Help with COMPAQ CQ58-331SA

Hi Guys,
Apologies in advance if these questions are rather silly but here goes.
My wife owns a Compaq CQ58-331SA and it is terribly slow so decided to look at giving it a small upgrade.
It is running Win 8.1 and has 4GB of 1333MHZ DDR3 Ram in it, thus I ordered another 4GB (Matching) from Mr Memory - "4GB 204-pin SODIMM DDR3 PC3-10600 1333MHz".
The other thing I am looking at doing is changing the HDD to an SSD. This can be done using "Kingston Technology 240GB Solid State Drive V300 SATA 3 Upgrade Bundle Kit with Adapter".
Would mean losing 250GB+ of storage space as currently has a 500GB HDD, but not an issue as only used for MS Office and browsing the Net.

Questions -
1. As the laptop came preloaded with Win 8 on it and no operating system install disk or documentation, how do I do a legal fresh install of Win 8 on the new SSD drive ?

2. Apart from the Laptop itself being horribly slow, issues also happen when browsing movies via Netflix - stuttering and non-HD streaming. HD works fine on movies (via Storage) but not streaming - will the upgrades listed help with this.

I have never upgraded a laptop before and my experience is limited.
Thanks for any help.

1. ?
2. Streaming is your internet connection mostly. Is it wireless? If so, does it exhibit the same behavior when hardwired?

1: Go here and download the media creation tool. It'll download the installer for either a USB stick or DVD.

Looking at the specs, it probably has a 5400 RPM HDD. This will be slow at best, even on a wired connection,

On issue 1, there may be a recovery partition on the original drive. If so, migrating to a smaller SSD may be possible and then a "fresh" factory image. There are other methods, but I'll stick with one that I use...

I have a corporate license for Easus Partition Manager, but there is a free version for home use. The free version will be able to accomplish the tasks well and it will recognize disks attached via USB or other methods.

To migrate the data, the original partitions should be less than the size of the new disk. This can be done on the current installation and inside Windows, so is easy to accomplish. As long as there is less data than the size of the new partition, Partition Master will let you graphically reduce the size. Once you have made the desired changes, hit apply. As this is the OS disk, it will request a reboot to make the changes. The changes are made in a preboot environment and usually the system will reboot a couple of times during the process. Once complete, the system will restart into the OS on a smaller partition.

After the partition has been sized down, you can use the copy disk wizard portion of the application to copy all partitions to the new SSD. Again, it will preform this in a preboot environment and require a couple of restarts. Once complete, it will prompt you to change boot order make other changes to boot from the new drive. At this point shut down and replace the HDD with the SSD.

On starting, the system will boot into Windows and install new hardware, then require a reboot.

The nice part of this is that it does not require reactivation and preserves applications.

If this does have a recovery partition, then recovery of the factory image could be done at this point, followed by re-installation of applications. Windows 8 typically uses host based activation, so this should be successful as well.

The key to this process is to be careful and take things one step at a time. I've done this numerous times, including everything from domain controllers to my son's laptop.

Updating: It looks to have HP recovery manager/recovery partitiion. It may also have an option to burn bootable media to reinstall the OS.

Cheers for the replies guys.

@EarthDog, we have a broadband dl speed of around 70MB wired and stays up around 40MB wireless. Tried plugging the Laptop into the modem to see if this would resolve the issue but it didn't. The processor in the Laptop is an AMD E-1200 (think its either 1.2GHz or 1.4GHz) - and according to what I have read on the net, it's weak.

@Dlaw - cheers - will I need to grab the Win 8 OEM Product key from my laptop (can use Keyfinder) ??

@Xaotic - I recently bought a license for "Paragon Hard Disk Manager Suite 2015" from amazon. I used it to partition a few disks and create a WinPE Recovery environment on one USB Key and then created an OS backup onto another (for my Win 7 machine).
Was contemplating using this, however, from what you have said, cloning the contents of the HDD to the new SSD shouldn't be too bad.

I went ahead and ordered the extra 4GB 1333MHZ RAM from MrMemory and I ordered the "Kingston Technology 240GB Solid State Drive V300 SATA 3 Upgrade Bundle Kit with Adapter" from Amazon today as well.
The current 500GB HDD only has Win 8.1 on it and MS Office so it's not being used much at all.

I also purchased a USB-to-SATA cable.
Should have all the bits in the next few days.

Final question - I was looking up comparison reviews on performance between Win 8.1 and Win 7 online. It looked to me like Win 8.1 was faster (booting up, application start times, etc). However, some Laptop guy whose videos I watched on youtube said the following to me - ""the processor in that laptop is weak and you would be better running Win 7 on it as opposed to Win 8.1. By changing the o/s alone, you will see a remarkable increase in overall speed""
- Does this sound true to anyone that is very experienced with laptops and this chip in particular?

Cheers again and apologies for the mundane questions.
Hopefully it will all go smoothly and we will see a huge boost in the performance, thus preventing the need for a new laptop for some time.

I'm not sure that I'd refer to it as a remarkable difference, but 8.1 is generally more friendly to lower end hardware due to the simpler graphical styles.

Drivers would be your main issue. HP is not listing anything other than 8 and 8.1.

Hey Xaotic,
The RAM installed no bother and improved things a little.
I then decided to get the - Crucial BX100 2.5-inch SATA III Internal Solid State Drive - 120 GB - drive to replace the exiting 500 GB HDD.
This is where I messed things up. The new drive came with Acronis True Image HD Software - which allows you to clone your HDD to SSD. I followed the process but each time it go to the restart stage, it would boot back into Windows. Got a bit impatient and checked online for issues. Found that this issue was common and the cause was the SATA-to-USB cable I was using.

As I was getting nowhere, decided to just install the new SSD and run a Windows 7 HOME install from my CD. Wasn't really thinking this through all the way.
Installed Win 7, then got the necessary drivers for WIFI and got online. All running fine.
However, I obviously can't use my Win 7 HOME Product key as its on my gaming PC. I do have an Unused Win 7 Pro OEM Key, which I tried to activate - no joy.
I found a site where you can create Win 7 ISO's from -- http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-recovery , however, I read on Tomshardware forum that you can only use RETAIL keys and not OEM keys.

Not sure how to proceed, could do
1. Buy another Win 7 Retail key.
2. See if I can get a Win 7 Pro Installation CD from somewhere.
3. Reinstall the original HDD Win 8.1 drive and try to clone it again.

Anyway, wasn't as straightforward as I had thought it would be. Also, the cloning process using the various free and bought software is not easy for me to get a handle on.
Cheers.

If you're reinstalling, and thus aren't worried about malware on the current installation (not that I've personally had any problem with it, but still..), the only program I've found that can actually retrieve the product key from UEFI on OEM machines is this. However, so long as you download the correct ISO/USB installer from the link in post #3 (ie: if it came with 8, download 8. If it came with 8.1, download 8.1), it should automatically find the key and activate without a problem.

Dlaw's is the preferred method for a clean install. UEFI installs are a bit different, but it will remove the driver issues and that would be a larger hurdle.