help!!! completely new to this

[putnamto]

i have an old compaq cq56 laptop from eaons ago that ive been trying to build into an arcade cabinet, ive been fighting this thing basically in the dark for weeks before finding this place.

to start off i formatted the system and reinstalled win7+drivers, installed Retroarch and lb/bb(after many failed attempts at getting other frontends running)

aaaaand it runs horribly, very horribly. im bad at typing so im just going to put my problems into list form lol

LB takes almost a minute to load
LB takes a very very long time to populate my list of games, set it overnight to wake up to a low memory warning from windows(i got 2GB)
BB takes alot longer than LB to load
using the unified theme i have a black background on the platform wheel, and the platform wheel is invisible,
the game wheel moves fine for awhile but if i scroll to fast it doesnt populate(cahed images and stuff not loading?)
sometimes BB will crash giving me an error about sound files or something(happen a couple times, didnt take notes sorry)
BB has encountered an unexpected error and has to close (i see this one alot)
 

and the last thing, when i first installed BB i only loaded 6 games as a test and it would load the games fine and start them(menus were still laggy as all hell) but when i threw mly library of 103 games at it i started to run into the above mentioned problems.

oh and when loading a game now i get the LOADING GAME screen, then after the screen goes away im still in big box with full control, if i close big box Retroarch is open in the background paused.

any kind of help anybody can offer a man?

EDIT: i think the computers borked, i just got a low ram warning from windows while posting this and i only have chrome and task manager open.

Edited September 9, 2018 by putnamto

[neil9000]

To be honest 2Gb of ram is really nowhere near enough, Windows itself will probably use more than that. Also it could be a specs issue, you say its a old laptop, so im assuming a low powered cpu and crappy intergrated graphics on a slow laptop HDD. 

Post your specs here and ill have a look, but im thinking your laptop simply isnt up to snuff at this point.

[putnamto]

its the laptop, i installed BB on my main computer(fx6300, gtx 1050ti, 16gbddr3) and it runs flawlessly their with all the same settings.

i cant really blame it though, the laptop has seen better years.

i have another motherboard with an fx6300 that im going to donate to the project, just gotta get some ram, 8gb should be more than enough right?