Is possible to Downgrade from Win 7 to XP2

dx052

I am sure anything is possible if you know how! but I don't. I have upraded my laptop to Win 7 and find it very slow unlike my previous OS Win XP. I have the right ram and system requirements but not really enjoying the experience. WiFi is also very slow compared to what it was like before, Is it possible to still buy a Win XP disc with all the drivers for an easy installation? even if it means an install on a new HD

PlutoinCapricorn

How strange!

I have switched to W7 from XP and would never go back - everything is much faster. I did it partly because XP's days are numbered. New laptops all seem to come with W7.

Perhaps someone can help you to speed things up, rather than go backwards.

auroan

dx052 wrote: »

I am sure anything is possible if you know how! but I don't. I have upraded my laptop to Win 7 and find it very slow unlike my previous OS Win XP. I have the right ram and system requirements but not really enjoying the experience. WiFi is also very slow compared to what it was like before, Is it possible to still buy a Win XP disc with all the drivers for an easy installation? even if it means an install on a new HD

The only way you'll get hold of XP legally is via a technet subscription.

I'm interested to know what your think the right amount of ram etc is correct for Win 7 and what your laptop spec is ?

fwor

Have you upgraded all of the drivers for the laptop's onboard devices to the manufacturers Win7 ones?

The default drivers that ship built into Windows may work Ok but are typically not optimised in any way. The graphics chipset driver often seems to be a culprit that leads to poor performance...

dx052

@auran I have 2.0 Gig RAM/2.00 Ghz Processor. 80 gig HD. Win 7 32bit SP1.

@fwor I didn't know I had to upgrade all the drivers! I will have a go at that now.

I am assuming I do this via device manager? as I have just done so and each driver was searched rather quickly saying I had the latest driver.

auroan

dx052 wrote: »

@auran I have 2.0 Gig RAM/2.00 Ghz Processor. 80 gig HD. Win 7 32bit SP1.

Your problem regards performance in Win 7 is memory. 2GB of ram will see you swapping memory to disk in very short order once you have anti-virus, a few backgroud apps and a browser running. 4GB* is really the bare minimum I would advise be spec'd for Win7.


(* - I qualify this advice with 15 years experience in the IT industry)

dx052

Thanks! will my laptop a Dell D630 allow me to upgrade to 4GB of RAM as its quite cheap?

debitcardmayhem

auroan wrote: »

Your problem regards performance in Win 7 is memory. 2GB of ram will see you swapping memory to disk in very short order once you have anti-virus, a few backgroud apps and a browser running. 4GB* is really the bare minimum I would advise be spec'd for Win7.


(* - I qualify this advice with 15 years experience in the IT industry)

Win 95 then :rotfl::rotfl:Posting this on a netbook with 2GB memory. I wish I had my old "pocket" IBM/370 with me running MVS 5 times under VM/SP on how much ram oh yes 8MB and about 200 users, things just ain't what they used to be.:p

PlutoinCapricorn

I have 6gb of RAM with my Win 7.

victor2

auroan wrote: »

Your problem regards performance in Win 7 is memory. 2GB of ram will see you swapping memory to disk in very short order once you have anti-virus, a few backgroud apps and a browser running. 4GB* is really the bare minimum I would advise be spec'd for Win7.


(* - I qualify this advice with 15 years experience in the IT industry)

32-bit Win 7 won't use much RAM above 3GB anyway. 2GB should be adequate for typical use.

auroan

victor2 wrote: »

32-bit Win 7 won't use much RAM above 3GB anyway. 2GB should be adequate for typical use.

Unfortunately I missed the 32bit part of the OP's thread. But Win7 will use up 3.51GB of the 4GB, using the rest for hardware addressing.

But from experience... on an old machine 2GB isn't enough if you want the SAME performance as you had with XP (which is what I was getting at).

For example. I'm running firefox at the mo with 3 tabs open and it's consuming 340MB of RAM. System resources take between 800MB and 1.3GB of RAM. Run anything else and you will be paging/swapping (depending on wintel/unix parlence) to disk. If you start to page to disk (and if it's 80GB it's probably an old one which may be rather slow) you can wave goodbye to any performance.