Older system fails after installing Win7/8

[nukefault]

Trying to resurrect an older machine: AthlonX 4200+, 2GB DDR400, 160GB hard drive, 7900GT KO, nForce4 mobo.

I bought it with XP, and that runs fine, but I wanted 7. Installed Home Premium 32bit and the install went fine but when it boots from the hard drive after install it shows the Windows loading screen and then graphical corruption. Slightly diagonal static pattern... I can take a pic of it if anyone wants.

Just out of curiosity I tried installing the Win8 DP and got a similar problem: install went fine, but on the initial bootup it shows the loading screen and then a solid green screen that flickers every 20 seconds or so.

I'm pretty sure it's not hardware since the system runs fine under XP. Ideas?

[nukefault]

I imagine it might be a problem with the 7900GT and the Windows
default graphics driver, but not sure how I'd fix that since I never get into Windows before the error.

[wh666-666]

Ugghhh win7 is terrible for driver support. I had an older machine I had to shove win7 on for a client last month (socket 478 board). Had to fiddle around for ages in recovery mode, using compatibility mode for drivers getting the onboard graphics working. Then the audio wasnt supported at all and at that stage had to buy a win7 pci sound card ...


Ughhhh windows, what a pain in the backside!


Conversely, client this week wanted an old dell c610 laptop to run any OS that would work with a 3g dongle for the internet. He just wanted it to browse nicely, play music, etc. XP was just so sluggish with the 3g software installed. Also I knew it would get clogged with viruses within a few hours.

Installed linux, piece of cake, half the time of XP and never had to do anything out of graphical modes/never had to use the terminal. Plugged in 3g dongle and it works without any software straight away. Client loves that they dont have to open software and click connect as it just connects on boot without them having to leap throuh hoops and also likes the speed and cant seem to fathom how it will stay relatively fast for the foreseeable future, unlike windows.

I found it quite funny in fact, the reaction:
- "so do I need to install an AV program, ani-spyware, etc"
Nope, all sorted. Just make sure you dont enter you password on anything but the update/software manager.

- "but i'll need to defrag it every week and run chkdsks to keep it running wont I?"
Nope, no need to defrag and will chkdsk itself automatically.




Anyway back on subject, have you tried going in to safe/recovery mode and then using compatibility mode to install the driver if it wont install normally?

[nukefault]

Actually I just got through trying Ubuntu on a similarly old laptop and had miserable driver issues with 11.10 32bit. Had to do some ridiculous DOS-style driver workaround to force it to support an unofficial driver for the wifi card, and had to do a bunch of shenanigans on the Ubuntu forums to even find that workaround. The WinXP drivers were right there on the Gateway website. Then the sound driver started making static before every system sound and at semi-random other times. There's probably a workaround, but between that and having to mess with Synaptic to install functional/proprietary graphics drivers I just said heck with it and installed XP instead.

Took me 45 mins to install the OS, drivers, and updates and it runs like a charm. Obviously that one experience isn't statistically significant, but it sure didn't leave a good taste in my mouth. Installing stuff is supposed to be so convenient in Linux, but you don't have to enable the Add/Remove Programs control in Windows, then enable proprietary drivers, then look up your driver in some arcane list (assuming there's even info about it - if not, have fun digging through the support forums for a hack)... yeah, it's just not a very friendly process.

I'm running the Win7 installer on the secondary hard drive now just to see if it'll work... don't wanna blow away the functional XP install until I'm sure 7 will fly. Will post back in an hr or so after trying Safe Mode. Haven't had issues with Win7 drivers since I started using 7 back in the beta period (except for a stupid old printer that I just threw out) so I didn't even think of going to safe mode. Newb mistake lol.

[Geforce255]

Even if you get Win7 to run, your performance will be, well - lack luster, on those specs. I have better luck with Linux distros on older hardware. Of course, if you're looking to game it might not be a good idea, since I've found Wine runs more slowly than native Windows on the same hardware.

[wh666-666]

Even if you get Win7 to run, your performance will be, well - lack luster, on those specs. I have better luck with Linux distros on older hardware. Of course, if you're looking to game it might not be a good idea, since I've found Wine runs more slowly than native Windows on the same hardware.

Ughhh I hate wine. Runs slow, if it works at all with some programs.

I use sun virtualbox on linux with an xp install. Works quicker than win7 on the same hardware and only slightly slower than a real xp installation.

Actually I just got through trying Ubuntu on a similarly old laptop and had miserable driver issues with 11.10 32bit. Had to do some ridiculous DOS-style driver workaround to force it to support an unofficial driver for the wifi card, and had to do a bunch of shenanigans on the Ubuntu forums to even find that workaround. The WinXP drivers were right there on the Gateway website. Then the sound driver started making static before every system sound and at semi-random other times. There's probably a workaround, but between that and having to mess with Synaptic to install functional/proprietary graphics drivers I just said heck with it and installed XP instead.

