Please help anyone OS(Operating System) choice?

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m_jani

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Apr 12, 2013
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I am using a pretty old laptop aged about 5 years which came with Windows Vista pre-installed. My product specifications are these:

CPU: 1.46 GHz Intel Pentium dual core processor T2310, 1 MB L2 Cache

Memory: 2 GB DDR2 RAM

Video Graphics : Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100( Mobile Intel 965 Express Chipset)

Hard Drive : 500 GB (5400 rpm)- My Operating System(OS) partition will about 170 GB.

(NOTE: More info:-

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01346512&tmp_task=prodinfoCategory&cc=in&dlc=en&lang=en&lc=en&product=3593072

)

I have used all the OS's from XP to Windows 8.

Am looking for performance(top priority) and productivity(which Windows 7 & 8 provides) for my laptop, have tried each and every tweaks and cleaning, but find Windows 7 not to be smooth enough.

Am confused which OS must I choose from XP, Vista, WIndows 7, Windows 8?!


Please help everyone?

More details:

Will be using this model for the latest softwares, games a little bit, really heavy internet browsing, office apps and watching movies.

No SSD recommendations please!

Only Windows OS ( from XP till Windows 8) please as majority of my programs work with it only!
 
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geofelt

geofelt

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Oct 9, 2006
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Your 2gb is a big limiting factor. It appears that you can not increase it.
Your problem is not with vista.

The only upgrade that I can see to improve performance would be to replace your hard drive with a SSD.
And... the improvement will be very apparent.
 
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jackson1420

jackson1420

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Agreed that is a very old system. At least 4 or more generations behind.

Low end stuff in the $350 dollar range comes with 10 times the power.

Windows 7 is the best. Windows Vista wastes RAM. Windows XP is highly insecure, slow and runs of the FAT 32 file system. Limiting you to files less than 4GB in size each - so no HD content.

Windows 8 is just a shot and miss in my opinion and unless you have a pretty glossy screen with touch abilities that is still a waste.

Get used to Windows 7 or go for an Ubuntu OS.

Your processing power is just so low that even an SSD or RAM upgrade would barely band aid the issue.

You use you browser heavy? Well 2gb of RAM is your bottleneck straight away. Next is you only have two cores. When I open even 35+ browsers at once I have all my 8 cores at nearly %90 load in an i7 Ivy bridge CPU. It only last a couple seconds but imagine how much faster that is when your system would freeze up and be unresponsive.

Sorry for even browsing you will run into issues.
 
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ram1009

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I don't disagree with your conclusions but WXP is not limited to FAT 32.
 
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sincreator

sincreator

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I agree that Windows 7 is the best current OS, but not with anything else in that paragraph... First off Windows Vista fully updated is Windows 7 basically. The memory issues were fixed a LONG time ago through updates/service packs. Windows XP does not run off Fat 32 either. It's NTFS. Im using Win NT/2000 right now from my work computer and it's NTFS. lol. About XP being insecure compared to the rest I'm not really sure, but ALOT of businesses still use it so can't be too bad...

To the original poster, I would probally use XP on an older system such as yours. It's a little lighter in the resources department, and it was the OS that was designed around the hardware at that time. Your computer for example.
 
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jackson1420

jackson1420

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You're right XP can be installed as NTFS but many have been installed under FAT32 as well. It depends on who did it.

Many businesses aren't getting good IT consultation by keeping XP, the only reason you keep it is for legacy programs. It makes administration much easier and efficient than Windows XP. Machines run faster on 7 period. Don't try to argue that you are doing something wrong if you experience the opposite. I hate XP and Vista, Vista works the same as 7 but you aren't getting any advantages by choosing Vista over 7. I still don't like having to either prepare a deployable image or go on an updating spree upon installation. Why try to backup Vista? It never got traction anyway. If you really know how to secure the borders then you can leave a passwordless system up then..

 
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jackson1420

jackson1420

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Uhh Windows XP can be installed under FAT32. Not only NTFS...

I know this because I have this last week I upgraded a company to Windows 7 and some of the older XP machines had it formatted as FAT32

And of course NT/2000 has NTFS.

Hence the name NT!


