How to make Windows 7 faster on a older PC


Recommended Posts

Aside from replacing most of the guts (better processor/MB/etc), more memory for sure. 7 works with 512MB, but it'll be much happier with 2GB+. Gives it a lot more room to breathe. XP's a little better with 512 but any big application will still get it to go swap-happy. Kill off a few necessary services (indexing, etc) too, helps a bit. Just opening a browser will chew up most of that all by itself.

 

Or just use Linux :)

Depends on the desktop, a lot of the current ones tend to get rather sluggish with only 512MB too. Get a XFCE or something maybe but you're still under the gun for memory constraints once you start actually loading things.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Depends on the desktop, a lot of the current ones tend to get rather sluggish with only 512MB too. Get a XFCE or something maybe but you're still under the gun for memory constraints once you start actually loading things.

 

I was thinking along the lines of Xubuntu or Lubuntu. ;)

 

Install more ram. Seriously - it's not expensive.

 

If it is DDR, yes, it is expensive, it is hard to get nowadays.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was thinking along the lines of Xubuntu or Lubuntu. ;)

 

 

If it is DDR, yes, it is expensive, it is hard to get nowadays.

 

 

It is actually SDRAM I believe but could be DDR can't remember.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The mobo only supports up to 1 GB of ram :(

It'll still help quite a bit, it'll still be fairly tight for bigger applications but it won't slow to a crawl just opening Notepad either.

Windows or Linux, 512 is going to be tight after a desktop gets loaded. A browser alone can easily use a couple hundred megs to over a gig. Look at any office program or other desktop applications... 512 is gone in the blink of an eye unless you want to go with a barebones desktop, Lynx for a browser and Nano for your word processor. There is no magic bullet that you can install to make 512MB not suck with current software. Get more memory.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello,

 

A few things you can do to improve the performance of the system:
 

  • Bring the RAM up to 1GB (check to see if 2GB is unofficially possible, though).
  • Upgrade the CPU.  I am guessing you have either a Socket 423 or 478 CPU, if this is a desktop.  You should be able to find slightly faster CPUs available on sites like eBay.
  • Replace the on-board video with a dedicated video graphics cards, either AGP or PCI.  This will not only improve video performance, but allow you to reclaim the shared RAM from the system that the onboard video card takes from system memory.
  • Install a faster HDD.  Western Digital still offers 7,200 RPM Ultra ATA-100 IDE drives.  You could even look into getting rid of the IDE drives entirely and going to SCSI drives.

All of these actions involve replacing hardware, which is going to cost some money.  Given the age of the system (2001-2002 vintage?) it may be better to simply save up for buying a new computer, though.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

Link to comment
Share on other sites

By the time he spendsall that money on drives, ram, etc, he could have bought a halfway decent used/refurb computer on ebay. Let's be real people, if you're going to run Win 7 fully patched with AV, Office, Java, Flash, and all the other "stuff", it's going to take a computer that's somewhat up to date within reason. I consider 4GB RAM and at least an i5 process a minimum for an end user to be "satisfied".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

By the time he spendsall that money on drives, ram, etc, he could have bought a halfway decent used/refurb computer on ebay. Let's be real people, if you're going to run Win 7 fully patched with AV, Office, Java, Flash, and all the other "stuff", it's going to take a computer that's somewhat up to date within reason. I consider 4GB RAM and at least an i5 process a minimum for an end user to be "satisfied".

 

nothing older then First generation Core 2 duo i would say

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My 2 cents:

Priorities for no hassle, minimal support approach:

  • Lubuntu
  • Add RAM as much as you can,And in this case, u may use Xubuntu

You can use a live CD/Flash drive to test b4 decision

 

This is a minimal support scenario.We take it for patients with extreme fatal illness with no hope of recovery.

I think you want this approach.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Uninstall windows search, gadgets, and get rid of media center if it came with it. That would help a little without doing some hardware upgrades. I do agree to get a decent gpu that will help on that low memory 512 MB

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Try to be realistic here. With that hardware, you are never going to have breathing room in Windows 7. You will barely be able to run it. If it were me, I would throw Arch Linux or Gentoo on there with a tiling window manager like awesome/dwm or at the most, Openbox. Then again, once you put a browser on there and open a few tabs, say goodbye to the remaining RAM. Turn it in to an encrypted standard definition (because of the HD size) porn server.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Uninstall windows search, gadgets, and get rid of media center if it came with it. That would help a little without doing some hardware upgrades. I do agree to get a decent gpu that will help on that low memory 512 MB

 

If none of those are being used then it won't help with speed at all.

 

Seriously, throw the computer away and get yourself the cheapest new computer you can get. Would probably be about 4-5 times more powerful then what you have at the moment. 

 

Worst case scenario spend the $20 to get 1GB of RAM and learn to live with it. :(

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For what it would cost to upgrade, i'd just get a new pc or put on a very old lubuntu/xubuntu install as the requirements are light, but then you would have security to think about. You could run win98 on it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.