Took me 45 mins to install the OS, drivers, and updates and it runs like a charm. Obviously that one experience isn't statistically significant, but it sure didn't leave a good taste in my mouth. Installing stuff is supposed to be so convenient in Linux, but you don't have to enable the Add/Remove Programs control in Windows, then enable proprietary drivers, then look up your driver in some arcane list (assuming there's even info about it - if not, have fun digging through the support forums for a hack)... yeah, it's just not a very friendly process.

I'm running the Win7 installer on the secondary hard drive now just to see if it'll work... don't wanna blow away the functional XP install until I'm sure 7 will fly. Will post back in an hr or so after trying Safe Mode. Haven't had issues with Win7 drivers since I started using 7 back in the beta period (except for a stupid old printer that I just threw out) so I didn't even think of going to safe mode. Newb mistake lol.

Hope you managed to get in to safe mode on win7?

Ive never really had an issue on linux (apart from below), but I have quite a few distros here that I like aesthetically and know work well, sometimes one distro will work on one old pc, but then another pc the same age, slightly different specs and a different distro will work better.

Im not keen on ubuntu and dislike gnome and kde, xubuntu is quite nice. Saying that, my current distro, mint 9, is similar to ubuntu (iirc based on fedora) and uses gnome or kde I think. Works well though on a lot of hardware, like a dream. Their latest release though is pure crap though. Most distros, booting the live cd and seeing what works natively, gives you a good indication.

Ive had less problems on linux. The only real headbanger was the older broadcom wireless cards. They wouldnt work natively, ndiswrapper was crap, etc etc. Although that was the only real issue and nowadays, all mini-pci cards seem to be intel or atheros which do work natively. Never had an issue with printers, etc etc.

However still far less problems than windows, xp or win7. The issues with drivers under xp. Lordy lordy, installations of that used to take ages as half the hardware wasnt supported natively, especially network adapters, involving a second machine in scouring for drivers as many OEM's have useless driver support/aftersale care.

Even in win7, to get one sound card working, I had to find other people with the same problem and with some others input, rewrite the inf file so that it worked by making it use the mic port instead of the line out port. Absolute ball-ache!

[nukefault]

Yeah, got it working... decided to go back to XP anyway for performance reasons and because it came with a legal XP Pro COA, which is always nice... don't have to use my spare 7 key, and XP is still pretty functional for basic use anyway.

I'm thinking the thing to do is just sell the mobo/cpu/ram/graphics card separately since they're so obsolete, and then sell the nice case and psu to someone who wants to put nice, modern stuff in it that actually requires that kind of beast.

I can probably buy a decent G950-level laptop with the money anyway, and that'll suit my purposes a lot better.

Sounds like all the modern OSes still have stupid driver issues, and it's pretty much luck of the draw.

[Roger45]

The simple answer is that I do not believe that Win7 will run on only 2GB of RAM. It is a memory pig compared to XP. You might try to up your RAM, it is dirt cheap now, and see if that helps.

[nukefault]

Uhh, 7 runs fine on 1GB for basic use. My gf's netbook handles Office and Firefox and Windows Media Player just fine with 1GB. I'm also expecting Win8 to handle low RAM a bit better than 7, and public beta is ~3 weeks away last I heard...

[James]

I have an old Pentium-M 1.6GHz with 1GB of RAM.

Runs windows 7 Pro just fine for everything I need it to do.

That's:
MS Office 2007
putty
Cisco Anyconnect VPN client
Firefox browser
Thunderbird email with enigmail plugin

It can do any and all of those things easily with 1GB of RAM. It's major slowdown is the stupid 5400rpm drive that is in it.

[nukefault]

@James agreed... I'd have Win7 on my Celeron M 1.4ghz with 1.25GB memory except for some weird driver issue. I could probably resolve it with some hassle, but just didn't care enough. XP is doing all I need, and it takes up less hard drive space than 7. Which is important since this thing has a 40GB hard drive lol.

I've gone back and forth on the hard drive issue. 5400rpm is insanely slow, but honestly I really didn't notice any big speedup when I upgraded the system in my sig to a 7200rpm WD Blue, and I'm not noticing any major slowdown with the 40GB 4800rpm fossil drive in this machine. I still get the same ~20-30MB/sec transfers as the NV53, and while I'm sure the NV53 averages a bit higher, it's just saving an extra few mins on those rare occasions when I do file copies.

I keep the vast majority of my files on the desktop and access them through a shared folder... all I have on the laptop is my Dropbox and a copy of about half my music folder at any given time.

Really, it'd be a waste of money to upgrade this thing beyond the bare minimum anyway. I blew $30 on adding a gig of RAM to it so it wouldn't be painfully slow, and I was thinking about blowing another $30 on a nicer hard drive until I realized I'm really not bothered by the current one.

Heh, funny thing is I got this machine used for $40. Was planning to wipe Windows and sell it for $60, until I noticed that the screen and speakers are actually pretty nice. Both are a significant improvement over the NV53, the speed hasn't bothered me since I upped the RAM, and I've only sunk $70 into the system. That's pretty sweet... so I'm thinking this'll keep me happy until I can nab a relatively cheap ultrabook in a year or so. Being a tech cheapskate is surprisingly satisfying as compared to always worrying about having the latest parts to save a few milliseconds here and there.