Installing Vista on 'older' systems?

[Sunil Sood]

Does anyone have any experience of installing Vista on older machines and if
so, how you found it?

I have a couple of old base units here on which I am considering installing
Vista and was wondering if anyone else had got Vista working 'well'* on
similar machine specs:

Athlon 1000/1800
512MB RAM
32MB Geforce 2 MX

Now I realise that I woudn't get Aero working on these but if I changed the
graphics card to a 256MB Radeon 9550 and perhaps doubled the RAM - how do
you think these two machines would cope with Vista (inc Aero?), given the
processors are quite old (relatively speaking).

People's experiences of running Vista on machines with 512MB of RAM would
also be of interest to me..

(*i.e. in real life, not just meeting MS's miminum operating requirements!)

The reason I am asking is that I need a new monitor and am trying to decide
between upgrading one or both of these machines or buying a complete system
from Dell (something like a Core2duo 4300, 1024MB RAM and a 256MB Geforce
7300) rather than just a monitor.

Alternatively, if one/both of these machines could be upgraded sucessfully -
that would be a lot cheaper than buying a new base unit.. however, these two
machines are getting slightly 'long in the tooth' and if upgrading them
isn't going to be of much benefit, then a new system would seem to be the
way to go..

While I would like to 'experience' Aero/Vista as you can probably gather,
I'm not a 'gamer' and just need some machines for office/internet use +
watching video etc..

Any advice welcome.

Regards
Sunil

 

[kirk jim]

Hello Sunil.. you may want to look into this small utility that lets you
create custom Vista dvd's or even reduce the install into a cd in size, and
remove all the BLOAT vista has.
By doing this vista is lite and works better,

http://www.vlite.net/

whatever anyone says in here, that vista will run fine, fast or great with
512 mb ram, it is a frikin lie!
What they say is erronious misinterpatations of things they see and think
they know what is going on.

Unless you do a lite version and then disable services and other
things...then vista will run on 512 mb... but I would advise you to install
1 gb.

Good luck!

 

[Leythos]

Athlon 1000/1800
512MB RAM
32MB Geforce 2 MX

Now I realise that I woudn't get Aero working on these but if I changed the
graphics card to a 256MB Radeon 9550 and perhaps doubled the RAM - how do
you think these two machines would cope with Vista (inc Aero?), given the
processors are quite old (relatively speaking).

People's experiences of running Vista on machines with 512MB of RAM would
also be of interest to me..

Don't bother, vista doesn't offer anything worth having at this time, at
least not above XP.

A typical system needs to have a FAST CPU, 1GB or more of RAM, and a fast
video card just to be considered the minimum.

I have a 3.2ghz P4 (hyper-threaded), 2GB RAM, 128MB RAM video, 120GB
Drive, in my laptop and vista runs dang slow on it. It loaded vista on a
Dual Xeon 3ghz with 4GB RAM, 512MB Video card, and it also ran slowly.
Both machines used 600+MB (890MB on the 4GB system) at idle with just
vista installed.

I've moved back to XP (since they were just test machines) and can't find
any valid reason to move to Vista at this time.

--
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[J. H. Holliday]

Does anyone have any experience of installing Vista on older machines and
if
so, how you found it?

I have a couple of old base units here on which I am considering
installing
Vista and was wondering if anyone else had got Vista working 'well'* on
similar machine specs:

Athlon 1000/1800
512MB RAM
32MB Geforce 2 MX

Now I realise that I woudn't get Aero working on these but if I changed
the
graphics card to a 256MB Radeon 9550 and perhaps doubled the RAM - how do
you think these two machines would cope with Vista (inc Aero?), given the
processors are quite old (relatively speaking).


While I would like to 'experience' Aero/Vista as you can probably gather,
I'm not a 'gamer' and just need some machines for office/internet use +
watching video etc..

Any advice welcome.

Regards
Sunil

Here's my advice. If you want to "experience" vista, go down to you local
computer store, sit down at one of the machines on display-- and experience
to your heart's content. If you want to "experience" it at home, go buy
yourself another computer. A low-ender with vista is yours for just a few
hindered bucks....

