With no Video card, really hard to get a good performance....

2 Gb of RAM is recomended with 256 MB of Video is the best for Vista (or the minimum to have a decent performance)

 

In your case, you should uninstall all the unnecesary programs Dell install and run when Windows start, or just disable them from MSCONFIG

Agree..

 

1.  No video card, and the integrated one is taking some of your 1 gb of main memory, leaving you with less, and that is not good

 

2.  1 Gb of main memory, and Vista likes 2 Gb to run better

 

3.  You got the 5400 rpm hard drive, and the 7200 rpm would have been better.

 

Stop Unnecessary Startup programs

Below procedure will provide a faster boot up, and eliminate wasting memory on programs that are not in use at this time, and may help gaming sligtly……

http://netsquirrel.com/msconfig/  Fair reading on start up programs


Start up programs for Vista OS: Click on START, than put in the Start Search box just above Start, MSCONFIG. Msconfig will appear near the top of this box, click on it. Now you are in the System Configuration Utility Program. Click on START UP you see on the top of this Utility Program. Uncheck the programs from here that you do not want to start at boot up, leaving the anti virus, and any third party firewall alone as well as any video card driver. You can always go back into this program to restart them. They will not be uninstalled, just disabled. Click on APPLY, than it will ask you if you wish to reboot the system. Do so.

After it boots up again, you will be presented with another start up warning window in the lower right side of the screen, which says " Windows has blocked some start up programs". Click on this icon in the system tray, put your mouse pointer over the "Run blocked Program" than another window will appear stating " System Configuration Utility". Click on this, and a box will appear in the middle of the screen. From the System Configuration Utility Program box that appears, it will tell you that you have made an adjustment. If you don't want to see this pop up each time you boot up, put a check mark in the little box in the lower left corner of this announcement.