Switching to 64 bit Windows

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  1. Posts : 179
    Microsoft® Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
    Thread Starter
       #11

    Thank you! :)
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  2.    #12

    One other question: Did you try the chipset delivered by Window Update first as suggested in Clean Reinstall Windows 7?

    Or did you jump to the chipset or other downloads and not wait to see which drivers Win7 wanted, test performance with those before importing any others?

    You can reclaim some CPU cycles and tighten RAM performance by editing visual effects of fading, sliding, dragging intact and selection rectangle, from Optimize Windows 7 - Windows 7 Forums.
    I wouldn't think of running less than 4gb RAM without doing this. There is no noticeable change in visuals.
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  3. Posts : 179
    Microsoft® Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
    Thread Starter
       #13

    gregrocker said:
    One other question: Did you try the chipset delivered by Window Update first as suggested in Clean Reinstall Windows 7?

    Or did you jump to the chipset or other downloads and not wait to see which drivers Win7 wanted, test performance with those before importing any others?

    You can reclaim some CPU cycles and tighten RAM performance by editing visual effects of fading, sliding, dragging intact and selection rectangle, from Optimize Windows 7 - Windows 7 Forums.
    I wouldn't think of running less than 4gb RAM without doing this. There is no noticeable change in visuals.

    Windows update did not offer any chipset downloads. So I had to download it myself from intel.com
    But it did offer other useful drivers: Wifi, ethernet, audio and HP QuickLaunch Buttons (those are the special hotkeys on the keyboard). I installed them, and they all work fine.

    As for the before-after comparison: well, I didn't run any benchmarks so I won't be able to tell you exact numbers or percentages, but however I did play around a bit with the computer and I can say it was definitely much slower without the chipset driver. Drive speed, to be exact.
    It was slower to read and write to the hard drive than it was with the factory installed Windows Vista (which had everything installed). It was like using an old IDE drive.
    The chipset driver package included Intel Rapid Storage which is a sata controller driver and I checked device manager to confirm: it is installed and AHCI mode is now enabled, along with queueing.
    Copying large files is now faster, so is boot time.

    I also grabbed the latest graphics drivers from intel.com, because the one Windows Update offered is wrong. And I also installed the driver for the synaptics touchpad to enable scrolling. But apart from these three drivers, everything else is from windows update and it works great! Way faster than vista.

    Thank you everyone for your help!


    A note for anybody else who has the HP Compaq 6720s and would like to install Windows 7
    I'm leaving this note here because there's controversial information on the internet regarding installing windows 7 on this notebook. And there is a lot of wrong driver advice on other sites. Only listen to this site, I learned a lot here, and got good&working suggestions and driver locations.

    Windows 7 is fully working, but you have the job of getting the right drivers. I played around with this. Don't worry it won't take more than 10 mins to get this thing done-

    So here's it:
    Install Windows 7.
    You should have wifi or ethernet working without any drivers. Download the optional updates for your notebook (like HP Quicklaunch buttons, Audio, wifi, ethernet -> they will improve internet speed). These are good and working.

    But Do NOT download the Intel Graphics driver from windows update it is wrong! It is Not for your model. It partially works but not perfect.
    Instead, go to intel.com and search drivers for Intel 965GME. (Or if you have a different card then make sure to verify the model of it, but I think most 6720s have this one.)
    There's a 32bit and a 64bit driver available fo Windows 7.

    Now you also gotta look up the chipset driver. I don't have the model number on hand sorry, so look it up using a program like everest or aida64 or speccy. It should have Intel ICH8 in it but you need the exact type. I'll post the exact model here later when I get to that computer.
    Install it and REBOOT. It will install the sata controller driver, which, according to my personal experience on this notebook, improves disk performance dramatically.

    Then grab the synaptics touchpad driver from either your Vista Driver DVD if you still have it (there is a 64bit driver included too) that works fine with Windows 7, or you can grab it from hp.com, search for compaq 6720s. You can also download other utilities for your notebook from there but those are not required and won't improve performance, just add useful features. Some of those features (like image backup and restore) was not present in vista, so HP made a free program for it for your notebook, but it is present in windows 7 out of the box, so you don't need to download it.
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  4.    #14

    Did you try the chipset and Display drivers from the HP Support Downloads webpage for your model firs? This is what I would do if chipset elements and/or display driver are missing or dysfunctional after all Windows Updates are done.

    As a rule of thumb, you want Windows Update to provide everything it has first, then take account of what is needed based on Device Manager and performance, next import anything missing from the PC maker's Support Downloads webpage, then the Device Maker.
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  5. Posts : 179
    Microsoft® Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
    Thread Starter
       #15

    gregrocker said:
    Did you try the chipset and Display drivers from the HP Support Downloads webpage for your model firs? This is what I would do if chipset elements and/or display driver are missing or dysfunctional after all Windows Updates are done.
    Yes but those two drivers there are completely wrong. They don't work with Windows 7. The graphics driver states it only supports vista and despite it lets you install it on Win7, it has strange issues like youtube video cannot be played in fullscreen and flash (and games) performance is very bad.
    Chipset driver seems to install, but doesn't do anything. I checked device manager for the important devices (like sata controller) and it does not swap out their drivers, not even after a reboot.

    That's why I went to intel.com, those seem to work.
    Apart from these two drivers, the other drivers on windows update and HP Support downloads do work fine.



    gregrocker said:
    As a rule of thumb, you want Windows Update to provide everything it has first, then take account of what is needed based on Device Manager and performance, next import anything missing from the PC maker's Support Downloads webpage, then the Device Maker.
    I did just that. That's how I figured out what I still needed.


    Thank you for the help.:)
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  6.    #16

    Good job!
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