Windows 7: Performance issues jumping from WinXP to Win7

I've an old PC (Asus A8N motherboard + AMD Athon 64 3000 CPU + 1GB RAM + GeForce6600) but it has always been enough for me because I just use it for MSN, facebook, email, youtube and ocasionally downloading stuff. I was perfectly happy with its speed when I used WinXP, but then I had an imposible-to-remove virus so I decided to reinstall Windows, and a friend told me one cannot install XP anymore because it won't let you run Windows Update, so I decided to put in Windows 7 Ultimate 64bits SP1 instead... and I now started having performance issues.

I used to be able to open 3-4 windows of Websites with flash video and they'd all work simultaneously very well. Now just 1 window of flash video is jerky and slow and takes CPU usage to 60-70%, while 2 windows can almost make my PC freeze. Also whenever I open a youtube music video within facebook, I cannot hover the mouse over it because the layer on the video will slow down so much that the music will cut off! Something else I noticed is that the PC is continuously loading stuff from the hard drive. I don't even know what it's doing but hard drive light keeps blinking and it slows everything down. Also Windows Mail is noticeably slower than its XP peer (Outlook Express) and takes a long time to even open. It's not a virus: I'm clean per Avast.

I thought this could be due to motherboard drivers so I went to Asus website, but it seems they don't do drivers for Windows 7 for this motherboard. I did download and install Geforce drivers. I checked Harware "device manager" and it sees 3 unknown devices, but I don't know what they are since everything is working out fine for me (printer, sound, mouse, keyboard, USB drives)

I went to "evaluate system speed" within windows and I got: CPU 3.7 / memory 4.5 / desktop graphics 2.9 / game graphics 3.5 / main hard drive 5.5 - overall: 2.9 (due to desktop graphics). I also checked on "performance issues" and it lists "adjusting visual configuration can improve system speed: deactivate transparence or change to Windows 7 basic color configuration.". I did change to Windows 7 basic color configuration, but the performance issues listed above stay the same.

Any ideas? Thanks a lot!
Facundo

Hi,

Perhaps your older hardware isn't capable of running Windows 7 Ultimate....usually you should run the System Readiness Tool first to check that.

However, post your system specifications using this tutorial, and maybe we can help out:

System Info - See Your System Specs

Regards,
Golden

hello .... sorry I took long to answer, but I posted system specs using the tool as you suggested. How can you help me? thank you!

Am I reading your System Specs correctly - you have 1GB of RAM? If so, you definitely need more!

Yup, You really need more RAM than 1GB!

Agreed - running Windows 7 itself on 1GB RAM will do fine, but running more than a few apps on top of it will require more (at least 2GB) if you want any kind of performance. By the way, assuming your copy of XP is legitimate (and not pirated), you can install and activate Windows XP for another year and a half (April 2014) and still receive updates.

Try Readyboost. It isn't going to do wonders for your system, but it will probably help. I agree with the people above. You need more ram. 2gb for 32 bit Windows 7 and 4gb is my recommended amount for 64 bit.

How to set up Readyboost: ReadyBoost - Setup and Use