In article , Bill W
wrote:

At the same time, this laptop is not supported for
anything past Win 7 - no chipset updates at all.

that could be why you are having crashes.

It might also be why I have low read/write speeds - ~250 for each.

250 of what units and what time frame?
and how is the drive connected?

So if you do have
some interest in trying the same thing, check to see what OS your
laptop supports. I think you can force Win 10 onto just about anything
that's not an antique, but you should expect problems. Mine seem to
have diminished considerably. Maybe Windows fixes itself. And if
you're happy with an earlier version of Windows, an SSD will almost
certainly be a huge improvement.

swapping an hd for an ssd has zero effect on the choice of os.

if whatever is on there now works, it will work after the swap, just
faster. it's just 'another sata drive'.

Right - that comment was mostly related to OS upgrades. As a corollary
to what you said, if you're having trouble with Win 10 on an older
laptop, those troubles will obviously continue with an SSD upgrade.

yep

My
crashes are probably rooted in the clean install, and the need to find
drivers all over again, along with getting all the settings right.

quite likely.