Will Win7 solve my Vista problems?

[masplin]

I am runnig a Dell XPS 430 with Vista Home Premium SP2.
Intel Core 2 Quad CPU 2.4GHz
RAM 4GB
640GB RAID HD

Typically I have running
Outlook
1 or 2 Firefox Windows with mostly static pages, but includes spreadbetting page with live updates
Microsoft Money that polls for updates every 5 minutes
Spread betting graphics platform that takes live updates
Excel spreadsheet polling ofr data every minute
Kapersky Internet Security

I frequently used Adobe Lightroom 2.6 for RAw image photo editing and organisation, but close it when finnished.

I have been shocked that what I thought was a well speced PC continually freezes with "not responding" on many programs. Sometimes I just have to power off as cannot actually close the programs.

My questions are:

1.Will upgrading to Win7 solve my memory/application problems or is something more fundamental going on with what i am runnnig and all the other rubbish that seems to get loaded up without one knowing!
2. Given that the most intensive thing I do is large file photo editing will I see the benefit of 64 bit given the aggravation of some of my software/hardware potentially not working? Should I just go for the easier 32 bit and hold off on 64bit until either I am doing more intesive tasks or 64 bit is more common place?
3. I need to upgrade my kids pcs so is the machine I have good enough to get the best from Win7 or should I look to buy a new one for myself and pass this one down the line. If the latter what is the minimum spec I should go for?

Grateful your advice as I know this is going ot take me many days to rationalise al lthe pcs in my house and want to get it right before taking the plunge.

Mike

 

[Core]

1.Will upgrading to Win7 solve my memory/application problems or is something more fundamental going on with what i am runnnig and all the other rubbish that seems to get loaded up without one knowing!

It's impossible to say for sure, since software and hardware configurations vary from one PC to the next, as do user practices. However, I will say that of the problems I had with Vista, all but one went away when I moved to 7.

2. Given that the most intensive thing I do is large file photo editing will I see the benefit of 64 bit given the aggravation of some of my software/hardware potentially not working? Should I just go for the easier 32 bit and hold off on 64bit until either I am doing more intesive tasks or 64 bit is more common place?

I personally would not go back to 32-bit, but that's primarily because I've experienced little to no problems running 32-bit software. On the other hand, I'm not married to any particular product; if something were to not work, I'd use something else. This does not really apply to your situation. Some people do experience problems running older apps on x64. A retail version of 7 comes with both x86 and x64 discs. You could try x64 and switch to x86 if you experienced trouble - however, switching would require a clean install, which sounds like something you don't have time to do very frequently. If software compatibility is particularly important to you, which seems to be the case, I might break my usual routine and suggest that you stick with x86.

3. I need to upgrade my kids pcs so is the machine I have good enough to get the best from Win7 or should I look to buy a new one for myself and pass this one down the line. If the latter what is the minimum spec I should go for?

In terms of processing power and memory, you're fine. 7 is much lighter to run than Vista, by a considerable margin. The only question mark here is your graphics card or chip. Even these days there's onboard and then there's onboard.

 

[Nibiru2012]

If you have 3 PCs in the house, it might be best for you to get a Family 3 PC License for the Windows 7 installs.

What's specs are the kids PCs?

Go to the MS Windows 7 webpage and run the Windows 7 advisor, it will tell you many things that may help.

 

[masplin]

Rest of the House

Due to trickling down of pcs over the years I have the following:

Wife: Dell Dimension E521 Athalon 64 x 2 Dual 2.6GHz, 2 x 320 GB HD, 4 GB RAM. low level tasks but constantly crashing/freezing. Vista home Premium
Child 1: Dimension E521 as above 2 GB of RAM. Runs like treacle. Vista home Premium
Child 2 & 3: Older Dimension with only 30-40GB HD running WinXP. Expect they don't have the power to upgrade to Win 7 and cost more to rebuild than buy new. Horrible performance due to newer games being played.

Sony Vaio Laptop running Vista Home Premium used for low level photo processing when away from home.

So essentially want to redo everything and move everyone to Win7. Apart from the 32 vs 64 question which probably only applies to myself the question whether to buy 2 high spec PCs for self and wife (to stop her divorcing me) or 2 low spec ones for kids if the XPS 430 and Dim E521 we have are good enough?

Useful to know there is a 3 licence deal.

