Dell Inspiron 1520 Sluggish

I'm using my MIL's old Dell Inspiron 1520 after my year and a half old M5010 died. It has an Intel 1525 1.5 Ghz processor, 4 GB of memory (recently upgraded from 2 GB), and a 150 GB hard drive. I did a clean install of Windows 7 Professional 64-bit on it, so there's no bloatware.

The problem I'm having is that the computer is really sluggish when browsing the web. There always hesitation when switching between tabs, and panning and moving around Google Street View is out of the question. I've used Internet Explorer, Firefox, Waterfox, and Chrome, and all of them are just as sluggish. I only have the browser open, so I'm not trying to do a lot at once. Everything else on the computer seems to be plenty quick. It boots up quickly, opens programs fine, etc. Our internet connection is 50 down and 20 up, so I'm getting plenty of speed there. Plus, my wife's new computer has no issues.

One thing I've noticed is the hard drive on my Inspiron is extremely noisy. I don't believe I've ever heard one so loud, however, all the onboard diagnostics, along with HD Tune, say the hard drive is fine. Could the noisy hard drive be related to the sluggishness I'm having? I've disabled the Aero theme, which had a moderate effect on it. Also, upgrading the memory from 2 to 4 GB only seemed to have a moderate effect on the sluggishness. It's recognizing all 4 GB of memory. Is this just a case of the processor being too slow for modern web browsing?

 

Go to BIOS and see if you're getting the "AC adapter not recognized" error.

 

Thanks for the reply. The only thing I could find in the BIOS was under Battery Info and it said "AC Adapter=90W"