Painfully feeling forced to leave XP for Windows 7 on T42

[RolfThinkPad]

T42: 1.7GHz Pentium M-735, 2GB RAM, 64MB ATI RADEON 9600, 40GB disk

(13GB free space but with everything I need on it and more. However, I can easily get a bigger disk if essential).

Goes like greased lightning with XP Pro and don't want to change from my T42!

Looks like it's time to let go of XP , so looking at Windows 7 Professional .

Does anyone have any useful knowledge on this subject? Any input would be helpful.

One thing seems certain: it has to be the 32-bit version, based on my understanding of the CPU specification. Is that correct?

[ajkula66]

You'll do fine with that T42 since Radeon 9600 is supported by Vista and W7.

And yes, only a 32-bit version can be installed on these.

I'd suggest getting a newer HDD, though.

Happy upgrading.

[dr_st]

With that said, I see no reason whatsoever to ditch XP on your T42. Especially if it causes you as much pain as you describe. I do not share the "doom and gloom" sentiments that would have you believe that the second XP goes out of support your computer will immediately get infected with 10,000 different kinds of viruses/malware and you will die. I plan to continue running XP on my old hardware that was designed for XP.

[IbmPad]

I just acquired a new computer, but I was using a T42 until recently. In April 2013 I decided to replace my XP with a Windows 7, because of the planned end of support of XP and because more and more programs required Windows Vista or more recent to work properly.

At first I was quite reluctant to do the upgrade, but after some tuning (disabling Aero, unneeded services and some file patching) I was happy with it. The W7 kernel has many improvements and cool features (e.g. Superfetch, ETW, I/O priorities, ASLR, etc.) The computer is not slower with W7 than XP; startup time and applications loading time were reduced. Browsing in folders using Windows Explorer is a bit slower though. The system load is acceptable; when the system is idle I have 43 running processes and 550 MB out of 1.5 GB memory used (it was quite the same with XP if I recall correctly).

Nevertheless I encountered some problems with my FireGL T2 video card. I have tried many different drivers and the only one that would work correctly was the XP driver for the FireGL V3200, and only after having hex-edited a file to prevent it from bluescreening when switching session.

[Raceboy]

I have always used Windows Update driver for FireGL T2 and Radeon 9600, it works perfectly but it has no Catalyst Control Center. Though it did not bother me at all.

[pianowizard]

I agree that in most cases, 7 wouldn't be much slower than XP on a T42. But 7 with all the security updates will take up at least ~20GB (versus <10GB for XP), so you will definitely need to get a bigger hard drive.

If I were you, I would just keep using XP until late March. It should take only half a day to do the upgrade plus all the updates. Also, considering the T42's high failure rate, this T42 might die even before XP expires!

[Temetka]

Why would you disable services?

Mircrosoft's engineers know far more about what the OS needs than you do. Turn them back on.

Here's a quick and dirty guide for tweaking windows for best performance:

1. Install Windows

2. Leave it alone.

3. Enjoy.

[dr_st]

Well, that's a fairly simplistic approach.

Certain aspects of the OS, which are enabled by default, are oriented towards usability, not performance. It is certainly believable that if one does not need those particular features, turning them off may yield a performance gain. Possibly negligible on modern hardware, but that's not modern hardware we are discussing here.

[RolfThinkPad]

Thanks for all the input.

Yes, got another hard disk waiting patiently in its packaging (so what if it's PATA/IDE and not SATA - it's way fast enough for me).

Agree on the simplistic approach for XP-install-leave-it-alone, but only on faster hardware. On older hardware it's def. worth tuning XP (and other software) to reduce the payload - there is a big difference when non-essential stuff is removed.

Re. gloom and doom when XP "dies" - agree that it is probably nothing to worry about, but I have concerns that Windows Security Essentials (which I much prefer to other free antimalware) will not be updated. Other than that, it would be nice at the time "support" ends to have all the security patches gathered up somewhere and create an XP "Service Pack 4" build.

Re. Windows 7, more research shows that it will be a bit faster than XP while using the same resources on memory and CPU. I would imagine it can be tweaked like XP by carefully disabling the non essential stuff.

(Forgot to mention that a big reason for keeping the T42 is the 4:3 screen format - for real work it is far superior that the widescreen format. Title bars, menus, toolbars and taskbar already make the working area like a silly letter box and this is amplified more when using widescreen hardware ! All one does is scroll up and down all day while losing sight of what a Letter or A4 size document is like.)