Doc

 

[Chris Whelan]

Does anyone have any experience of installing Vista on older machines and
if so, how you found it?

I have a couple of old base units here on which I am considering
installing Vista and was wondering if anyone else had got Vista working
'well'* on similar machine specs:

Athlon 1000/1800
512MB RAM
32MB Geforce 2 MX

I tried it on an Athlon XP 3200, 1GB, and a GeForce 5200. It ran like a
slug.

It might be interesting to try it on one of your boxes, but IMHO it would
not be remotely usable.

Chris

 

[dgk]

Does anyone have any experience of installing Vista on older machines and if
so, how you found it?

I have a couple of old base units here on which I am considering installing
Vista and was wondering if anyone else had got Vista working 'well'* on
similar machine specs:

Athlon 1000/1800
512MB RAM
32MB Geforce 2 MX

Now I realise that I woudn't get Aero working on these but if I changed the
graphics card to a 256MB Radeon 9550 and perhaps doubled the RAM - how do
you think these two machines would cope with Vista (inc Aero?), given the
processors are quite old (relatively speaking).

People's experiences of running Vista on machines with 512MB of RAM would
also be of interest to me..

(*i.e. in real life, not just meeting MS's miminum operating requirements!)

The reason I am asking is that I need a new monitor and am trying to decide
between upgrading one or both of these machines or buying a complete system
from Dell (something like a Core2duo 4300, 1024MB RAM and a 256MB Geforce
7300) rather than just a monitor.

Alternatively, if one/both of these machines could be upgraded sucessfully -
that would be a lot cheaper than buying a new base unit.. however, these two
machines are getting slightly 'long in the tooth' and if upgrading them
isn't going to be of much benefit, then a new system would seem to be the
way to go..

While I would like to 'experience' Aero/Vista as you can probably gather,
I'm not a 'gamer' and just need some machines for office/internet use +
watching video etc..

Any advice welcome.

Regards
Sunil

I just bought a laptop that runs Vista Home Premium and it came with
1gb ram. There is a gadget that shows the CPU and memory utilization
and without doing anything the memory utilization hovers around 65%.
This laptop does not have bloatware installed. I think a system with
512 would be accessing the disk constantly. That would not be good.

One of the reasons I bought this laptop (Everex XT5000T) is because
the ram was a single 1gb stick (instead of two 512s), so I put in
another 1gb and it is quite fast. But I sure wouldn't run it with 512.

 

[Gaz]

Does anyone have any experience of installing Vista on older machines and
if
so, how you found it?

I have a couple of old base units here on which I am considering
installing
Vista and was wondering if anyone else had got Vista working 'well'* on
similar machine specs:

Athlon 1000/1800
512MB RAM
32MB Geforce 2 MX

Well, as you already know, you need 1gb of memory.

Now I realise that I woudn't get Aero working on these but if I changed
the
graphics card to a 256MB Radeon 9550 and perhaps doubled the RAM - how do
you think these two machines would cope with Vista (inc Aero?), given the
processors are quite old (relatively speaking).

People's experiences of running Vista on machines with 512MB of RAM would
also be of interest to me..

Painfull. It is pretty much intolerable. but the performance improvement at
1gb is substantial

Stick yourself a cheap geforce 6200 in there as well and you will be fine
for aero.

Gaz

 

[Gaz]

Don't bother, vista doesn't offer anything worth having at this time, at
least not above XP.

A typical system needs to have a FAST CPU, 1GB or more of RAM, and a fast
video card just to be considered the minimum.

I have a 3.2ghz P4 (hyper-threaded), 2GB RAM, 128MB RAM video, 120GB
Drive, in my laptop and vista runs dang slow on it. It loaded vista on a
Dual Xeon 3ghz with 4GB RAM, 512MB Video card, and it also ran slowly.
Both machines used 600+MB (890MB on the 4GB system) at idle with just
vista installed.

I found vista reasonably snappy on my centrino laptop with 9700mobile ati
graphics and 2gb of memory. Memory was the biggest improvement, going from
512mb to 2gb, i get something like 3.9 on the performance rating.

