Laptop is slow even after reformatting...what to do next?

[intelftw]

I bought a dell studio 1555 in mid 2009. This computer worked great for me until about the begging of this year. I have tried reinstalling windows twice. Both times it made it significantly faster, but after a week or so it is just as slow as it used to be. Ive made sure to install avg anti virus as soon as possible both times. I'm curious what i could try differently or what i might be doing wrong. One idea i had was swapping the old hdd for a small ssd to increase the speed there. Tell me what you think. Thanks!


Specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo T9550 2.66GHz, 1066Mhz, 6M L2 Cache
4GB, DDR2, 800MHz 2 Dimm
512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570
320G 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive

 

[Slaymate]

when you reinstalled windows did you update all the drivers? Did you run all the updates from Windows Update?

What do you mean by just as slow as it used to be? The internet? Playing games? Loading windows? Any specific application? or is it slow at everything?

A ssd will make some things faster, but in some situations you won't notice a difference. SSD's are expensive and I would not get to small of a drive for a laptop. I would get at least a 120GB drive.

 

[intelftw]

after reinstalling windows i ran all windows updates. the drivers im not so good with, but i managed to installed drivers off the disks that came with it originally.

by slow i mean i loads everything really slow. takes windows about 2.5 minutes to load windows. takes google chrome 10 seconds to load. Microsoft zune 50 seconds, etc. One thing i notice though is that after the initial loading its not very slow after that, it just takes forever to get going.

 

[MindoverMaster]

Do not use the drivers on the CD. OK, do yourself a favor and throw that thing away. Look under support on your manufacturer's website. Should have a section for drivers. Use those. First one I would get is for the GFX.