Running Windows 7 on older systems...

[Fumma]

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.

[Heather]

I put Windows 7 on a really old laptop and it found all the drivers fine!

[Lee G. Veteran]

I think it should run reasonably. As RAM is so cheap, it's probably worth adding some more to speed Windows 7 up.

[bagpus]

I think your be quite surprised how well Windows 7 will run on your current hardware. I got it running on a old asus, with a 1500ghz cpu 1gb ram and onboard gfx 32mb.

[BajiRav]

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 Sitting 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

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

[jerzdawg]

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...

[Fumma]

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

[hdood]

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.

[BigCheese]

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

[KoYkOy]

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

[thealexweb]

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.

[Berserk87]

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)

[Unto Darkness]

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.

[Rudie32]

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.

[Obraxis]

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.

[.tony]

It'll run fine, but I suggest getting at least 2GB of RAM, it'll help it nicely.

[McDave]

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.

[phoobarnvaz]

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.

[McDave]

My brother has an onboard 6100 that runs areo so your 6200 should be capible too. Sorry can't help you with your problem tho.

[riot]

I've got it running on an 8-year-old Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop with P4 2.0GHz, 512MB RAM, and 64MB GeForce Go 440 and it runs as good as or better than XP.

[phoobarnvaz]

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.

[sonrah]

How about this?

CPU: Intel P4 1.8 ghz

Ram: 786 mb

Gfx: Nvidia 6200 AGP 8x

Windows 7 runs perfectly fine and is more stable than XP in terms of wireless connectivity etc.

[Fumma]

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.

[PGHammer]

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.