Win 10 on D257 is very slow...

Among the computers I have is an Acer D257 (Atom N455, 1.67 GHz, 1 GB ram) which I installed Win 10 on during the free upgrade program. I like to use it for listening to music while I work outside because it is louder than my SW1-011 but compared to the SW1 (or anything else I have) it is painfully slow.

I don't use this for anything else (in fact, before today I hadn't turned it on since November) and now that I'm going to be using it again I have been contemplating reverting to its original Win 7 but if anyone has any ideas on how to make it run faster with 10 I am open to trying them.

1GB RAM and atom n455 really isnt cut for windows 10 let alone 4gb ram for daily usage

The 1 gig ram is the problem not the cpu . For what he's using it for.
I have a AO722 2 core with 8 gigs installed and runs great with Win10 pro.
If you can't upgrade the ram, you might start looking at some light linux distros.

Let's run Win10 on really really old hardware

A thread in this forum you might want to look through.

With 1 gig ram , I'd shut off all window animations including aeropeek. Open the task manager
and see if there any background programs you can shut down.
If you are not connected to the internet, you probably can shut down any antivirus programs as well
That might give you a bit of an increase.

Sidecar Bob said:

Among the computers I have is an Acer D257 (Atom N455, 1.67 GHz, 1 GB ram) ... it is painfully slow.
...but if anyone has any ideas on how to make it run faster with 10 I am open to trying them.

thomaseg1 said:

The 1 gig ram is the problem not the cpu . For what he's using it for....

Well, the Atom N455 cpu is part of the problem. It only supports a max of 2GB RAM.
Intel Atom(R) Processor N455 (512K Cache, 1.66 GHz) Product Specifications

...I have a AO722 2 core with 8 gigs installed and runs great with Win10 pro...

I have an AOD270 (Intel Atom N2600, 2GB RAM). It's useable, but hardly fast. My Passmark rating of 525 is comparable to the 466 for the AMD C-60 in the AO722, but at 283 Sidecar Bob's Atom N455 is bound to feel slow.

PassMark - CPU Comparison Intel Atom N455 vs Intel Atom N2600 vs AMD C-60

At 1GB ram it hardly needs stating that you should be running the less demanding 32-bit W10. At 2GB RAM I can (and have) run 64-bit W10 (up to and including 1903) but it's far too slow. One problem is that, unlike the AMD C-60, there are no W10 drivers for our Atom's graphics meaning that the only useable driver is the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter. One way to alleviate that is to turn off all visual effects. That makes the Intel Atom feel a little snappier.



It would also be worthwhile turning off all background apps in Settings > Privacy > Background apps.

thomasreg: I saw that thread and even started looking through it but it is 38 pages long and after the first few I gave up.

This is interesting: I let the D257 update overnight (it took about 14 hours altogether including a couple of failed updates at the beginning) and it seems to be running faster than I remember it running before and certainly faster than it was yesterday. It always took several seconds for the start menu to show after clicking the Win key, longer if something was running. This afternoon it is opening the menu in less than a second, even while WMP is running.

Bree: I was typing the above when your reply came in. I am running the Win 10 Home 32 bit on the D257 (now version 1809).
It took me a while to find Performance Options but it is now set to best performance and I have turned off most of the background apps. It still isn't exactly what I'd call "zippy" but it did make a difference and between whatever changed in Windows it is now at least in the range I'd call "acceptable".

Thanks

"acceptable" is an improvement. It'll never be fast, but at least its useable now.

Yes. 2GB RAM + SSD will make it quite acceptable.

If don't have SSD and have not made clean install onto completely empty drive for long time, then you should use PerfectDisk boottime defrag, fragmented locked system files tend to slow down computers a lot.