hey guys I have a really slow laptop. its an acer aspire 3500
the battery died a while back and it can only run while plugged in to an outlet
it has a celeron m processor 1.4 ghz and the gfx chip is a SIS M661MX. its very bad.
I only have 256 mb of ram, but it says i have 224.
its loads fast whenever I need to open up an application or so
BUT my biggest pet peeve is the fact that I cannot run games on it. even old games.
When I run a game the ingame videos always lag. it stutters and stutters and stutters. But if I use a media player to play a movie or a video, it runs perfectly. why is that?
Also ingame play lags too. but its not network lag. its where the whole game halts for 1-2 seconds then continues then repeats the halt process.
I have noticed that when I close useless programs (like utility trays, msn etc) prior to running a game I get better performance. it lags less, BUT IT STILL LAGS. Even games like Half Life and planescape. The only thing that runs perfect is the snes emulator.

As I lack funds to either upgrade or get a new laptop, what do you guys suggest I do (if anything)?
Also can you tell me from the picture below whether I can close certain programs? I dont know what they do except for the svchost.exes . oh and ignore firefox.exe i know I have to close it (and tskmgr.exe and daemon.exe)
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Why does system Idle process take 99 CPU power. WHY? its always 99 or sometimes 98


even my old pentium III 700 mhz 256mbram desktop computer could run half life flawlessly, not to mention ingame videos.

hmm it might be the overhearing afterall. Ive noticed that ingame whenever it lags, the laptop makes weird noises. like a fan spinning or so.
I dont have a case or a sleeve for the laptop. It is placed on my desk and its reasonably flat. The fan is on the right side and if I put my hand around it i can feel a lot of hot air.
How do I deal with my laptop overheating?

Try spraying some compressed air in as deep as you can with the straw they come with. If your warranty is long gone, you can take out a few screws and give it a much more thorough cleaning.

You should also make sure you have the latest drivers for sound/video/mobo.

yeah i have all the latest drivers. Im gonna buy compressed air sooner or later. for now what helps is turning off a LOT of programs, even the desktop (explorer.exe). hah

the easiest fix for this is to get all the gunk out of the inside of your laptop and lubricate your fans. the easiest way to do this is to submerge your laptop completeley in oil, cooking oil is what i usually use since it's cheapest but any oil will work (any clean, thin oil). also when cooking oil evaporates it smells like popcorn which is kinda nice.

climbtree I tried it with vegetable oil. and it fried my circuits. thanks a lot for ruining the only electronic piece of equipment i use in my room. it didnt smell like popcorn either, it smelled like burnt circuits. youre an asshole.
now watch my warning go up more lol

but seriously though i forgot to mention its been this slow from the day i bought it.
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I used a canister already but it didnt really do much. I mean yes my computer makes a slightly different noise, but the speed and performance are the same ;(

Yea, a celeron with that low of speed will barely run even the games that came out when it did, especially with one of the worst video performance solutions: onboard video.

You bought a shitty laptop and it performs shitty. Not surprising and not much you can do without spending any $$$. Celerons are terrible processors, your onboard is probably terrible, and you have a minimal amount of ram. I don't know what you can do really.

if you download Process Explorer you can set any program to idle priority and maybe close more stuff

look up what Windows Services you can disable and how you do this

also there's a program called PCI Latency Tool but I'm still not sure if it actually does anything

thanks ragnar that actually helped ​. I downloaded process explorer and I was able to turn off 6 more processes ​. Oldschool games work like a charm now, granted that I turn off certain programs before playing.