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#1
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 Win7 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 Win7 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 Win7 basic color configuration.". I did change to Win7 basic color configuration, but the performance issues listed above stay the same.
Any ideas? Thanks a lot!
Facundo