Will Win 7 run okay?

[metallicamike]

I just got a comp for free. It is a Compaq Evo with 1GB of RAM, a GeForce 7600, and an Intel Pentium 4. I really want windows 7, but my friend told me it wouldn't run very well. But i just wanted to make sure.

Thanks!

[Post Monkeh]

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/system-requirements.aspx

looks like it would run, but you're just above the minimum requirements so i wouldn't be expecting to do anything hardcore.

[AllRadioisDead]

Give it a shot. :)

[chessnerd]

Windows 7 on my laptop typically idles at 800 MB of RAM, so it'll be a tight fit but should be able to install and run. Disabling Aero in favor of Basic or Classic would help a bit, but I'd recommend upgrading to 2 GB of RAM. My 7 install rarely breaks 1.4 GB when multitasking with web browsing, listening to music, and word processing so 2 GB should work fine. However, don't expect to be able to do any hardcore gaming unless you've got 3-4 GB of RAM.

[cascade9]

I've tried win7 on similar specs and it was too sluggish for me (P4 3.0, 1GB DDR400, GT6600).

Some people dont really notice what I would call 'sluggish' so it might be OK for you.

[swoll1980]

seems like a waste of money to pay $100+ for a win7 licence. If it barley meets the minimum requirements, use the version that came with it.

[Post Monkeh]

Windows 7 on my laptop typically idles at 800 MB of RAM, so it'll be a tight fit but should be able to install and run. Disabling Aero in favor of Basic or Classic would help a bit, but I'd recommend upgrading to 2 GB of RAM. My 7 install rarely breaks 1.4 GB when multitasking with web browsing, listening to music, and word processing so 2 GB should work fine. However, don't expect to be able to do any hardcore gaming unless you've got 3-4 GB of RAM.

no amount of memory would make that rig a gaming powerhouse.

[CharlesA]

seems like a waste of money to pay $100+ for a win7 licence. If it barley meets the minimum requirements, use the version that came with it.

This.

I was able to get a copy of Win7 Pro x86 down to ~500-600MB of RAM used by uninstalling IE and turning off crap that I wouldn't use, like offline files, and windows search.

[-grubby]

I had Windows 7 running fine on an AMD Sempron 1.8 GHz, with 768 MB of ram and GeForce 6100. To each their own, though, and if I had any computers like that now I'd probably run ubuntu on them

[NightwishFan]

I would run my own stuff of course, but if Windows 7 is half of what Microsoft says it is then it will run on that machine. If you want it enough give it a go. Good luck! I hope it runs for you whatever OS you choose.

[derekeverett]

Assuming that the computer is running some version of windows now.. you can download, install and run the Windows 7 upgrade adviser. It will check out your system and give you all the information you will need as to whether or not your system is able to run Win7.

I've used it a couple times. It's safe and fairly quick.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1B544E90-7659-4BD9-9E51-2497C146AF15&displaylang=en

[MasterNetra]

It will be fine! It could run on a 512MB's at install if you have less then 1GB Aero and the extra crap in general is disabled. I had it running fine on a desktop with 768MB of ram. Vanilla it idled around 200-250MB. Granted you probably couldn't do any hardcore stuff on 512mb but meh

[NightwishFan]

Boo.. I tried to run the Upgrade Advisor in wine and it said I need .net framework... That would have made a cool youtube video.

[Jesus_Valdez]

Is my understanding that Microsoft has a tool that let you know if Win 7 is going to run or not.

On the other hand, I think there's only one way to know it, I think that You can install it and run it for a while before it ask you for a valid key, only if it only runs a couple of time probably is all the time that you'll need to make up your mind.

And like others said, is always possible to turn effects off and uninstall parts of windows in order to make it run smother.

[Khakilang]

I got Dual core CP and 1.5GB RAM and I dare not even try running Window 7 because once you add in other software like MS Office and some 3D game and the computer will get stuck so its better off with Ubuntu.

[skymera]

I run Windows 7 Professional 64bit.

On bootup it uses about 1.1GB RAM with 1GB paged, slowly growing to 1.5GB with 1GB paged.
After a couple hours this is at 2GB RAM with 1-2GB paged.

Usually with Firefox, WLM, WMP and VLC occassionaly.

