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Windows 7 hardware requirements


TeeJay3800

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I'm interested in upgrading my machine from XP Pro SP3 to Windows 7. My computer isn't exactly bleeding edge :P , but XP is lightening quick on it and I've been told by a few people that it should still run 7 somewhat decently (see my sig for basic specs). I certainly wouldn't expect to use any of the fancy UI features that require more powerful hardware, but hopefully a basic install of Home Premium (or even Basic) will run alright. What do ya'll think?

Dell Latitude D600

Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit SP1

 

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My concern is that 1GB is the minimum requirement, and I only have just above that. I don't want to run Windows 7 if it will be any slower than what I'm running now. I'm attaching a screenshot of the results of the Upgrade Advisor. Please let me know what you think...especially about the video card and LAN card drivers.

post-6135-128277081255_thumb.jpg

Dell Latitude D600

Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit SP1

 

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upgrade to 3gb it's cheap and well worth it

 

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upgrade to 3gb it's cheap and well worth it

I think the max this machine can handle is 2GB, which I may very well do eventually, but what about the driver issues described in the Upgrade Advisor?

Dell Latitude D600

Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit SP1

 

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The processor is a bit faster than that but I only have 512mb on this machine and it runs 7 very well. You could always keep xp on a partition in case you ever need it for some really intensive thing. The performance hit was not anywhere near what I thought it would be with 512. 1.25gb should run fine for now.

 

http://drivers.softpedia.com/get/NETWORK-CARD/OTHER-NETWORK-CARDS/Dell-Latitude-D610-Broadcom-570x-Gigabit-Integrated-Controller-Driver-A01.shtml

I found this driver that lists Vista support. It should work in 7...

 

You could also aattempt to install the XP driver for it in 7.

 

 

For more specific help on the LAN driver issue follow the instructions HERE.

 

If the driver page for your LAN device is of no help in regards to Windows 7 drivers or at least Vista drivers post back what those instructions said yours was.

The internet - Where men are men, women are men and children are FBI agents.

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For more specific help on the LAN driver issue follow the instructions HERE.

 

If the driver page for your LAN device is of no help in regards to Windows 7 drivers or at least Vista drivers post back what those instructions said yours was.

Thanks for the info! You won't believe this, but my network card is VERY close what is in that list, but not exactly. The Device ID is 16A6. The closest in that list is 16A7. :( That still doesn't leave me with a Windows 7 driver for my NIC.

Dell Latitude D600

Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit SP1

 

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Thanks for the input guys, appreciate it! I now have 7 Ultimate up and running. All drivers are working except for the display driver (I still have a display, but using a standard/universal driver). I've been scouring the net, but if anyone knows where to find a Windows 7 driver for the ATI Radeon Mobility 9000, please let me know!

Dell Latitude D600

Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit SP1

 

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Thanks for the input guys, appreciate it! I now have 7 Ultimate up and running. All drivers are working except for the display driver (I still have a display, but using a standard/universal driver). I've been scouring the net, but if anyone knows where to find a Windows 7 driver for the ATI Radeon Mobility 9000, please let me know!

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

 

I hope these help as well:

Link

 

and Link

Simplicity is hard.

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The "Don't use a beautiful background" one is ridiculous. This has no impact on performance at all.

Haha, well I don't know. Maybe not for a standard computer with normal specs, but for a really low end PC with a choking RAM / CPU / GPU might show 2 - 3 seconds improvement. :rolleyes:

Simplicity is hard.

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Haha, well I don't know. Maybe not for a standard computer with normal specs, but for a really low end PC with a choking RAM / CPU / GPU might show 2 - 3 seconds improvement. :rolleyes:

Yeah only useful for a complete dinosaur. I've had one before. Some old grey colored brick laptop with a tiny low-resolution and contrast LCD. The battery it had was completely dead of course and it only had a ~512MB hard drive and I believe either an original Pentium or Celeron. Whatever it was it was slow. I recall either 32 or 64Mbs of RAM. It had a red analog style nub for a mouse on the keyboard. I think it origanally ran Win95 but someone put 98 on it.

 

It took 30 seconds at least to display a small jpeg. I dared not to use anything other than a solid color. :o

 

Edit: And just idling the thing on my lap caused quite a bit of pain. I just balanced it on one knee. I tried searching for the model and company tghat made it but it wasn't on the internet.

 

 

http://www.blackviper.com/Windows_7/servicecfg.htm

http://www.blackviper.com/Windows_7/supertweaks.htm

Edited by Talldog9

The internet - Where men are men, women are men and children are FBI agents.

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Again...using the Windows Classic theme is not a good idea, as Aero is GPU-powered. In fact, with that Dell Latitude, I'd bet using Classic theme would decrease performance. (that was already the case with Luna on XP. I've once enabled Luna on a small netbook...which resulted in a performance increase !)

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For those of you that might be interested, I got the display drivers working! When using the automated installer from ATI, the insallation always failed, saying something about incompatibility. However, I tried going to Device Manager, manually selecting the driver folder from ATI, and it worked! I now have the same video performance that I had when running XP. B)

Dell Latitude D600

Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit SP1

 

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