Last Attempt at Rescuing Sony Vaio Notebook

Kidderman

New Member
My daughter bought a Sony Vaio VPCM13M1E notebook a few years ago. It's a small, lower spec machine which was bought mainly for its portability. However, from day one, it's been unbelievably slow in every way. I didn't become aware of the problem until about two years after the notebook was purchased. My daughter simply believed that the slow speed was due to the spec of the machine. It's been barely used from new due to the speed problem. I've tried to address the issue two or three times over the years, without success.
I was recently advised by my daughter that she intended discarding the notebook as part of a de-cluttering exercise. I have decided to make one last attempt at speeding it up so that it functions sufficiently well for me to pass it on to a disadvantaged young person who might benefit from having a working machine as an educational aid as well as a means of accessing the internet. I remain confident that the machine can be rescued. I'd be very grateful for any advice which forum members may be able to provide.
The spec. of the machine is as follows:

--Intel Atom CPU N470 @1.83GHz 64bit processor
--2.00 GB DDR2 SDRAM PC2 5300 (upgraded from 1GB, now at maximum)
--Hard Drive=Showing 290GB (98.7GB used, 191GB free). 5400rpm spin speed.
--OS=Windows 10 (upgrade from Windows 7).
--Intel NM10 chipset
--Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3150 (Total graphics memory approx. 250mb).

I have upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10. It has made no improvement in speed. There are only three programs installed: Firefox browser, McAfee anti-virus and Microsoft Edge. The notebook takes about ten minutes to boot up. It can take about 60 seconds for a program to open. The internet connection appears to be fine. It is fast when using other PC's, however accessing and navigating when online can take up to a full minute each time a new search is required. Entering text takes a few seconds to appear in a search bar after pressing letters on the keyboard. Device Manager indicates that all components are working properly.

I'm hoping that there may be forum members who can suggest possible diagnostics and/or fixes. It would be a shame to discard what should be a perfectly serviceable machine.
 

DavidG

Active Member
TBH it is a low spec budget machine, the processor is slow is only has 2GB RAM and a slow small hard drive. It really isn't worth spending any money on it. It was a mistake to upgrade to windows 10 which if anything would have made it slower. You could try reusing it as a linux machine - try any of these distros

otherwise just restore it to windows 7 remove MacAfee and and find a lightweight free antivirus such as bitdefender, remove Firefox and use Chrome (which is a bit faster) and leave it at that.
 
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Kidderman

New Member
Hi, and thanks for posting. I'd hoped that the notebook had enough power and capacity to handle the most basic of tasks without becoming overloaded. I didn't take into account the extra load from Windows 10 and a heavier anti-virus program. However, the speed problem existed from when the machine was bought new and only had Windows 7 installed. Surely Sony wouldn't have designed and built a model which was so slow with virtually nothing installed? It's been suggested that I try a faster, bigger hard drive. I'll give that a go and see what happens. If it doesn't work, I may well go down the route which you've suggested.
 

DavidG

Active Member
It's been suggested that I try a faster, bigger hard drive
Unless your current hard drive has filled up replacing with another mechanical hard drive is a complete waste of money. If you are going to do anything replace the current hard drive with a 250GB SSD which might give a modest improvement, however even that wouldn’t be a given, due to the rest of the low specs.
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
Don't spend any more money on that thing. It was a bad decision to buy it in the first place. It's a single core dual threaded cpu, even adding an SSD won't make it any better.
Surely Sony wouldn't have designed and built a model which was so slow with virtually nothing installed?
Yes they would have because all the pc manufacturers did this. However, the minimum specs to run windows 7 should have been a quad core with 6 to 8 gb of ram. I can't believe this machine was upgraded to windows 10, i'm sure its running like a turtle against a rabbit at this point.

It's time to invest in a new machine with the following specs.

Quad core cpu 2.4 ghz or higher
8gb of ram
512 gb SSD.
 

Kidderman

New Member
The original 320Gb 5400rpm hard drive failed two Seatools tests, not surprisingly. I had a spare drive (500Gb 7200rpm which has Windows 7 installed). I put that in the PC and installed Google Chrome and Bitdefender.The speed problem appears to have gone. The machine is considerably quicker to access and navigate the internet than it was. There is no longer a delay when entering text. I'll install a lightweight office program and pass the machine on to someone who'll benefit from having it. Thanks to those of you who took the time to post.
 
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