How to tweak old PC Notebook HP 510 to run faster

[fredericoroldao]

Hi. I have an old PC Notebook HP 510, with Intel Celeron M 1.6GHz, 504 Mb RAM, running Windows XP 2002 SP2 Home Edition.

I'd like to make it less sluggish and more usable.I was told by HP the latest OS it can run is Vista 64. What are your suggestions, avoiding having to invest much? Thanks.

[WAWood]

@fredericoroldao 

In all honesty, being realistic, my advice is to junk it.

First off, there is nowhere I know of where you can even get Vista today.  HP has not carried the recovery media for years, nor have the other recovery media suppliers, and no one has written Vista driver for years, either.

Second, HP no longer supports PCs that old, so with a laptop, if you force Vista onto it, it will then need HP drivers -- which are not available.  IF it does not work well, you are stuck.

Third, MS has not supported it in years, meaning that going out to the Internet is immediately risking infection, as there are no security patches forthcoming from MS.

And finally, you need 1GB of memory for Vista to run well, and you do not have that.  With a laptop that old, you are going to have a very hard time finding memory for it.