Looking to Super Tweak my Win 7 to make it XP like

[Dizaster]

Hello everybody, I just registered my account here in the hopes I could find some very useful information about my device. I'm looking to tweak every bit of my windows 7 so I can squeeze every bit of juice out of it.. I notice that my Windows XP with 3 Gigs of ram is waaaaaaaay faster then my 7 with 4 gigs of ram installed. I'm willing to try any and everything to super speed up my laptop. I've had it for a while and reformatted plenty of times but i'm looking for some amazing tweaks to perform here.. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Brink]

Hello Dizaster, and welcome to Seven Forums.

If you like, here's a list of items that can help improve performance.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/11728-optimize-windows-7-a.html

 

[Dizaster]

Hey thanks bro I appreciate that, I've used some of those tweaks when suddenly i stopped dead in my tracks.. would it be a good idea if I dual booted windows XP professional instead? I have an installation CD here. Would it then use all of my 4 gigs of ram on it's less resourceful OS? Would that be a great solution to my problem? and could I make it my daily OS to use?What would be the Pro's and cons of dual booting? Would my internet connection remain the same or be botched? Would love to hear feedback for this and a great way of setting it up perfectly with no problem.

 

[Brink]

Well, since XP support is basically over, it would be best to stick with your Windows 7.

If you wanted to, you certainly could dual boot with XP and Windows 7 though.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/8057-dual-boot-installation-windows-7-xp.html

Personally, I find Windows 7 performs better than XP. It really comes down to your wants and needs though.

 

[Dizaster]

Yeah It's sad that XP is no longer supported. But I also have an IMAC here and for the past 4 or 5 days I've been running Windows XP in a virtual machine on the mac with 3 gigs of ram (VMware professional) and it's so much more faster than my windows 7, So i'm thinking of just dual booting it, and i'm wondering would it use all of my computer specs on it? As if i just purchased a windows xp laptop? Just trying to figure out how it would work but I appreciate your responses you are a great Admin

 

[Brink]

XP should use all of your PC's resources if you have XP drivers available for everything.

 

[Dizaster]

What do you mean by if I have any XP drivers available? I just have my Windows 7.1 laptop and my "Windows XP Media Center Version 2005 With Update Rollup 2" Operating System Disc to install a fresh a copy of XP

 

[Brink]

You'll most likely need to install drivers for your laptop's devices in the XP installation. For example, SATA, network (LAN/wireless), video, touchpad, sound, etc...

You could check at your laptop manufacturer's driver download page to see if they have XP drivers available.

 

[whs]

For much better performance I would replace the HDD by a SSD. That is the best performance upgrade money can buy. Tweaking the system will only give you a bit.

 

[Britton30]

Yup, XP in a VM or an install will need its own drivers installed.
I have an old Dell lappy that came with XP Home which I've upgraded the drive and RAM (2GB, its max) and have it dual booting XP Pro and Vista Pro. Vista runs OK, XP is so slow it's not useable.

 

[Dizaster]

How can I go about finding the correct drivers and installing them before I attempt to dual boot?

 

[LMiller7]

As a general rule if resources are adequate Windows 7 will outperform XP running on the same hardware. And the resource requirements for this aren't particularly high. If Windows 7 performance is inferior to XP then something is wrong.

 

[Dizaster]

Well XP runs flawless on the virtual machine on the mac compared to my windows 7 on my laptop it's much more snappier in process. and i didn't need any drivers when installed it in the virtual machine i just popped in the disc and it did the rest for me

 

[whs]

As a general rule if resources are adequate Windows 7 will outperform XP running on the same hardware. And the resource requirements for this aren't particularly high. If Windows 7 performance is inferior to XP then something is wrong.

Right - I have yet to see a vanilla XP that is faster than Windows 7 (on the same system).

 

[LMiller7]

Well XP runs flawless on the virtual machine on the mac compared to my windows 7 on my laptop it's much more snappier in process. and i didn't need any drivers when installed it in the virtual machine i just popped in the disc and it did the rest for me

You are running XP and Windows 7 on different hardware and the comparison is hardly fair to Windows 7. There is far more to performance than just RAM size. Laptop hard drives tend to be slow as the priority is for low power consumption, not performance. Same for the CPU. Same for the video system.

 

[windude99]

If you have s specific issue, please feel free to post it here so we can help you with it. That Mac might have a faster hard drive which is causing XP to start faster. As others have said, it is not a fair comparison. I agree with WHS. You should install a solid state drive into your laptop. It will make Windows 7 run very, very well. XP is old and is not worth running on a computer that you will be using for online purposes. Also, I think there are times where virtual machines will boot faster than physical machines.

 

[jonnyhotchkiss]

I would try a native boot install xp to vhd. Win 7 supports it now, so it's easy to create a (virtual) volume, then mount it and instlall XP. It'd be interesting to see how well it manages to auto-install drivers... I would (as a 'precaution') have a network adapter (wi-fi?) driver (so you can get to the cloud where the drivers live!)

In my experience (maybe manufacturer dependent), the order in which drivers are installed is sometimes a factor (on XPS I had to follow very specific instructions to get the intel wireless display technology to play nice with the hd audio drivers and maybe nvidia...) if ya can, it wouldn't hurt (at all) to get the info (and the 'repositories') saved (added to the boot media from which you install xp, ideally a usb?)

some more info