[ctrlmd]

huh
im running windows 7 for about 5months with p4 3.0g, 7300gs, and 3g rams
without any kind of problem

[forrestcupp]

It's funny that someone comes to a Linux forum to ask about a Windows 7 question. It's also funny that he actually got this many informative responses.

[Mark Phelps]

I just got a comp for free. It is a Compaq Evo with 1GB of RAM, a GeForce 7600, and an Intel Pentium 4. I really want windows 7, but my friend told me it wouldn't run very well. But i just wanted to make sure.

Thanks!

Why are you coming here with this question?

Go to sevenforums.com (a Win7 forum) and ask the question there.

BTW, I'm running Win7 on a 1.7GHz Centrino with 1.5GB of memory and it works fine. 1GB is a bit tight -- would upgrade it to 2GB if you have the room and $$.

[5dolla]

i dunno man I have seen lots of people claiming they can run window 7 on older
hardware. Considering the fact that windows 7 is basically vista sp3 and from experience
ive seen eat up just as much as vista sp2 in resources...... I cant believe these claims
that it works flawlessly on older hardware. IMO if it dosent work fast and snappy then....
it dosent work. I would say stick to linux or go back to good ol xp nothin wrong with xp.
dx10 or 11 on a 7600 is a ftl anyway. Oh and win 7 net book remix sucks imo. Man if only
game devs would wake and smell the kernel :popcorn:

[Kevbert]

Maybe, but don't expect to run old XP programs on it.

[swoll1980]

i dunno man I have seen lots of people claiming they can run window 7 on older
hardware. Considering the fact that windows 7 is basically vista sp3 and from experience
ive seen eat up just as much as vista sp2 in resources...... I cant believe these claims
that it works flawlessly on older hardware. IMO if it dosent work fast and snappy then....
it dosent work. I would say stick to linux or go back to good ol xp nothin wrong with xp.
dx10 or 11 on a 7600 is a ftl anyway. Oh and win 7 net book remix sucks imo. Man if only
game devs would wake and smell the kernel :popcorn:

I heard you could run XP on a 650MHz celeron and 128MB of RAM. I can say, w/o a doubt, that this is not true. After power up, it took about 5 minutes to get to an unusable desktop.

[5dolla]

I heard you could run XP on a 650MHz celeron and 128MB of RAM. I can say, w/o a doubt, that this is not true. After power up, it took about 5 minutes to get to an unusable desktop.

I agree with you

[cascade9]

I heard you could run XP on a 650MHz celeron and 128MB of RAM. I can say, w/o a doubt, that this is not true. After power up, it took about 5 minutes to get to an unusable desktop.

Umm......it ran. So it was true.

*everyone can laugh at this is they want, I did it for fun* I've run winXP on a P2-233, 128MB. It was really, really really slow, boot times appraoching 30 minutes, and very painful on the desktop once you go in, but it ran.

5 mintue boot-up times isnt that bad, really, it took that long for my cyrix 200+, 16MB win98SE box to boot. *snickers* youth of today, its alway 'now, now now!' :P

[BigCityCat]

I could be wrong but I think the tool is really designed to make sure you are running a genuine version of windows so you can do the upgrade. I know I put the upgrade disk in and booted from it and could not install. It was mandatory to run the compatabilty check. i'm not sayin that it doesn't do exactly what it is stated to do. I just think there is an alterior motive for the compatabilty tool.

[doorknob60]

I heard you could run XP on a 650MHz celeron and 128MB of RAM. I can say, w/o a doubt, that this is not true. After power up, it took about 5 minutes to get to an unusable desktop.
I've ran XP on a AMD K6-2 500 Mhz and 128 MB of RAM, and it ran fan. Might have helped that I never connected that computer to the internet though, just played some offline games on it...but still, as far as I can remember it worked well.

[MasterNetra]

I got Dual core CP and 1.5GB RAM and I dare not even try running Window 7 because once you add in other software like MS Office and some 3D game and the computer will get stuck so its better off with Ubuntu.

