Recommended Posts

Hello,

I'm wanting to give Windows 7 a try however my system specs are hardly impressive so I'm wondering what my experience is likely to be given that besides my graphics card (which was recently replaced) most of my hardware is a couple of years old.

I listened to Windows Weekly last week and Paul mentioned that Windows 7 is designed to run on a lot more and older hardware than Vista perhaps was initially although Vista runs fine on this system... the only issue was my old graphics card (an ATI 2400 HD PRO) would regularly turn stop working.

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (Venice)

1GB DDR 400Mhz RAM

ATI X1650 AGP DDR2 512MB

160GB HD

Any advice is much appreciated before I take the plunge.

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/722248-running-windows-7-on-older-systems/
Share on other sites

I just finished reading this post...

Rejuvenating Old Hardware with Windows 7

Posted By: Nic Fillingham | Jan 13th @ 7:24 PM URL:

Embed Code:

Close on10_win7oldhardware_300.png on10_win7oldhardware_300.pngSitting on my desk at home is one of the original Shuttle SFF (Small Form Factor) PC's that I purchased back in 2003. It ran Windows XP Pro which was a bit sluggish but very stable. I had tried to install Vista on it at one stage but the experience wasn't that fantastic so I reverted back to XP.

This morning I thought it would be fun to wipe the machine and see if I could get the Windows 7 (32 bit) Beta build to install and whether or not the machine would be usable. My hopes weren't particularly high as this was six year old (vintage??) hardware based on a chipset (NVIDIA nforce2) that even Vista doesn't officially support.

To my surprise (and delight) the installation process went smoothly and quite quickly. There were a number of (chipset) devices that weren't automatically installed - which was to be expected - so I downloaded and installed the most recent nforce2 drivers from the NVIDIA web site.

This resolved all unknown devices except for ethernet adapter which was installed but non-functional.

A quick Live Search returned this Digg article talking about how to get nforce2 drivers to work with Vista (as well as Windows 7) which pointed me to this page where I downloaded a driver pack and manually installed the Windows XP ethernet driver.

Once I had ethernet up and running I was able to connect to Windows Update and get the machine up to speed with the latest drivers and various updates.

The end result: All devices successfully installed and functioning normally. I'm not going to be able to play Crysis on the machine but I certainly have rejuvenated a 6 year old PC that is quite capable of running everyday tasks like internet, email, photos, music and even movies!

Machine Specs:

- Shuttle SN41G2 Barebones System (circa January 2003)

- NVIDIA nForce2 SPP/MCP-T Chipset

- AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (2.167 GHz)

- NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT (upgraded from original graphics card)

- 2GB RAM (upgraded from 1GB RAM ~ 2 years ago)

Windows Experience Index Score: 3.3

WEI%20SN41G2%20(2).jpg

Not too shabby indeed!

So if you have a PC laying about the house with hardware specs similar to mine I highly recommend giving the Windows 7 beta a try to see if it can breathe new life into an old(er) machine.

And if you've managed to get the beta up and running on even older hardware please let us know in the comments - I'd love to hear about your adventures

I wonder if I can get the Windows 7 beta running on an i486DX,.. hmm,....

Channel 10

installed last night on a p4 3.0 ghz, 1 gb ram, 7800gs agp and it runs ok, def a lil choppy here and there when i moved around alot opening different windows... but i was surprised it did just fine if i was using it as a internet pc only...

Windows 7 is complete and utter crap on older hardware, and I don't know why people would claim otherwise. It can't compete with XP at all (you should see it running next to XP on a P3!). It might to some extent be designed to be usable on more lower end hardware than Vista was, but modern low-end hardware is not the same as old hardware.

Having said that, the orignal poster's hardware there is reasonably fast so I'm sure it'll be usable for playing around with, but it's no magical replacement for XP on hardware of that era.

It'll run fine on that. I'm running it on my pc with no problems (Athlon 64 3000+ newcastle and 1.5Gb RAM).

i tested windows 7 in my old laptop and its work fine except for some graphic and i notice that my some old hardware is automatically updated by windows 7,its very good windows system.

