Upgrade to Windows 7

[keyplus90]

I recently upgraded my computer from XP to 7 32bit professional. All is OK but during the installation all of the old stuff has been saved under "window old" about 29GB on C drive. Although I still have over 100GB hard drive as unused but my computer has slowed down instead of speeding up as I expected.

Before installation I had backed up all of the files I wanted to save on another external drive. Now my question is that if I delete that "window old" file and clear 29GB occupied, would that disturb my computer in any way?

[Old_Geezer]

I can't see why using a part of a drive that has plenty of free space would affect the speed anyway. At least not significantly.

But neither can I see that deleting the old system is going to cause problems; the new installation should not be referring to anything in it.

[SlackAlice]

If your sure you've got all the files you needed then deleting the 'windows old' will not cause problems. I had this when I did a re-install on Windows 7. I must admit I moved it all to a backup external drive first just in case I needed it (paranoid I know!).

[ChuckFickens]

As above, deleting it is going to make no difference to speed at all, but also should do no harm.

Window7 in general need higher spec hardware to run than windowsXP did, one of the main things it requires is RAM. with XP I'd suggest 1GB as being a reasonable minimum, with windows7 I'd suggest 2GB as being a reasonable minimum amount of RAM, so if your computer has less than 2GB of RAM consider upgrading it. (check RAM by right clicking on computer and selecting properties)

You can also make windows7 a lot faster on machines that are at the lower end if it's system requirements by switching off all the "fancy effects" by right clicking on computer on the start menu, select properties, then click on the "advanced system settings" on the left pane then click on settings under the performance heading and make sure adjust for best performance is selected.

[VHG]

I am surprised you think going from a 10 year old operating system to a new one would speed up your computer.

Generally hardware requirements for software go up and up and new software generally requires better/faster hardware than older software.

Personaly I can see no point in moving from XP to W7 on a computer that originally ran XP, far better to put the money towards a new PC.

[keyplus90]

Thanks to all of you,

VHG - The reason to upgrade to window 7 are my kids. Because this computer is solely used by them for their homework and for some reason they were asking for it. And I have never been good at inside of computers. And then buying a new computer would cost more than upgrading especially when it is running OK. For me it was clearly a choice between £42 or £350 so I decided to go for £42.00.

ChuckFickens – It has 1.5GB Ram so I think I would buy and install more. And I would look into other things you suggested.

Thanks to Old –geezer and SlackAlice too.

[ChuckFickens]

"and for some reason they were asking for it"

Kids always ask for the latest stuff, regardless of if they actually need it or not!

I'll be honest, 1.5GB is right on the border line for RAM... You may not see much improvement by upgrading, if it had been 1GB Id say it's worth going to 2GB but as it stands you'd have to throw out the .5 stick and replace it with a 1GB and it's probably not worth it.

Turning off the fancy effects will help (but obviously it doesn't look as nice then)

[Old_Geezer]

Just to say we opted to upgrade my woman's PC from XP (which had problems) to Win7. Bit of a nightmare. Installation DVDs couldn't be read, not even when copied to a DVD with a different boot sector. Eventually had to get an expert to help, who had to upgrade the CMOS, and even then could only get the installation on by (and I may have misunderstood the details here) installing it elsewhere and using a pen drive to move it over (or something like that). Even now it exhibits problems. Opening up a picture file brings up the blue screen of death unless one explicitly uses Office or Paint. And I discovered the default picture viewer isn't even a separate executable ! Should have scrapped the original PC and bought new, but sunk too much money into the upgrade now. It'll have to do.

[keyplus90]

ChuckFicken – Good point but sometime (I guess most of the times) you have to surrender when it comes to kids demands.

Geezer – I know what you mean. I just put the disc in and followed whatever appeared on screen. I have no idea if it cleared the old OP system or copied it somewhere else.

I did have one thing in my mind. I saw a nice base unit on Ebuyer but without operating system.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/251310

I thought if it would not work then I would buy that and put this copy of Window 7 on that. I am not sure if it would be possible or not though. But it is working OK so I may forget about thatand may keep in mind for later stage.