[SOLVED] Old laptop for the basic new tricks

[ruchir_ezio]

So my dad needs a laptop for his daily tasks
and there happens to be one lying around.

The Problem:
It's an 8 year old hp pavilion which hasn't been used in over 2 years. I checked it out and it does boot up seems to work sluggishly but that's expected by today's standards.
It has an i5 430m processor
6 gb ram of which 2.99gb is unusable for some odd reason
500gb hdd
1gb nvidia GPU that I can't remember which one.
Aso it's never been formatted clean so it's been running win7 32 bit out of the box.

The Use Case:
Browsing web, creating word docs and Excel sheets, power point presentations. Some media streaming now and then, lite gaming on websites like Miniclip.com, ebooks and video calls.

And Questions:
Would it support win10 64 bit and MS office 365?
What could be the issue with 2.99 gb unusable ram and how can I fix it?
Would this laptop be usable given the above use case after upgrading to an SSD?

 

[robert600]

I can probably help with this but can you provide the model number of the laptop? It'll probably be on a sticker under the battery.

 

[robert600]

The RAM issue is probably as simple as it having a 32 bit windows os. Max Ram for 32 bit Win7 is nominally 4 GB but as I recall (it's been a while) it's actually like 3.54 or something like that.

 

[ruchir_ezio]

I can probably help with this but can you provide the model number of the laptop? It'll probably be on a sticker under the battery.

,
it's an HP pavilion dv7 3186 cl entertainment notebook

 

[ruchir_ezio]

The RAM issue is probably as simple as it having a 32 bit windows os. Max Ram for 32 bit Win7 is nominally 4 GB but as I recall (it's been a while) it's actually like 3.54 or something like that.

You mean to say that wouldn't be an issue with a fresh install of win10 64 bit?

 

[robert600]

You mean to say that wouldn't be an issue with a fresh install of win10 64 bit?

What I'm really saying is that there is no way to know about that ram when it is used in a 32 bit windows os. Most likely it is fine but ... there's no guaranties of this ... the only way I know to test is to install a 64 bit os like win10.

Updating from win7 to win10 is still free. I think it might (by default) give you 32 bit Win 10 though (I've done lots or updates but I've always started with a 64 bit os so ...). I believe there is a way to upgrade from win10 32 bit to win10 64 bit (again for free). Going from 32 bit to 64 bit results in loss of all data and programs so back up everything important before doing this. If you to persue this, I would post a new thread in the "Windows10 forum" here at Tom's. Title it something like 'how to upgrade from Win7 32 bit to Win10 64 bit for free'. There's some very knowledgeable folks that monitor that forun and they will give you some very solid advice.

 

[robert600]

I'm having trouble finding the Maintenance and Service Manual for that model. That part of the HP site is down at the moment. The product decription for it however states that it ships with Win7 64 bit. Odd that you have the 32 bit version but at least you know it can support the 64 bit os.
I did find a manual for the 3085 which is similar but lists different processors.

Thinking of the present sluggishness ... if you haven't already ... switch the 'powerplan' in Win7 from "balanced" (the default) to "high performance ". That should help a little.

 

[robert600]

The Use Case:
Browsing web, creating word docs and Excel sheets, power point presentations. Some media streaming now and then, lite gaming on websites like Miniclip.com, ebooks and video calls.

And Questions:
Would it support win10 64 bit and MS office 365?
What could be the issue with 2.99 gb unusable ram and how can I fix it?
Would this laptop be usable given the above use case after upgrading to an SSD?

Questions 1 & 2 we've dealt with. I think the answer to 3 is yes but marginally. The SSD will help a lot ... do get at least a 240 GB ... the 120 GB may look ok but they fill very quickly. The nice thing about the SSD idea is that it can easily be tranferred to another computer after the laptop is finished with so it's not wasted money. For a discussion on SSDs filling up, I refer you to this thread:

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/ssd-slow-down-when-full.3634195/#post-21901317

That i5 - 430M processor is near the bottom of that particular i5 family of mobile processors (2.26 GHz and turbos to 2.53 GHz). Higher up the ladder is the i5 - 560M (noticeably faster at 2.66 GHz and turbos to 3.2 GHz. I believe it would be an easy swap and would dramatically change that laptop (say goodbye to that sluggishness). If you're interested, let me know and we can talk further about this. There's one on ebay at the moment for $10 :

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Core...sh=item3da9e9d902:g:UzUAAOSw~mRexcQe#shpCntId