Become a Patron!

Windows 7 lagging

CashNVape

Gold Contributor
Member For 4 Years
I just installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 pro 64bit (Dell xps400) I only have two 512 modules installed 1gb. could it be I need more memory? machine works using kodi TV, Netflix. but if I try to use YouTube the video freezes a lot while the audio still continues and also opening my computer or documents it takes a long time and just loads. did I install too new of Windows? I have a few older Panasonic toughbooks that I forced 7 on and they work fine no issue and there ment for Xp ONLY.


the desktop does say Dimension 9150 but further research says its a xps400.

audaces fortuna iuvat
 

Angrygod50

Gold Contributor
Member For 4 Years
Member For 3 Years
Member For 2 Years
That's an old computer to be expecting any kind of speed out of. That being said 1gb of ram is not nearly enough, that motherboard maxes out at 4gb and that's what I'd be using. You will see a fairly large speed increase but even the cheapest modern computer will out run it.
 

CashNVape

Gold Contributor
Member For 4 Years
That's an old computer to be expecting any kind of speed out of. That being said 1gb of ram is not nearly enough, that motherboard maxes out at 4gb and that's what I'd be using. You will see a fairly large speed increase but even the cheapest modern computer will out run it.
it was 10 bucks at a yard sale.
it works amazing on Xp, fast as heck. I was reading up and several people have installed 7 on theirs without an issue. according to Dell it can run Vista but I don't know if I want Vista that's why I skipped it and went right to 7. the reason why I chose 7 was to use Kodi.
so I should buy some more ram? know which pc4200 I should get? 533?

audaces fortuna iuvat
 

CashNVape

Gold Contributor
Member For 4 Years
having 4 gig in it will help a LOT.
okay dropped in 4gigs
lets see what happens. one thing I can't figure out is when turning back on restarting the keyboard num lock comes on and I have to turn it off before I can enter the password.

audaces fortuna iuvat
 

Angrygod50

Gold Contributor
Member For 4 Years
Member For 3 Years
Member For 2 Years
I seem to recall Bill Gates saying that he could not imagine anyone needing more than 640K of RAM.
The old days of Win 3.1 when I didn't think I needed a 10 meg hard drive. The good new days I have 32gb ram and filling up 3Tb hard drives fast. We've come a long way.
 

CashNVape

Gold Contributor
Member For 4 Years
The old days of Win 3.1 when I didn't think I needed a 10 meg hard drive. The good new days I have 32gb ram and filling up 3Tb hard drives fast. We've come a long way.
my next step is finding a ssd drive eh 300g is enough space that isn't going to cost a lot. I found 280gb and drives for my toughbooks for cheap on eBay.

audaces fortuna iuvat
 

celticluvr

Gold Contributor
Member For 4 Years
ECF Refugee
In order to run a 64bit OS you need at least 2 gigs of RAM. Learned that a few years back when I was building my first PC :)
 

Synphul

Gold Contributor
Member For 4 Years
With so little ram it was likely thrashing the hard drive hitting the swap file. 1gb of ram doesn't go very far. If it was an older machine, hard to say without knowing the actual specs of all the hardware.

Most used hdd's vs newer faster ssd's and the spinning disks they did use were typically 4800-5400rpm which are painfully slow. Not to mention the smaller platter of 2.5" form factor drives, the data is stored close to the spindle which spins the slowest. Data on the outermost edge of the platter rotates faster at the same revolutions and 3.5" drives coupled with generally faster 7200rpm speeds can make a world of difference.

With older hardware (in general) you may run into driver issues with newer os versions. There may not be drivers compatible with say win 8.1/10 for older chipsets and various other onboard features. Especially when it comes to laptops where they use proprietary hardware and bios and so on. The manufacturers tend to do all sorts of weird things and then you're stuck depending on them for drivers which they may have abandoned before the newer os's came into existence. Windows uses compatibility mode but that's a bandaid at best. Many times it won't work even with compatibility mode.
 