Well don't run MS Office, but no when I tried it on both my laptop which has 1GB and my old 2002 Gateway 500se (which has 768MB of ram) windows 7 had no trouble running, even runs Morrowind and Oblivion better then Windows Xp does..or at least for me it did. Though again with the desktop after I had installed windows 7, windows automatically disabled Aero and its resource hungry components sense it had less then 1GB of ram. It idle (vanilla) around 200-250MB. It really is better then Vista. But that said I still prefer the freedom that comes from running linux. Currently got Lucid on the desktop and PCLinuxOS Beta 2 on my Laptop.
-Also note the version of Win7 was ultimate, I don't know how home edition would fair, assuming there would be much if any difference at all.

[derekeverett]

I am so tired of people comparing win7 to a Vista "sp3"..

I have used both on the same machine recently. win7 uses almost half the resources.. after a few hours running is remarkably more stable than Vista and the new taskbar is brilliant to work with.

Just because they both ship with Aero interface doesn't make them the same.

Win7 is a HUGE improvement. Vista made me miss OSX. I think I like win7 better than OSX.

Ubuntu gets it's own special category! ;)

[_h_]

I run Windows 7 Professional 64bit.

On bootup it uses about 1.1GB RAM with 1GB paged, slowly growing to 1.5GB with 1GB paged.
After a couple hours this is at 2GB RAM with 1-2GB paged.

Usually with Firefox, WLM, WMP and VLC occassionaly.

That's weird. When I had Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit, I had it running cold booted at less than 300mb of RAM and barely ever touched my total 3GB of RAM even with uptimes of weeks.

[madjr]

well ubuntu, xubuntu and lubuntu should work well on it

[jrusso2]

This is Microsofts recommendations for the minimum needed.

If you want to run Windows 7 on your PC, here's what it takes:
1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

[J_Stanton]

I heard you could run XP on a 650MHz celeron and 128MB of RAM. I can say, w/o a doubt, that this is not true. After power up, it took about 5 minutes to get to an unusable desktop.

i have seen a computer with those specs running xp. yes it was very slow, but not unusable. you just have to tweak the heck out of it. someone actually got xp to run on 32mb ram. http://winhistory.de/more/386/xpmini_eng.htm

[MasterNetra]

This is Microsofts recommendations for the minimum needed.

If you want to run Windows 7 on your PC, here's what it takes:
1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Again it is their "Recommendation" if you want to run it with Aero enabled then yes I would agree with that.

[cascade9]

This is Microsofts recommendations for the minimum needed.

If you want to run Windows 7 on your PC, here's what it takes:
1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Yes, thats what they say. I wouldnt run windows 7 on the minimum. Like I said on page 1, when I tried on something with far more than the recommened specs for win7 it was way to sluggish for me. Then again, what I call sluggish might be fine for other people.

Microsoft also say this about windows xp-


Here's What You Need to Use Windows XP Professional

•PC with 300 megahertz or higher processor clock speed recommended; 233 MHz minimum required (single or dual processor system);* Intel Pentium/Celeron family, or AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended
•128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)
•1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available hard disk space*
•Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution video adapter and monitor
•CD-ROM or DVD drive
•Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device


http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sysreqs/pro.mspx

Same specs for home-

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sysreqs/home.mspx

Windows 95-


System requirements for installing Windows 95:

Personal computer with a 386DX or higher processor (486 recommended)
4 megabytes (MB) of memory (8 MB recommended)
Typical hard disk space required to upgrade to Windows 95: 35-40 MB The actual requirement varies depending on the features you choose to install.
Typical hard disk space required to install Windows 95 on a clean system: 50-55 MB The actual requirement varies depending on the features you choose to install.
One 3.5-inch high-density floppy disk drive
VGA or higher resolution (256-color SVGA recommended)



http://support.microsoft.com/kb/138349

What microsoft say as a 'minimum' is awful to have XP on IMO. Even the 'recommened' specs are nasty to run XP on. Same with windows 95. I always take microsofts 'minimum' requirements with a large sack of salt :P

[cguy]

I just got a comp for free. It is a Compaq Evo with 1GB of RAM, a GeForce 7600, and an Intel Pentium 4. I really want windows 7, but my friend told me it wouldn't run very well. But i just wanted to make sure.

Thanks!

It may run OK at first, but in the long run it will be crap.
Just like Windows XP.

I get annoyed every time I have to use my sister's W7 laptop.