Win7 Real-World performance

[Jaybird180]

End of Support for WinXP is encouraging me to upgrade from my ancient Dell D620. We have a Dell Inspiron 1525 that came preloaded with Vista that gets no use. The HDD died and was replaced and Ubuntu was installed to get it back into operation, but alas, we get more productivity via Windows.

Well, not wanting to toss it out, I am considering purchasing 4GB. RAM for the 1525 and a fresh install of Win7 and will go with OpenOffice and/or LibreOffice and that will be our basic setup.

Besides Office type applications, we plan to use it for home financial stuff, lite video editing (Home videos), occasional ripping and converting multimedia and the D620 has had enough.

I am convinced that upgrading is the most economical and on paper the 1525 meets the hardware requirements, but I have no idea how it will actually perform.

Am I throwing $ away trying to save?

 

[RJM62]

End of Support for WinXP is encouraging me to upgrade from my ancient Dell D620. We have a Dell Inspiron 1525 that came preloaded with Vista that gets no use. The HDD died and was replaced and Ubuntu was installed to get it back into operation, but alas, we get more productivity via Windows.

Well, not wanting to toss it out, I am considering purchasing 4GB. RAM for the 1525 and a fresh install of Win7 and will go with OpenOffice and/or LibreOffice and that will be our basic setup.

Besides Office type applications, we plan to use it for home financial stuff, lite video editing (Home videos), occasional ripping and converting multimedia and the D620 has had enough.

I am convinced that upgrading is the most economical and on paper the 1525 meets the hardware requirements, but I have no idea how it will actually perform.

Am I throwing $ away trying to save?

What's the processor? And what would the total RAM be after upgrade?

Win7 64-bit will run sufficiently well on a decent CPU and 4Gb of RAM to handle most of the lightweight mission you describe. It won't be a speed demon, but it will be decent enough that it shouldn't provoke cuss words. For anything more than very light video editing, however, you'll want more RAM.

-Rich

 

[Sac Arrow]

It it ran XP, it will run Windows 7 just fine. We upgraded all of ours a while back.

 

[Jaybird180]

What's the processor? And what would the total RAM be after upgrade?

Win7 64-bit will run sufficiently well on a decent CPU and 4Gb of RAM to handle most of the lightweight mission you describe. It won't be a speed demon, but it will be decent enough that it shouldn't provoke cuss words. For anything more than very light video editing, however, you'll want more RAM.

-Rich

The 1525 supports 4GB Max. Processor, T2390, 1.86, 1MB, 2C Pentium Merom Dual Core, M0

It it ran XP, it will run Windows 7 just fine. We upgraded all of ours a while back.

I can't imagine running Win7 on my D620 but if it will....that thing is probably full of junk anyhow which is why it is so slow. Used to be faster.

 

[Norman]

I upgraded from Vista Home Premium, which I might add was working well, to Windows 7 Professional on a clean install. Already had Office 2007, so I stuck with that. The processor is a dual core Intel, and I added 2 gig of RAM , so it now has 4. Everything seems to be working well. Total cost was less than $200.00.

 

[RJM62]

The 1525 supports 4GB Max. Processor, T2390, 1.86, 1MB, 2C Pentium Merom Dual Core, M0

That should work. Won't be a speed demon on graphics-intensive stuff, but for SDA it should work okay.

I can't imagine running Win7 on my D620 but if it will....that thing is probably full of junk anyhow which is why it is so slow. Used to be faster.

On a Centrino? Maybe. I never tried it. It would probably boot up and run, but I doubt it would be breaking any speed records.

-Rich

 

[Jaybird180]

I got Dell to send me the Vista OS and a drivers disk for the 1525 and I thought it would be smooth sailing. Well, it hasn't been.

3 issues:
1-It's prompting for a HW driver (modem) that it cannot install. I ignored and got that to stop popping up (I hope)
2-Unable to get Windowsupdate to run
I manually installed SP1 & SP2, still no joy - no KB matches the error code given (8024A000)
Unable to install the 'Fix-It', as it will not install Powershell
3-It needs a new battery, it's dependent upon AC Power (small issue)

Is Vista "evil", much like WinME was?

I also noted that it was 32-bit Vista they sent, but it matched the Model #, so

and it never prompted for the License key

 

[RJM62]

I got Dell to send me the Vista OS and a drivers disk for the 1525 and I thought it would be smooth sailing. Well, it hasn't been.