Synphul

Gold Contributor
Member For 4 Years
Lol, I don't blame CashNVape, I still run win7. Win8 was a flop, like vista was to xp. Win10 is hardly any better and with the forced upgrades, default to share updates with other users like it's a lame version of napster along with many other faults, nah I'm good. The biggest thing win10 had going for it was dx12 and that's been a real shitshow for gamers. They've been ragging about dx12 for years now and it's still not showing much promise other than theory.

There's nothing win10 does that my win7 install doesn't aside from dx12. Maybe the big picture book styled gui (win8) works for phones or tablets but it's ridiculous on a desktop. About as successful as a touchscreen monitor when people realized there wasn't much calling for it on a desktop screen outside of pos systems maybe. Pedaling a bicycle makes sense when there's little room for an engine but it's not a solution for powering a semi.

If only m$ had come out with something as reliable as win7 or improved upon it instead of making it worse. They tried to make me envious by hinting that the edge browser wouldn't be compatible with older versions, imagine my perplexed look to learn m$ still made a browser. Ok a bit of sarcasm, but seriously. There are so many other options out there it's not worth giving m$ another chance just to find out they may or may not have made a browser that finally doesn't suck. Others have been making browsers that didn't suck as bad all along dating back to nutscrape.
 

CashNVape

Gold Contributor
Member For 4 Years
With so little ram it was likely thrashing the hard drive hitting the swap file. 1gb of ram doesn't go very far. If it was an older machine, hard to say without knowing the actual specs of all the hardware.

Most used hdd's vs newer faster ssd's and the spinning disks they did use were typically 4800-5400rpm which are painfully slow. Not to mention the smaller platter of 2.5" form factor drives, the data is stored close to the spindle which spins the slowest. Data on the outermost edge of the platter rotates faster at the same revolutions and 3.5" drives coupled with generally faster 7200rpm speeds can make a world of difference.

With older hardware (in general) you may run into driver issues with newer os versions. There may not be drivers compatible with say win 8.1/10 for older chipsets and various other onboard features. Especially when it comes to laptops where they use proprietary hardware and bios and so on. The manufacturers tend to do all sorts of weird things and then you're stuck depending on them for drivers which they may have abandoned before the newer os's came into existence. Windows uses compatibility mode but that's a bandaid at best. Many times it won't work even with compatibility mode.

Lol, I don't blame CashNVape, I still run win7. Win8 was a flop, like vista was to xp. Win10 is hardly any better and with the forced upgrades, default to share updates with other users like it's a lame version of napster along with many other faults, nah I'm good. The biggest thing win10 had going for it was dx12 and that's been a real shitshow for gamers. They've been ragging about dx12 for years now and it's still not showing much promise other than theory.

There's nothing win10 does that my win7 install doesn't aside from dx12. Maybe the big picture book styled gui (win8) works for phones or tablets but it's ridiculous on a desktop. About as successful as a touchscreen monitor when people realized there wasn't much calling for it on a desktop screen outside of pos systems maybe. Pedaling a bicycle makes sense when there's little room for an engine but it's not a solution for powering a semi.

If only m$ had come out with something as reliable as win7 or improved upon it instead of making it worse. They tried to make me envious by hinting that the edge browser wouldn't be compatible with older versions, imagine my perplexed look to learn m$ still made a browser. Ok a bit of sarcasm, but seriously. There are so many other options out there it's not worth giving m$ another chance just to find out they may or may not have made a browser that finally doesn't suck. Others have been making browsers that didn't suck as bad all along dating back to nutscrape.
sometimes the machine freezes for a minute or two and cpu spikes to 99% than it catches up. I'll bet if I swap the hard drive for a ssd drive the machine will fly.

specs on the machine are:
4gb, pentium D Dual 2.8gb, 64bit
 

VU Sponsors

Top