Can i upgrade??

Hi everyone,

I purchased an older, but loaded HP Special Edition laptop to both help the seller with some $$$ and treat myself to a laptop that I once helped rid of a virus...I was so impressed with the performance of this loaded older system that I held out hope that I could one day have it for my own, and now I do. There's nothing I would love more than to get it streamlined again (it is woefully bogged own and my be reinfected) and hopefully upgraded to Win7, or at the very least restored to a clean copy of XP Pro with SP 2.

I think it's pretty obvious, to me anyway, that this may have been HP's top of the line model when it first retailed. I'd really appreciate help with running the small program on this site that will detail everything installed when I first post. FWIW, I was attempting to run a fresh copy of a Microsoft Security Essentials full scan and I hadn't even passed 4% scanned after 1.5 hours, so I think something's amiss.

Can someone please give me some help and point me in the direction I need to go?

Thank so much!!

sbuxman

The two machines I have upgraded form XP to W7 have been very impressive performance wise. A Athlon 64x2 4400+ and a T8300 in a Dell lap top. The biggest problem was finding 64 bit drivers for the Dell and the old Athlon mb (939 socket) does not support AHIC, so SSD performance is down from what it could be, still faster than a spinner.

W7 is definitely faster loading than XP and seems much more stable, worth the cost IMHO. Go 64 bit if you can get drivers.

sbuxman said:

...FWIW, I was attempting to run a fresh copy of a Microsoft Security Essentials full scan and I hadn't even passed 4% scanned after 1.5 hours, so I think something's amiss.

for a 'full scan', that time could be normal.

The problem with HP's is they have the worst load of bloatware in the industry, so the best thing you can do for it is to do a Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 which steps would be the same for XP except you'd use an OEM channel disk with SP3 for your licensed version.

To get an idea of any issues with Win7 run Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. To make it function better, turn off everything in msconfig>startup and Services (after hiding all MS Services) except a lightweight AV like MSE or Avast.

Drivers are never an issue with Win7 which has most of them in the installer, or provided when you run all rounds of Important and Optional Windows Updates after install.

To further clean up the present install you can use the same steps as in Clean Up Factory Bloatware.

You can shrink C using Partition wizard bootable CD to make space for a Dual Boot of Win7 to compare and decide. Later we can help you remove XP if you want.

Partition Wizard Resize Partition Video Help.
Clean Install Windows 7