One other question is I understand I could do an upgrade to the 32 bit version witohut having to reinstall all my programs. However I wonder how much rubbish there is already on my machine and have seen people recommend going for a clean install anyway no matter if you go for 32 or 64 bit?

 

[masplin]

Hi Core. you mentioned about Graphics card. I have an ATI Radeon HD 4800 which says total graphics memory available 1918Mb. Not sure if that is the right info or where to find it in Vista?

Seems liek you woudl recommend a clean install even for 32 bit. Does that mean format the hard drive and start from scratch? since the dsic is an upgrade presumably that is an option you cosse on installation and wipes the HD and installs the new OS? Obviously I need to back up all my files.

Mike

 

[catilley1092]

Whether Windows 7 will solve your problems with Vista, I cannot answer, as I went straight from XP Pro 32 bit to Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit. I also have Windows 7 Pro on a laptop. Both systems run fine, the 64 bit PC was bought new in November. I wanted one sooner, but decided to wait, as I didn't want to fool with the free upgrade to Windows 7 that was being pushed at the time. On my older laptop, Windows 7 runs far better than XP Pro did. I don't have the Aero display, but 7 uses less resources, and contrary as to what is being reported, I have longer battery life. The system is also faster, having 2GB RAM. Since you have 4GB RAM, you can benefit highly from 64 bit Windows 7. Whichever version you select depends on your needs, one size doesn't fit all, but the majority are using Home Premium, followed by Professional. The older one, probably 32 bit will work fine, but it won't have Aero graphics. Many people says they wouldn't have 7 without it, but it pumped new life into my Dell Latitude D610. I did have to make a visit to Driver Max in order to get the latest possible drivers for it. If you buy a family pack, you can try it and see without activating, that will help in making a decision. You have a period to try it out. Hope this and all of the above information helps, and welcome to the forums, masplin. Should you need further help, post again, this is a friendly forum and there's usually someone around to help out. Best of luck to you.

 

[masplin]

Hi catilley1092


When you say "older one" do you mean the Dimension E521 or the older Dimensions? i was asusming the E521 with a dual 2.6Ghz processor would be ok for 32bit, but thought the older machines the HD were just cope.

You say you can buy a family pack and try it out. If I install Win7 on these old XP machines and it doesn't cope is it easy to uninstal and get bakc to XP so at least the pc functions? If I would have to reinstall XP that might be a problem as XP was pre-installed and not sure I have installation discs still.

 

[catilley1092]

Whichever one(s) that came with XP preinstalled are what I would consider to be the older ones. Usually, they won't fully support 100% of the graphic features of Windows 7. Meaning no Aero display. Many times you have to visit an outside source, such as Driver Max for the latest drivers. But that doesn't guarantee you will have all of the features. Drivers are not a replacement for newer hardware. You actually have two options on the table here. You can download VM Player from File Hippo, it will be in the lower left hand corner of the page under Developer Tools. After installing it, you can install Windows 7 inside of it and not touch your XP install. The other option, a full install, you need to use the backup program of your choice, backup the computer(s) in case you change your mind, then install Windows 7. I don't know exactly how old these system(s) are, but at the mention of XP, it suggested an older model. There are some Vista users who downgraded to XP, but it doesn't appear to be your case. But I have briefly described two options that you have. VM's are gaining ground, and are easy to use. A third option would be to shrink your XP partition and dual boot, if you don't want to use a VM. So there are two options on the table that will allow you to retain XP and not risk the install. But whatever you do, it is best to backup, and create a restore point before doing anything. Hope this helps.

 

[masplin]

I wasnt expecting to keep the XP machines as with only a 30-40GB HD they would be pretty full just with the OS. Do think I can get Win7 on these if I completely formatted them or am I wasting my time?

 

[masplin]

Just had a quick look at VM Player. So for my main pc that runs Vista Home Premium 32 bit I can I install Win7 64 bit to try it out? If so and it goes well I assume I would need to do a celan install of Win 7 and reinstall everything again?

 

[clifford_cooley]

It maybe time to purchase two new machines if you want Windows 7 on all of them.

I am running a Dell XPS 430 with Vista Home Premium SP2.