What is stopping me moving over, is more to do with the laziness of
transferring my installed programmes etc on my dual boot xp.

Gaz

 

[Leythos]

Painfull. It is pretty much intolerable. but the performance improvement
at 1gb is substantial

But the performance is still less than XP at 512MB and even XP with 1GB.

--
Want to know what PCBUTTS1 is really about?
*** WARNING - this links contains foul/pornographic content of an
abusive nature created by PCBUTTS1 and still hosted on his public
website ***
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http://www.pcbutts1.com/downloads/bughunter.htm

 

[Leythos]

I found vista reasonably snappy on my centrino laptop with 9700mobile ati
graphics and 2gb of memory. Memory was the biggest improvement, going from
512mb to 2gb, i get something like 3.9 on the performance rating.

I got 4+ on everything except video, but it's still slower than XP at all
levels, still doesn't offer anything of benefit, isn't worth the time/cost
to change.

--
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[Rod Davies]

Well my 9yo socket 7 (?) motherboard equipped PC upgraded to Vista Home
Premium no probs. BIOS was, according to upgrade advisor, a potential
issue...nup, no prob!

I have a 2.8ghz Celeron, nothing special there, and 2.75GB PC3300 Ram, not
quick stuff, but a fair bit of it! An old 30GB WD 7200 seek HDD (or
something like that!) and PCI - NOT PCI Express, slots, and USB1 (YES USB1 -
but that's going to change tomorrow!).

Vista for me (apart from some very minor quirks and a MAJOR networking issue
with wifey's XP Pro pc!) is SO MUCH better than having the same PC run XP
Pro its not funny.

Much quicker, intuitive, much more STABLE, prettier, and, did I say this
already?, quicker than XP.

Installer beware - but I went for the upgrade on an O-L-D box, and so far so
good.

Rgds

 

[John Barnes]

I had it installed on an AMD 3500+ 2 gig ram and was always waiting for
activities to stop hanging. Now using a 5200+ and it works great.

 

[Gaz]

But the performance is still less than XP at 512MB and even XP with 1GB.

I didnt find performance hit that bad. The os in a few ways felt as quick ,
i have to say though, turning aero off, the OS looked far uglier then XP.

Do you not find that XP though was quit a bit slower then 98se and w2k??
Turn off the visuals on XP though and you get a massive improvement in
speed.

Gaz

 

[Leythos]

Much quicker, intuitive, much more STABLE, prettier, and, did I say this
already?, quicker than XP.

Your older PC, as you said, can not possibly run Vista faster than it did
XP with the same applications. Since vista requires removal of many
applications that most people run under XP, your performance has changed.

Vista on every PC we've tested is slower, much, than XP Pro configured on
the same hardware.

--
Want to know what PCBUTTS1 is really about?
*** WARNING - this links contains foul/pornographic content of an
abusive nature created by PCBUTTS1 and still hosted on his public
website ***
http://www.pcbutts1.com/downloads/leythos.htm
http://www.pcbutts1.com/downloads/bughunter.htm

 

[Leythos]

I didnt find performance hit that bad. The os in a few ways felt as quick ,
i have to say though, turning aero off, the OS looked far uglier then XP.

Do you not find that XP though was quit a bit slower then 98se and w2k??
Turn off the visuals on XP though and you get a massive improvement in
speed.

I always turn off the visual toys, and yes, XP was/is slower than 2000.
Vista is slower than XP, even with the toys turned off.


--
Want to know what PCBUTTS1 is really about?
*** WARNING - this links contains foul/pornographic content of an
abusive nature created by PCBUTTS1 and still hosted on his public
website ***
http://www.pcbutts1.com/downloads/leythos.htm
http://www.pcbutts1.com/downloads/bughunter.htm

 

[Alun Harford]

Don't bother, vista doesn't offer anything worth having at this time, at
least not above XP.

A typical system needs to have a FAST CPU, 1GB or more of RAM, and a fast
video card just to be considered the minimum.

I have a 3.2ghz P4 (hyper-threaded), 2GB RAM, 128MB RAM video, 120GB
Drive, in my laptop and vista runs dang slow on it. It loaded vista on a
Dual Xeon 3ghz with 4GB RAM, 512MB Video card, and it also ran slowly.

