HP Pavilion N5420

A friend of mine is currently using a 3-year-old HP laptop with a celeron processor. She says that it has been very slow lately "like a turtle." She is also running out of disk space. I have recommended an upgrade to 384 MB of RAM (it is pc-100) and I am giving her my 30GB 4200 RPM hard disk. I figure that a fresh install on a faster hard disk coupled with the RAM should last it another year.
The problem is, I cannot seem to find instructions for upgrading this laptop. It is an HP Pavilion N5420. Does anyone know where i can find a manual online?

GPU cooling (100°C->75°C)* Inspiron 8600 * 1.8ghz Pentium M * 128 MB Radeon 9600 Pro Turbo (337/242 -> 400/300) * 2x512 MB DDR2700 SDRAM * Aquamark 3: 24058 * 3DMark'03: 3404 * 3DMark'01 SE: 13120

 

Andrew,

Here's the link for the N5420 series notebook. You should be able to get all the manuals & drivers for this unit.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Home.jsp?locale=en_US&prodSeriesId=372916&prodTypeId=321957

Regarding the slowdown of the system, if there's a lack of HDD space, that would slow the system down. You may want to try just reloading the system from scratch first, this usually fixes speed issues. If it hasn't been reloaded for a while, useless files, drivers & registry settings could also add to tyhe slowdown.

-Vb-

 

Thanks for the link, I somehow overlooked that on the website. The hard disk hasn't had a clean install in 3 years, and was recently upgraded to windows XP. I'm putting in a completely new disk. I'm also going to allocate plenty of virtual memory. It's not a good substitute for RAM, but we don't have a lot to work with. The instructions are pretty doable, but not that easy. I guess I have been spoiled with my upgrade-friendly i8600.

GPU cooling (100°C->75°C)* Inspiron 8600 * 1.8ghz Pentium M * 128 MB Radeon 9600 Pro Turbo (337/242 -> 400/300) * 2x512 MB DDR2700 SDRAM * Aquamark 3: 24058 * 3DMark'03: 3404 * 3DMark'01 SE: 13120