This machine has Windows 7 support and can be upgraded without problems. Drivers & Downloads for XPS/Dimension 430

Wife: Dell Dimension E521 Athalon 64 x 2 Dual 2.6GHz, 2 x 320 GB HD, 4 GB RAM. low level tasks but constantly crashing/freezing. Vista home Premium.
Child 1: Dimension E521 as above 2 GB of RAM. Runs like treacle. Vista home Premium

These machines have Vista 32-Bit and 64-Bit support and can be upgraded to Windows 7 32-Bit or 64-Bit with little problem if all the hardware is up to par. Drivers & Downloads for Dimension E521

Child 2 & 3: Older Dimension with only 30-40GB HD running WinXP. Expect they don't have the power to upgrade to Win 7 and cost more to rebuild than buy new. Horrible performance due to newer games being played.

These machines could be upgraded but in my opinion would be better served if left with XP.
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Other questions

You will not have any troubles communicating between 32-Bit and 64-Bit across a network. The only troubles I have is older OS's getting access rights on the newer OS's. My Win7_64-Bit will see XP_32-Bit just fine. Its the other way around that gets me, I haven't spent much time on the issue because it is not that important to me. From XP I get a login screen to login to Win7. Why I ask because I have no login data stored on my account. I am the sole user with no login screen but yet XP will ask for something when I try to access Win7 across the network. Simply leaving it blank and clicking continue will not work.

The 3PC license was available but I've not seen it available here recently. I do hope it is still available as I thought it was good to have a 3PC license for Windows.

---
PS: I hope the links work for you, I tried a direct link to your machine but Dell wants to be an _ss and make things difficult linking to more than one machine. On my side both links take me to the same page and I have to manually change to the second machine.

 

[Nibiru2012]

I wasnt expecting to keep the XP machines as with only a 30-40GB HD they would be pretty full just with the OS. Do think I can get Win7 on these if I completely formatted them or am I wasting my time?

Yes, you can. Windows 7 uses about 12-14GB of disk space though.

I highly recommend doing clean installs and reformat of the drive may be done during the Windows 7 install process.

Now your older video cards may not give you all of the Windows Aero features.

You can run just about any 32-bit software on an x64 system. There are some that won't run but most seem to be the AV and firewall programs.

If you're not familiar with VM software, I recommend staying away from it. Mostly it's used by the ubergeeks who like to test different operating systems.

 

[draceena]

Have you tried the Microsoft Upgrade Advisor? If not, give it a run on your computer and see what it says. I don't forsee any issues with your going to 64bit but if you did install it and have too many issues and wanted to then go to 32bit, it would require a total reinsatll of the Operating Syatem

 

[masplin]

Brilliant all the advice. One last question. The 2 dimesion E521 have a maximum of 4GB of RAM so is there any benefit from 64 bit? In fact I have read that some software may actually run slower on 64 bit. Should I
a) Install 64 bit on everything just for consistency
b) Install 32 bit on these 2 lower spec PCs

Mike

 

[clifford_cooley]

The 2 dimesion E521 have a maximum of 4GB of RAM so is there any benefit from 64 bit? In fact I have read that some software may actually run slower on 64 bit. Should I
a) Install 64 bit on everything just for consistency
b) Install 32 bit on these 2 lower spec PCs

Mike

The only thing I can say to this question, would be to tell you I am running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit with 2GB memory and a lesser CPU without any noticeable lag in speed.

As far as consistency, I see no reason why you should worry about the differences in 32-Bit and 64-Bit systems. But if you want to use all of the 4GB memory the 64-Bit OS is the only way.

 

[catilley1092]

Being that you have 4GB RAM on 2 of these machines, 64 bit is the only way to get the full benefit of it. 32 bit OS's only uses 3GB RAM by design. I cant see where you can go wrong with installing 64 bit Windows 7 on these computers. You will actually have a gain in performance, being that you can access all of your RAM. The lower spec system (the kids one), after seeing that there is only 30 to 40GB to work with, unless you're getting a family pack, it may be best to leave XP on it. If you're getting a family pack, I'd say yes, go for it. I don't even know for 100% that these packs are still being offered, there was something mentioned about the stock on hand in the ad. I don't want to see you spending a fortune for an OS for it and having to possibly pay to upgrade a lot of drivers. For a little more, you can catch a laptop on sale ready to roll. I'll leave that decision up to you, I'm just letting you know what you may be getting into, so you can see all of your options. Hopefully, we here have given you some information to go on. Best of luck to you.

 

[masplin]

Hi Clifford The Dell Drivers for the E521 only list Vista 64 bit not Windows 7. Is that the best thing to download if i'm going for 64 bit?

 

[Nibiru2012]

Vista drivers will work just fine with Windows 7.