On Wed, 08 Jan 2014 09:14:17 +0000, Huge wrote:

Win 7 needs more ram - if it has enough then its generally as quick or
quicker than XP. Without it however it runs like a dog (three legged!)

Tell me about it. My 3Gb machine is no longer big enough to run W7 in a
VirtualBox, it's effectively unusable, whereas XP ran fine.

Anyone know if it's possible to put more RAM in a Dell Inspiron 530?

Crucial will tell you exactly what the score is.

But I rather suspect the issue is that it's virtualised, and your host's
plain running out of welly, rather than memory.