SONY VAIO PCG-FX801

20 GB hard disk

Mobile AMD athlon 1400+ CPU

512 MB RAM

Hello,

I'm wanting to give Windows 7 a try however my system specs are hardly impressive so I'm wondering what my experience is likely to be given that besides my graphics card (which was recently replaced) most of my hardware is a couple of years old.

I listened to Windows Weekly last week and Paul mentioned that Windows 7 is designed to run on a lot more and older hardware than Vista perhaps was initially although Vista runs fine on this system... the only issue was my old graphics card (an ATI 2400 HD PRO) would regularly turn stop working.

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (Venice)

1GB DDR 400Mhz RAM

ATI X1650 AGP DDR2 512MB

160GB HD

Any advice is much appreciated before I take the plunge.

I ran Windows 7 great on a system with specs much worse than that. You'll be fine.

i installed windows 7 on my msi wind, and it runs FLAWLESSLY, no lagging at all, not system hickups, no super long load times.

the msi wind is a NETBOOK, designed for email and internet tasks....it dosnt compete against any pc, and yet it can run windows 7 smoother than windows xp (mostly)

Beat this:

Processor: Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz Prescott

RAM: 1GB DDR 200 MHz

GPU: Ancient Intel Integrated Graphics with 8 MB Shared

HDD: 80GB 7200 RPM

I can't run Aero effects, so I am on the Classic theme with appearance set to best performance. This should speed up Windows 7 significantly. It is running as well my Windows XP. No hanging, no crashing, no lagging. The booting is also fine. It takes around 15-19 seconds [From Windows Starting to Login screen].

Overall, I think your computer can handle it.

I am using windows 7 with an old acer aspire 3613lci. It ran xp fine. Vista was ok, no aero. But windows 7 flys on this thing! It boots just as quick if not quicker than xp on it! It only has a 1.5 mhz celeron m chip with 2 gig of ddr2 ram. I have 192mb of shared video memory but i still don't have aero since the gm915 chipset doesn't have drivers for it. (and most likely won't ever). I do plan on keeping windows 7 on it when it gets released. Just the more basic one. It found all my drivers and the few that it did not find when installed where installed when windows update did it's thing. (mainly my printer and ac97 audio). I can even tether with my sony ericsson tm506 with tmobile 3g! Found those drivers all by itself.

Just for a laugh, I installed Windows 7 beta on an old PC we had at work, a 1Ghz 512MB DDR(1) with a Nvidia 5200 and an ancient 80GB 5400rpm IDE Drive.

And you know what? It runs Windows 7 really well for the spec. I mean, some of the cheapest dual-core laptops we sell in the shop run Vista Aero like crap, and here is a 7 year old desktop running Windows 7 at about the same speed. Not only that, Windows 7 found ALL of it's drivers and installed them all. Didn't even have to search for updated ones, Windows update did all that.

I have to say, I was pretty impressed. Good job Microsoft.

OP Win7 should run fine. Just think of how vista was but a bit more snappier.

Well since some of you are playing the lets brag about I ran Win7 on c**p hardware game try and beat this. I have seen Win7 installed on a Intel P1 with 448MB ram 10GB HD. Ta Da, beat that.

Just joined the site & found this forum.

Am having problems installing Windows 7 32-bit on the following hardware to test if my video/audio editing programs will work under this version:

P4 3.0/Socket 478

BioStar P4M80-M4 MB

2 GB PC3200 RAM

Nvidia GeForce 6200

250 GB WD SATA Drive

160 GB Seagate PATA Drive

20 GB Seagate PATA Drive - With Removable Drive Bay

HP 640 DVD RW

LiteOn CDRW

PVR 150 TV Tuner

Have successfully installed 7 into VMWare Player. Have tried to install to the 20 GB drive & install my software to see what issues the software will run on 7. The first part of the install works/sees all the drives I have available. Will reboot & continue. About 3/4 of the way through the install...the screen turns black with the banner in the lower right-hand corner: Windows 7/For Testing Only. Build 7000. Left running all night long with nothing happening at all on the screen. During this time...the hard drive will be busy with the clock being reset...since I have to reset this after booting back into XP.

