Win7 cure-all?

[FITZY]

My SO's computer, a low end machine which I often use to visit this forum, seems to have WinXP problems; slow, odd messages, etc. I have tried to clean it up, defrag, etc, etc, but there still are problems. There never was an XP disk, it seems, the backup is on a D:\ partition, that XP keeps reporting is running out of space, and does not seem to run correctly anyway. For instance, SP3 will not install and fails at step 1, catalog check.

Anyhow, would an upgrade to Win7 cure all ills, or just muddy the waters further?

Is there a good system check utility out there that is free or real cheap?

I am even thinking of putting one of my old processors in it after checking compatibility.

[jrocky]

From Microsoft, upgrade adviser: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/upgrade-advisor.aspx

[loki]

Who's the manufacturer? If it's a Dell, or set up similarly, there is an option in the BIOS screen for restoring the computer to the original format. Other companies may be able to send you a system restore disc if needed.

Installing Windows 7 will correct all of those issues, but only because you would be installing a clean OS on the machine. I would recommend looking into restoring the XP install first, especially if it is a low end machine.

[FITZY]

It is an Emachine. I think they wanted $50.00 just to talk about it.

I did finally get SP3 to take, along with 57 other updates. Still truckin' along with it.

[FITZY]

Does anybody have any experience and/or authoritative info on Spotmau Power Suite? That may help me and prove useful down with my machines too.

[Flying Officer Jevans]

If it's some sort of system tune up program - I wouldn't bother. They've never done anything useful for me - I always do stuff manually. What exactly does it do?

[angels355]

W7 requires a fast computer.

Check to see who manufactured your hard drive, download the diagnostic software from the manufacturer and test the hard drive. I think there is a generic or open source hard drive diagnostic program but I haven't gotten the name of it. Most of the time I use the Seagate seatools hard drive diagnostic software for Seagate and Maxtor hard drives. This program usually works on all of my other hard drives also.

Have windows run a check disk. Start up XP, press start, computer, then right click your hard drive, select properties, then tools. Select check the hard drive, and select all of the options, it will probably tell you it wants to run the check disk after a startup, select OK.

Could you tell us more about your computer and its specifications?

If the hard drive is OK, the best thing might be to do a fresh install of XP, it is an outstanding operating system, and if your computer is not very powerful W7 would probably easily overwhelm it so XP is likely to be more appropriate for it .

[Flying Officer Jevans]

Well, Win7 can be made to work on low-end netbooks, but anything older than a few years old might struggle. You certainly won't have quite the same struggle that we had with Vista. I had a 60% drop in the memory it consumed on my computer when I used Win7 Beta 1.

[azur]

Does anybody have any experience and/or authoritative info on Spotmau Power Suite? That may help me and prove useful down with my machines too.

Once you've got the software into the mess you've described, it's time for a reformat and reinstall.

- Clean-up programs are generally just band-aids. Windows is sufficiently complicated that no app could ensure everything is correct.
- Changing hardware shouldnt do anything to solve the software problems you describe. At best it'd make things a bit snappier, but the issues are all still there.

[dc4bs]

My roommate was shocked at how much better one of his old laptops did under Win7-RC than it did with XP. The only thing that ran better on that laptop was a clean Linux install.

Just sayin. ;)

I'd probably stay away from Vista/Win7 on an older E-Machine myself. They are not meant for heavy duty use. Just the basics to get email and word processing done for the most part. For that, they are OK.

-dc4bs

[angels355]

My roommate was shocked at how much better one of his old laptops did under Win7-RC than it did with XP. The only thing that ran better on that laptop was a clean Linux install.

Just sayin. ;)

I'd probably stay away from Vista/Win7 on an older E-Machine myself. They are not meant for heavy duty use. Just the basics to get email and word processing done for the most part. For that, they are OK.

-dc4bs

Emachines need an immediate replacement of their power supply plus a stout surge protector.

Vista & W7 run well only on fast computers, I know first hand.

[Jun aka Pekto]

A "fast" computer is relative. I had Vista Home Premium and then Win 7 Ultimate RC on a circa 2005 AMD Socket 939 Athlon X2 4200+ (2.2ghz) with 2gb DDR ram, and either an X800XL or GF 8600 GT video card.

Both operating systems ran quite good although Windows 7 was noticeably more responsive.

I've heard people getting excellent results with lesser machines.

The one machine where both Vista and to a smaller degree, Win 7 lagged a bit was my laptop which has a 4200rpm SATA hard drive. It didn't help Symantec Endpoint Protection was also installed.

[loki]

Vista & W7 run well only on fast computers, I know first hand.

I haven't tried it yet myself, but I have come across many posts of people running Windows 7 on lower end machines, like netbooks, just fine. Vista certainly did struggle on netbooks, and the manufacturers forced Microsoft to keep XP around for them. Now with Windows 7, that is starting to change.

[angels355]

A friend said there was a discount sale at Wally World on small notebooks (don't know what brand), they originally had xp on them, they ran out of those. To honor their sale they sold the small notebooks w/ w7 at the same price. I saw it in action, it ran in basic graphics mode, not aero mode, it ran OK.


W7 runs acceptably on my 2.8 ghz p4 w/ 2 gb ram and sata hdd (sata hdd helped, along w/ the ram). It was non functional w/ 2.4 ghz p4 and 512 mb ram. When I switch to Linux my computer appears to be a very fast computer once again.

EDIT: PS: w/ ati agp 9800 SE 128 mb video card or better I get aero, which I like a lot, without it I get strictly w7 basic graphics. I have a 2.8 ghz 775 P4 w/ HT, 1.5 gb ram, and ati 512 mb PCI-E video card, and sata hdd's, w7 looks stunning. But I switch to w2000 to run fs9.

During the P4 era AMD 64 bit processors were way ahead of p4's. If I recall an AMD FX55 running at a normal clock of 2.4 ghz (?) could not be beat by a p4, the p4 had to be overclocked to 5 ghz to beat it.

[Jun aka Pekto]

What irritated me most about Windows 7 RC on my Toshiba laptop was the long initial load time when it first booted up. Once everything was done loading, Windows 7 RC ran great.

Vista's initial load time was even worse and Aero was chugging just a bit. I finally decided to install XP Home (although the laptop was supposed to be non-XP compatible) which made response times halfway decent.

It's that 4200rpm SATA hard drive. Slow hard drives simply didn't go well with either Vista or Win 7.