDD or SSD). When just doing basic things that 1GB of main memory is a bit problematic.

For some things your CPU might be the bottleneck but we can't do much about that.

 

[Willie0]

You could try to reformat since you don't know what really the problem is. You could also connect it to a vpn after to be safe on the web as it will be used for surfing.