Replace or upgrade???

[earthshine]

13. Clean installs are great, but I don't think it's the problem.

You're trying to run a sports-car app (Lightroom) with a 2/4 cylinder engine (Intel Core 2 Quad).

I don't think you should take the well-meaning advice offered in post #5. Do not upgrade to Win 10, but do ensure that your Win 7 is 64 bit.

Start > Control panel > system

One thing I used to do to speed up my system was create a RAMdisk
with the upper memory and pipe my temporary files there. This helps a lot with old-style HDDs, and less so with SSDs. It does speed up certain operations, but you pay the price in free memory.

I think you need total replacement. Try Craig's List for used computers locally in your area. If you can do the clean install, you can probably deal with a used CL computer and do your install on that one.

Money's tight. I hear that. But, don't skimp. Get a good processor, like an i5, and 16Gb on the RAM.