Believe it maybe the video drivers...but as old as my video card is...would think the drivers would be in 7. If this is the case...how can I get past this roadblock? Don't care about running Aero...just being able to get the same results I get in VMWare Player.

Am having problems installing Windows 7 32-bit on the following hardware to test if my video/audio editing programs will work under this version:

Nvidia GeForce 6200

Believe it maybe the video drivers...but as old as my video card is...would think the drivers would be in 7. If this is the case...how can I get past this roadblock? Don't care about running Aero...just being able to get the same results I get in VMWare Player.

Am sitting here with Windows 7 installed & writing this in Firefox Portable. As I suspected...the video card was not supported in 7. When I rebooted & told 7 to boot in low-res mode...booted to the desktop & installed the Vista drivers for my 6200. Rebooted & had 1400X900.

Also...the Realtek audio drivers were not found...so installed the Vista drivers & I have audio.

Problem solved & runs like a dream on my 20 GB drive. Will be installing on my main drive whenever I find enough time to get it done.

  • 2 weeks later...
Hello,

I'm wanting to give Windows 7 a try however my system specs are hardly impressive so I'm wondering what my experience is likely to be given that besides my graphics card (which was recently replaced) most of my hardware is a couple of years old.

I listened to Windows Weekly last week and Paul mentioned that Windows 7 is designed to run on a lot more and older hardware than Vista perhaps was initially although Vista runs fine on this system... the only issue was my old graphics card (an ATI 2400 HD PRO) would regularly turn stop working.

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (Venice)

1GB DDR 400Mhz RAM

ATI X1650 AGP DDR2 512MB

160GB HD

Any advice is much appreciated before I take the plunge.

Thanks everyone, I'll download a copy and give it a try over the weekend.

Well, I must say Windows 7 runs flawlessly on my "old" system - sure beats the sluggish experience that Vista was - actually if I'm honest I'm loving Windows 7, I keep reminding myself that it's a beta and I shouldn't really be using it as my primary OS but these past few days I have used little else.

Strangely though, as with Windows Vista, when I go to system properties I see the system reads that I have 2GB of RAM and not just one which is what I know I have (two sticks of 512MB although not matched). And my system store is 3.1 because my HD transfer rates are apparently a little low, CPU, RAM, Video etc are all 4.2+ but if I recal under Vista my HD was the only high scoring component and now under Windows 7 it's completely the other way around.

I might run some analysis software on the HD to check the drives health, it's a couple of years old now and has been hammered for much of that time so it wouldn't suprise me if all that is taking it's toll.

Windows 7 is complete and utter crap on older hardware, and I don't know why people would claim otherwise. It can't compete with XP at all (you should see it running next to XP on a P3!). It might to some extent be designed to be usable on more lower end hardware than Vista was, but modern low-end hardware is not the same as old hardware.

Having said that, the orignal poster's hardware there is reasonably fast so I'm sure it'll be usable for playing around with, but it's no magical replacement for XP on hardware of that era.

For all your claims of it being crap on older hardware, all you are doing is proclaiming your insistence that newer operating systems demand newer hardware.

That same hardware is (except for the nForce2 chipset) quite capable of running even Windows Vista (in fact. my Mom runs Windows Vista on a P4 Northwood-B). Why Vista as opposed to XP (which, admittedly, has a smaller memory footprint)?

Amazingly, Vista is actually more of a stable OS, despite (or even possibly because) of the extra code.

Data point: I dual-boot Windows Vista and Windows 7 beta 1 (both 64-bit) on my Celeron DC E1200 with but a single gigabyte of RAM. Despite the low RAM footprint, the 64-bit version of each operating system is more (not less) stable than the 32-bit counterpart on the same hardware. Speed doesn't matter one iota if all it brings is twice as many crashes.

It's why when comparing 32-bit vs. 64-bit, when stability is a factor, on the same hardware with the same amount of RAM, in my own testing, surprisingly, 64-bit wins.

