Why is my dell laptop so slow now it has 4 gigs of ram?

Storage has almost nothing to do with slowing it down. Stored data is not active, it does absolutely nothing until you OPEN it.

You probably have way too many PROGRAMS OPEN. Try start => run => ‘msconfig’. If you don’t have msconfig, google it, download it, then run it. Now look at the services and startup tabs. Click “hide microsoft services”. Now look at what’s left and start unchecking things you don’t need all the time. You can still open them later when you do need them. You might accidentally uncheck something you need all the time, so something like your internet might stop working. But don’t worry, all you have to do is run msconfig again and recheck it.

If you uncheck something and it comes back by itself, it may be an obnoxious program or even a virus. Try uninstalling it if you don’t need it, or see if it’s a virus.

If things get really frustrating and you can’t fix it, you can always get your Dell CD and start over. Make backup copies of your documents on another computer or hard drive or thumb drive. Then reinstall windows, then reinstall all your programs. Then copy the documents you backed up onto your lap top. Then it will be like a new computer… even with all your photos on there. Seriously, how do people come up with this nonsense?