[ABuNeNe]

I'm using Win7 after finding out WinXP does not support more than 2TB HDD capacity. It's work great, with all the hardware drivers!

Maybe when I've time will try out Win 8.1.

[irus]

do some essential performance mods to windows 7 the ones i find make the most difference are 1. disabling windows search from windows programs and features (besides things like media center etc).2. using a flash block plugin and 3. using adjust for best performance in advanced settings in control panel system settings. All 3 drastically reduce the number of i/o reads giving you the same snappy windows performance back. (i/o reads speed is what makes ssd so much better)

[GACrabill]

do some essential performance mods to windows 7 the ones i find make the most difference are 1. disabling windows search from windows programs and features (besides things like media center etc).2. using a flash block plugin and 3. using adjust for best performance in advanced settings in control panel system settings. All 3 drastically reduce the number of i/o reads giving you the same snappy windows performance back. (i/o reads speed is what makes ssd so much better)

I totally agree !
All three have been done to my Win7 T40 for some time now ... Windows Search takes too much memory to leave it Started as a Service all of the time.

[RolfThinkPad]

T42 1.7GHz, 2GB RAM, ATI RADEON 9600 64MB
Update:
Got Win 7 Pro installed, and I'd say it is generally faster than XP Pro. It's def. considerably faster for starting and shutting down.
Some issues with drivers and IBM utilities, but still working on them. But it looks like they will be OK as I've managed to get them working at some stage while experimenting a lot.
Also been experimenting with tuning Win7 (as mentioned above and more) and there is a big performance benefit, especially reducing the video-intensive stuff.
All in all it looks like I can get a decent build with Win 7, and am pleasantly surprised about the performance of the T42 (even with that PATA drive of mine!).

PS I'm comparing Win7 vs. XP with near identical PATA 40GB disks for this testing phase (have one fixed (XP) and one in the removable caddy (W7)).

[topshot]

Re. gloom and doom when XP "dies" - agree that it is probably nothing to worry about, but I have concerns that Windows Security Essentials (which I much prefer to other free antimalware) will not be updated. Other than that, it would be nice at the time "support" ends to have all the security patches gathered up somewhere and create an XP "Service Pack 4" build.

Supposedly, they will still release SOME critical patches but not everything will be patched. Not sure what that really means.

MSE will continue to be updated for XP through July 2015.

[dr_st]

Supposedly, they will still release SOME critical patches but not everything will be patched. Not sure what that really means.

Interesting. Where is the information coming from?

[topshot]

Supposedly, they will still release SOME critical patches but not everything will be patched. Not sure what that really means.

Interesting. Where is the information coming from?

I guess that is only for business. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/ ... ot_for_you
I thought I read something else recently that showed an excerpt from a MS release, but can't recall where now. Anyway, it will be interesting to see if some worm brings the net to a crawl like some in the past have whether MS will idly sit by and let it happen. Maybe AV products will be enough to prevent something like that. Or maybe this will be like Y2K all over again and the lights will still be on April 9.

[RolfThinkPad]

If MSE is supported on XP through 2015 I'll probably stay on XP. I mean, I've already got 200+ security updates after SP3!

[topshot]

If MSE is supported on XP through 2015 I'll probably stay on XP. I mean, I've already got 200+ security updates after SP3!

Still better off using a different AV, but if you stick with MSE, make sure you d/l the program itself in case you need to reload it for some reason as you won't be able to after Apr 8. Only the definitions will continue coming until July 2015.

[rms]

why windows? why not give your thinkpad some love and grab a nice non PAE image of a nice distro (fedora LXDE 19 seems to work nicely on my t43) and enjoy the wonderful world of GNU/Linux?

[Cigarguy]

Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) works great on my T42. I got 3 T42, one running XP for nostalgia sake, one running Win 7 just because I can and the last running LMDE. Of those my favourite is the LMDE edition. These are my fun/play machines that I bought for cheap. Love the 4:3 Flexview screens. All have 2 GB RAM, a Samsung 32 GB SSD in the Ultrabay and a slow 80 GB HDD in the main drive bay. None are fast enough for my daily user and therefore have no critical data. A T60 is my oldest daily user.

[RolfThinkPad]

I have concluded that Windows 7 runs faster than XP, and it starts and shuts down much faster. There are many performance tweaks that can be made, mainly with visual effects.

And I just installed a nice processor upgrade to 2.0GHz (from 1.7), which noticeably helps. And managed to get a large and new hard disk! So the hardware is pretty much maxed out.

For me, it's plenty fast for what I need.

However, my only problem is the screen flicker issue which I have raised in another post.