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

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • I have never been a huge fan of libre, it feels really good but exactly when you need an advance feature for data wrangling it falls short every time or has bugs. I am all for euro office if they can deliver a good and usable alternative to MS office with backing of govt function.
    • Go on, I'll bite. How does windows (nice comment on an 'article' which doesn't actually involve it ) lock users out of their data then? Been using it since 3.1 back in 92 and not once have I been locked out of my data? Perhaps you mean Bitlocker? In which case the average user (who doesn't mess about) will have been forced to use a MSA, and in which case the recovery key would have been saved to said account..... If the user did happen to bodge around and not use an MSA then Bitlocker wouldn't have become live (as it cannot without a safe place to store the key) I want to point out Bitlocker and MSA are not connected and you can of course force it on without a safe place to store the key, but you do that with your eyes open. So your standard consumer who knows no better sets up an MSA, gets bitlocker and a recovery key stored off box, with a route to reset their password. All of this notwithstanding the fact, if your data is important, you back it up, no ifs, no buts, no-ones responsibility other than your own. Important data lives in at least two locations, one of which is offline and recovery is tested, otherwise that data wasn't really that important. Disks, fail, laptops get lost, phones end up down the toilet, tablets get stolen, if your only copy of data is on a single device you're doing it wrong.
    • Clearly that feature isn't for us. It's for the ad spam marketers so they can more directly target us about going to places we might want to go again...but without understanding context clues. Like for the flight someone took for a friend's funeral. We want to be reminded of that every time we open an app, a browser, or email, right? Right, Siri?
    • Is your Apple Watch supported? Check the watchOS 27 compatibility list by Aditya Tiwari Apple kicked off WWDC 2026 with a ton of announcements, mostly centered around Apple Intelligence improvements, the Siri AI, and Liquid Glass updates. However, there is a lot of other stuff that couldn't catch the limelight. Let's talk about watchOS 27 and which models are supported by the newest operating system. According to the Cupertino giant, watchOS 27 will be supported on the following Apple Watch models when it arrives later this year: Apple Watch Ultra 3 Apple Watch Series 11 Apple Watch SE 3 Apple Watch Series 10 Apple Watch Ultra 2 It's a stark contrast with last year's watchOS 26 update, which had almost a dozen Apple Watch models in its list of supported devices. Apple supported models all the way back to Apple Watch Series 6. That said, if you own one of the five models, you'll need an iPhone 11 (or later) with iOS 27 to install the latest update. Yes, Apple has shown some extra love to the iPhone 11, and it old horse supports the iOS 27 update. watchOS 27 beta 1 is now available for developers and interested power users through the Apple Developer Program. So, if you're among those who like to play with fire, you can download it to your supported Apple Watch. Otherwise, the public beta for watchOS 27 will be available next month. The freshly baked Apple Watch update comes with Siri AI - an advanced, fully conversational version of Siri powered by Apple Intelligence due for later this year. A new dynamic app grid features icons for five Siri-suggested apps. You can use a new tap gesture to open a widget in the Smart Stack, and a new Find My app finally clears the mess of Find Devices, Find Items, and Find People on Apple Watch. Workout Buddy can run without an iPhone nearby and offers new insights based on data, including your progress for pace, distance, and workout duration. Apple improved its motion tracking algorithms to measure the distance of indoor treadmill runs and walks more precisely. Speaking of other changes, the music playback on watchOS 27 starts faster and you can create custom passes for any membership or card that uses a QR code or barcode, then easily access them in the Wallet app or pin in the Smart Stack.
    • "and pull old flight details from your email during back-and-forth conversations" The Siri I've become to know and trust. I've always wanted to pull info on old flights. /s
  • Recent Achievements

    • Very Popular
      Captain_Eric earned a badge
      Very Popular
    • One Month Later
      amusc earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Month Later
      DJC50PLUS earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      DJC50PLUS earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Proficient
      Eric Biran went up a rank
      Proficient
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      501
    2. 2
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      232
    3. 3
      ATLien_0
      85
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      76
    5. 5
      +Edouard
      75
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!