Looks like you have driver issues then.

Both machines used 600+MB (890MB on the 4GB system) at idle with just
vista installed.

That'll be Superfetch. If you really want to have expensive memory
sitting there doing nothing instead of using it for caching, you can
turn off the Superfetch service.

Alun Harford

 

[Dustin Harper]

Kirk,

I don't agree with you often, but I do here:

whatever anyone says in here, that vista will run fine, fast or great with
512 mb ram, it is a frikin lie!

Vista can run with 512MB of RAM. The same was a car can run with 2
cylinders. Very slow and painful. Add that to the already low specs of the
machine, and it would be exruciating. NOT recommended. It would run it, but
it would run VERY slow.

--
Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com

--

 

[Kerry Brown]

Does anyone have any experience of installing Vista on older machines and
if
so, how you found it?

I have a couple of old base units here on which I am considering
installing
Vista and was wondering if anyone else had got Vista working 'well'* on
similar machine specs:

Athlon 1000/1800
512MB RAM
32MB Geforce 2 MX

Now I realise that I woudn't get Aero working on these but if I changed
the
graphics card to a 256MB Radeon 9550 and perhaps doubled the RAM - how do
you think these two machines would cope with Vista (inc Aero?), given the
processors are quite old (relatively speaking).

People's experiences of running Vista on machines with 512MB of RAM would
also be of interest to me..

(*i.e. in real life, not just meeting MS's miminum operating
requirements!)

The reason I am asking is that I need a new monitor and am trying to
decide
between upgrading one or both of these machines or buying a complete
system
from Dell (something like a Core2duo 4300, 1024MB RAM and a 256MB Geforce
7300) rather than just a monitor.

Alternatively, if one/both of these machines could be upgraded
sucessfully -
that would be a lot cheaper than buying a new base unit.. however, these
two
machines are getting slightly 'long in the tooth' and if upgrading them
isn't going to be of much benefit, then a new system would seem to be the
way to go..

While I would like to 'experience' Aero/Vista as you can probably gather,
I'm not a 'gamer' and just need some machines for office/internet use +
watching video etc..

I have tested Vista on many computers. If you upgrade yours to the ATI 9550
and 1 GB of RAM it will be slow but usable with Vista. I ran a test system
for several months during beta testing with a P4 1.6 GHz, ATI 9550, and 1 GB
of RAM. I was testing a typical business system to see what was needed for
it to run Vista. I started with a P4 1.6 GHz, ATI 7000, and 512 MB of RAM.
Once I upgraded it to the ATI 9550 and 1 GB it was perfectly acceptable
running as a business computer using Office 2007. It is however a dead end
street. That is pretty much as far as you can take that system. My
recommendation would be to spend a few hundred more and get a new system
designed for Vista.

 

[Richard Urban]

I have an Asus A7N8X2.0 Deluxe M/B, 2 gig of PC3200 Corsair Matched RAM and
a Nvidia 6600 (vanilla) video board with 256 meg of DDR RAM.

The system works fine and is just as snappy as when I dual boot into Windows
XP. I just have to wait a bit longer for the SuperFetch to be populated. The
more RAM you have, the longer it takes. All unused RAM is committed to
SuperFetch use till very little, if any, free RAM exists.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban MVP
Microsoft Windows Shell/User

 

[Leythos]

Looks like you have driver issues then.

Nope, used the Vista provided drivers and then the Nvidia drivers later,
same results. It's just vista is not a good performer.

That'll be Superfetch. If you really want to have expensive memory
sitting there doing nothing instead of using it for caching, you can
turn off the Superfetch service.

Even turing off indexing, etc... the machines still used more than 600MB
RAM without any third party or additional apps sitting there.
--
Want to know what PCBUTTS1 is really about?
*** WARNING - this links contains foul/pornographic content of an
abusive nature created by PCBUTTS1 and still hosted on his public
website ***
http://www.pcbutts1.com/downloads/leythos.htm
http://www.pcbutts1.com/downloads/bughunter.htm