I have a Dell Dimensions 2400 purchased in 2005. Can I install Windows 7? The thing is running very slow and I was wondering if it would be better to do a clean install of Windows 7 or just reinstall windows xp
Hi fleogran. the quickest and easiest way to see if you can run Win 7 is by running the upgrade advisor: Download details: Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor
For help after running Upgrade Advisor,
Can you post your specs.
Filling out System Specs
Probably re-install XP would be your best choice.
However, you can probably run WIn7 on it, if you must. It would be best to have at least 1GB of RAM in the machine. (The maximum is 2GB. That would cost about $100 at www.crucial.com. It's a little expensive, relatively, because it's DDR. Old RAM types cost more than current stuff of the same capacity.) There are Windows 7 drivers for your onboard graphics (Intel 945G chipset). If you wanted to add a graphics card, you'd be limited to PCI. (PCI Express is the current standard. It's completely different from PCI, and not compatible.) There are PCI graphics cards that fully support Win7, like those with the nVidia 8400 chips or the ATI Radeon 4350.
I doubt that you'd see any speedup with Win7, and it might be slower than XP on hardware like that. XP is still a very usable OS.
In my opinion, it makes little sense to spend much cash on a system that old. Continuing to use it is fine, but rather than hang upgrades on it, save the money for more up-to-date hardware.
Thanks guys. I think I will just do a clean install of XP. I am not a comp wizard, so how is the best way to do that? format the C drive and make a start-up disk before hand?
Hello fleogran, welcome to Seven Forums!
If you have no data on the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) that you want to save, have a look at the tutorial at the link below, it over-writes all old data on the HDD and gives you a clean slate to re-install Windows to.
Just make sure you have all the drivers for XP that you will need before you start the install process.
When you get to the screen after the first "black/any key to boot ... " screen press the shift + F10 keys to go straight to the DOS command window.
SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation
How to install Win XP, tutorial:
How to Install Windows XP
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