I'm interested in upgrading my machine from XP Pro SP3 to Windows 7. My computer isn't exactly bleeding edge , but XP is lightening quick on it and I've been told by a few people that it should still run 7 somewhat decently (see my sig for basic specs). I certainly wouldn't expect to use any of the fancy UI features that require more powerful hardware, but hopefully a basic install of Home Premium (or even Basic) will run alright. What do ya'll think?
You have over 1GB RAM which is probably all you'll ever need for Windows 7, however you could always run a compatibility check.
Richard S.
My concern is that 1GB is the minimum requirement, and I only have just above that. I don't want to run Windows 7 if it will be any slower than what I'm running now. I'm attaching a screenshot of the results of the Upgrade Advisor. Please let me know what you think...especially about the video card and LAN card drivers.
upgrade to 3gb it's cheap and well worth it
upgrade to 3gb it's cheap and well worth it
I think the max this machine can handle is 2GB, which I may very well do eventually, but what about the driver issues described in the Upgrade Advisor?
The processor is a bit faster than that but I only have 512mb on this machine and it runs 7 very well. You could always keep xp on a partition in case you ever need it for some really intensive thing. The performance hit was not anywhere near what I thought it would be with 512. 1.25gb should run fine for now.
I found this driver that lists Vista support. It should work in 7...
You could also aattempt to install the XP driver for it in 7.
For more specific help on the LAN driver issue follow the instructions HERE.
If the driver page for your LAN device is of no help in regards to Windows 7 drivers or at least Vista drivers post back what those instructions said yours was.
For more specific help on the LAN driver issue follow the instructions HERE.
If the driver page for your LAN device is of no help in regards to Windows 7 drivers or at least Vista drivers post back what those instructions said yours was.
Thanks for the info! You won't believe this, but my network card is VERY close what is in that list, but not exactly. The Device ID is 16A6. The closest in that list is 16A7. That still doesn't leave me with a Windows 7 driver for my NIC.
If you can't find compatible drivers for your Ethernet there is always the USB dongle option.
Richard S.
Thanks for the input guys, appreciate it! I now have 7 Ultimate up and running. All drivers are working except for the display driver (I still have a display, but using a standard/universal driver). I've been scouring the net, but if anyone knows where to find a Windows 7 driver for the ATI Radeon Mobility 9000, please let me know!
Thanks for the input guys, appreciate it! I now have 7 Ultimate up and running. All drivers are working except for the display driver (I still have a display, but using a standard/universal driver). I've been scouring the net, but if anyone knows where to find a Windows 7 driver for the ATI Radeon Mobility 9000, please let me know!
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx
I hope these help as well:
and Link
The "Don't use a beautiful background" one is ridiculous. This has no impact on performance at all.
The "Don't use a beautiful background" one is ridiculous. This has no impact on performance at all.
Haha, well I don't know. Maybe not for a standard computer with normal specs, but for a really low end PC with a choking RAM / CPU / GPU might show 2 - 3 seconds improvement.
Haha, well I don't know. Maybe not for a standard computer with normal specs, but for a really low end PC with a choking RAM / CPU / GPU might show 2 - 3 seconds improvement.
Yeah only useful for a complete dinosaur. I've had one before. Some old grey colored brick laptop with a tiny low-resolution and contrast LCD. The battery it had was completely dead of course and it only had a ~512MB hard drive and I believe either an original Pentium or Celeron. Whatever it was it was slow. I recall either 32 or 64Mbs of RAM. It had a red analog style nub for a mouse on the keyboard. I think it origanally ran Win95 but someone put 98 on it.
It took 30 seconds at least to display a small jpeg. I dared not to use anything other than a solid color.
Edit: And just idling the thing on my lap caused quite a bit of pain. I just balanced it on one knee. I tried searching for the model and company tghat made it but it wasn't on the internet.
Again...using the Windows Classic theme is not a good idea, as Aero is GPU-powered. In fact, with that Dell Latitude, I'd bet using Classic theme would decrease performance. (that was already the case with Luna on XP. I've once enabled Luna on a small netbook...which resulted in a performance increase !)
For those of you that might be interested, I got the display drivers working! When using the automated installer from ATI, the insallation always failed, saying something about incompatibility. However, I tried going to Device Manager, manually selecting the driver folder from ATI, and it worked! I now have the same video performance that I had when running XP.
I would go on a reduced diet, not turn lights on...do anything to afford more than 1GB. RAM is thousands of times faster than HDDs, even SSDs.