Old HP Laptop?

[grkbar]

I am trying to refurbish my sisters old HP pavilon ze4125 laptop Amazon.com: HP Pavilion ze4125 Laptop (1.4 GHz AMD Athlon XP 1600+, 256MB RAM, 40GB hard drive): Computers & PC Hardware. Im not sure what she has done with it but it has become increasingly slow in usage. I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions on what I could do to boost performance via software first, and if nothing is available then I would think that the increase in RAM would improve on this problem area. But any suggestions and or solutions are appreciated.

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

Obviously reinstalling the OS would greatly increase speed. A few years of use and the operating system files get really messed up and the system lags down a bunch. Reinstall the OS and then if it's not fast enough get more RAM. Beyond that, it isn't really worth upgrading an older laptop when you can buy a comparable new one that is much faster.