3 issues:
1-It's prompting for a HW driver (modem) that it cannot install. I ignored and got that to stop popping up (I hope)
2-Unable to get Windowsupdate to run
I manually installed SP1 & SP2, still no joy - no KB matches the error code given (8024A000)
Unable to install the 'Fix-It', as it will not install Powershell
3-It needs a new battery, it's dependent upon AC Power (small issue)

Is Vista "evil", much like WinME was?

I also noted that it was 32-bit Vista they sent, but it matched the Model #, so

and it never prompted for the License key

It wasn't as bad as WinMe. That was a complete nightmare. But I don't think I ever did a Vista installation or upgrade that went smoothly, either. I really tried to avoid it, but once in a while a client's proprietary software provider would require it.

Most of the problems, in my opinion, had to do with UAC -- a good idea that wasn't ready for prime time. Turning UAC off solved a whole lot of problems (but also made the system much more vulnerable).

As for your error, there are many possible causes, but this is about the most comprehensive treatment I could find on Microsoft's site or the Interwebs:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...8024a000/562845f3-78d5-42a0-bed5-e3fd39f01df7

I also recall that on Dells, that problem could sometimes be cleared up by updating the lower-level device drivers, particularly the chipset driver. Why? I don't remember. I used to know, but when I sold my consulting business and moved to the boonies, I flushed that sort of information out of my brain cache.

Luckily, Dell keeps all its drivers online forever, so you should be able to go to their site and download the latest Vista drivers for that machine. Install the latest chipset driver first, and then restart the machine and install the rest.

Another thing that sometimes fixed these sorts of problems (in general, not just on Dells) was reinstalling the Windows Installer. You can download it from

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942288

It should have been part of one of the Vista SPs, but I remember quite a few cases where it got hosed somewhere along the line. In any event, reinstalling it won't hurt anything, and might help.

-Rich

 

[Jaybird180]

Another thing that sometimes fixed these sorts of problems (in general, not just on Dells) was reinstalling the Windows Installer. You can download it from

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942288

It should have been part of one of the Vista SPs, but I remember quite a few cases where it got hosed somewhere along the line. In any event, reinstalling it won't hurt anything, and might help.

-Rich

Installer encountered an error: 0xc8000222 trying to install the Installer

At least I did get the HW driver and BIOS issues resolved. It's running another Dell diagnostic now.

Manually stopping services produced Error code: 5

Windoze stuff doesn't want to install...

We'll get there. I haven't given up yet.

 

[Henning]

I bought a new Sony Viao with Win 8.1, 6GB RAM, an i5 processor, touch screen, and backlit keyboard for $800; everything works perfect. How much is your time worth? Or do you do this just for fun?

 

[Jaybird180]

I couldn't sleep last night so I was at it. There is definitely a point where it makes sense to go with a new product, as I have been holding off other things I need to do with the "new" computer.

 

[winrose46]

I come from having built my first PC, to modifying system motherboards; however, given the cost of new computers I have not built my last 3 computers. Tiger Direct has desktop computers from less than $400. Time and frustration associated with building or rebuilding your own with the current price of the PCs is not cost effective.

 

[Ghery]

It it ran XP, it will run Windows 7 just fine. We upgraded all of ours a while back.

Well, maybe. Many years ago I was in a meeting where a guy from Microsoft was demonstrating Vista, before Vista was released. He had a pair of laptops. One with 512 kBytes of RAM and one with 2 GBytes (I think, might have been more) or RAM. I asked about memory requirements as I was getting ready to build a new tower system and got the response that Vista would run in 512 kBytes, but "you did want to do something else, as well, didn't you?" 2 Gbytes was a much better solution. I would suspect about the same would go for Windows 7

Now, I picked up a new Intel NUC and am building a system around it. The extra hardware should show up today and the OS (Windows 8.1) tomorrow. I'm putting 8 GBytes of RAM in this thing. Along with a solid state disc (OS and a few other things) and a 1 TByte hard drive. I'll use an existing USB keyboard and mouse for initial development, but as I may install this in the family room and use the 57 inch TV as the display I'll look at a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard so I don't have to deal with cables. The keyboard will be bigger than the NUC.

 

[Jaybird180]

Forgot to report back-

Issue was resolved by reinstalling Windows. I'm just T'd off I didn't think of that sooner

 

[Ghery]

The NUC is up and running. Installing Windows 8.1 from scratch was simple. Created a bootable image on a memory stick (the NUC doesn't have a CD-ROM drive and I wasn't going to buy one with a USB interface). Started it up with the drive in a USB port and away it went. Turns out that the mouse and keyboard I had downstairs were wireless, so just plugged their radio hub into a USB port. Works great.