 
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dodger46

dodger46

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Can only reply based on personal experience. I upgraded my neighbour's HP Pavilion 6720s which is about the same spec/vintage as the C716TU to Windows 8 (As it was cheap! Upgrade still is...). The improvement was remarkable, faster, lighter, and as they have a young family, way more fun with the Apps store. If you sign up for a Microsoft Account you can still download Win 8 Evaluation and run it for 90 days to see if it suits...
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-in/evalcenter/jj554510.aspx
 
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m_jani

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Apr 12, 2013
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A sincere thanks to EACH one of you for all the replies!
It was nice to read the discussion and suggestions from you all!

For now I have decided to install Windows 7 or Windows 8.

Well I do agree my CPU power is low, but am sure RAM is adequate enough.
No wonder but Windows 8 is much less memory-intensive than Windows 7!

Maybe I dont have proper drivers working for my Windows 7 or 8(using HP drivers in compatibility mode as they were originally made for Vista; HP doesn't have drivers for any other OS except for Vista :(). My drivers get partially installed in OS's other than Vista.

For example, my 'chipset drivers installation package' installs all the drivers perfectly for all the controllers present in my laptop for Vista OS but the results are not the same with Windows 7 or 8-there only drivers for one or two controllers get installed.

So, is there something I can do to make my original Vista drivers work 100% with Windows 7 or 8 or even XP to gain utmost performance from my laptop?

Any other suggestions are welcome!

Thanks for the replies everyone!:)
 
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jackson1420

jackson1420

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If compatibility mode doesn't resolve the issue then I think that is as far as you can go.

Windows 7 and 8 have the close to the same driver set and compatibility settings in general. Which items are missing drivers? It may be useless such as blue tooth or something...

You can never have enough RAM :)

 
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m_jani

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Ok, maybe will have to live with it!

The Chipset drivers( for Motherboard) and the Intel Matrix Storage Manager( for my SATA HDD) are the only two drivers which are not getting installed fully.
Bluetooth is not present on my laptop so its not an issue.
 
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m_jani

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Have tried out 'Upgrade' method, but find the laptop to be slower than a fresh installation.
Thus, I always perform a 'Clean-install'.
 
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dodger46

dodger46

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Assuming yellow exclamation marks beside Items in Device Manager, have you tried searching the PCI data base using the VEN & DEV numbers from the Details tab/Hardware ID when you Rt click the Item and choose Properties? You may find links to updated drivers there from the manufacturers. (Equally you may be re-directed back to HP Vista drivers!)
http://www.pcidatabase.com/


 
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SimulationMan32

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I know that with an old laptop that I have since gotten rid of, I was also missing those type of drivers. I would see the yellow exclamation in device manager on windows 7, but, the computer ran fine. It was maybe a little bit slower but hardly noticeable. With an older system like that, you really can't prevent it from slowing down. I like to run CCleaner on those older systems, especially. I find it can really improve performance.
 
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m_jani

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Apr 12, 2013
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Sorry for a late reply as was out of my city where internet connection was not upto the mark!
Well, thanks for the link!
There aren't any yellow exclamation marks present after I install my Vista drivers on any other OS; just my thought maybe that would be the reason to gain more performance from my laptop.
 
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m_jani

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It was great communicating with each and every one of you and reading out the suggestions & advices regarding my question.

I have done much of research till now and my last step was to install 'Windows 8' on my laptop with my Vista drivers and the Windows 7 graphics driver(from Intel website) in compatibility mode.

Except for my 'HP Quicklaunch button drivers' which after trying much with settings didn't get installed but got it working after performing 'Microsoft Update'. It handled really well.

I did make sure in Windows 8 to 'turn off' automatically get best device drivers settings so that no device drivers would get downloaded and installed/updated without my permission, just to make sure nothing gets ruined.

Am using my Windows 8 with better performance than Windows 7( as Aero is partially present, resources are consumed less) past two days and its working out superb!:)

For more productivity, I have further installed Start is back, tweaked it a little bit and yes, my Start Menu is back from Windows 7. (ref:http://www.startisback.com/)
Its much better than Start8!

Just a minor issue was present with one of my old games named 'Microsoft Midtown Madness 2' which was lagging heavily, but solved it after applyling compatibilty mode of Windows 95.

Rest of my programs are working well no problems at all. And those which have problems are easily solved by applying compatibility mode of Windows 7.

Thanks to everyone here and 'Microsoft' as well!
 
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