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Re: Installing Window 7 on a 4 year old laptop question?

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Ryan P. wrote:
> On 7/10/2011 2:22 AM, mike wrote:
>> ghelf wrote:
>>> The original machine came with XP professional installed. The hard
>>> drive crashed and I have no recovery disks. I've got the new HD
>>> installed and I'm thinking, instead of buying and installing XP
>>> professional, maybe I should just go with Window 7. Is this a bad
>>> idea? The laptop is a HP/Compaq 6501b.
>>
>> If you have a XP COA/key you should be able to reinstall XP for free.
>> Finding a CD that works with that key may be an issue. For Dells,
>> most any dell cd will install on most any dell computer. No idea if
>> that works for Compaqs.
>>
>> I put 7 on my desktop 'cause it was free at the launch event.
>> Can't say that there's anything that it does that I couldn't already
>> do with XP.
> 
>  Besides use modern hardware.  :)

But for rampant snippage, you'd know that was my recommendation too.
> 
>>
>> And there's lots of stuff it CAN'T do that I could do with XP.
>> I had major issues with webcams and other legacy hardware that doesn't
>> have vista/7 drivers.
>>
>> Yes, win7 claims to be plug and play with webcams. And if I plug in
>> my webcam, I can indeed get a picture. Problem is that it's 320x240.
>> There's no way to change that. No way to brighten the image so I can
>> actually see it...I guess that's plug and play...GRRRRR!!
>> You really do need "real vendor-supplied" drivers for anything that's
>> configurable.
>> And there's no incentive for the vendor to put resources into a driver
>> that will get them zero revenue.
> 
>  Did you try simply loading the XP drivers?  I had the same problem with 
> my webcam (and my printer) when I first installed Win7, couldn't find 
> updated drivers, so I just downloaded and installed the original XP 
> drivers.  Worked perfectly after that.

Yes, no luck.  Had to update the webcam.  That camera's XP drivers do work.
The TV card didn't work, had to upgrade that too.  It has XP drivers
that sort-of work until the system sleeps.  It can't figger out how
to reset itself and I have to power off the system to get the TV card 
back.  Simple reboot don't work, have to cut the power.

Never did get the usb video capture to work, had to buy new hardware.
It came with drivers that suck, but they do at least get a picture.

To get the gigabit network card to work I had to turn ON the onboard
100Mb hardware in the bios then disable it in device manager.

The cost of the new video card and extra RAM so that I could
experience AERO exceeded the original cost (to me) of the system.
BFD and turned it back off.
And with all that RAM, I now wasted 2GB or disk space for hibernation
that I never used.  Just uncheck the box...hmmm...no longer a box to
uncheck...whimper in the newsgroups until somebody takes pity
and discloses the magic command line to disable hibernation.

I haven't tried anything that accesses the hardware directly.  Like PIC
programmers etc.  Is there a win7 equivalent to userportXP or giveio?
> 
>>
>> Don't get me started on "security". Took me six months to find
>> and disable enough of the "security" features so that I could
>> actually use the thing without major hassles.
>> Get used to seeing "sorry Charlie, you can't do that" and spending
>> hours googling how to work around that inhibition.
> 
>  I never run into that...  What were you trying to do that it threw up 
> so many warnings?
Everything.
Turned off UAC.
If you have the same username and password on every machine on the network
with all partitions shared,
windows machines can talk to each other without OS interference.
But a PDA won't.  Have to edit the registry to turn off some security
functions and share a folder.

"Sorry charlie, you don't have permission to access that directory."
Or worse yet, nothing happens when you click the directory.
But I AM an an administrator.  Ok,
Run as administrator...
"Sorry charlie, you don't have permission to access that directory."

I had to learn how to take ownership of system directories so I could
edit
permissions so I could write them.
Ditto for all the user directories.

Windows help doesn't work until you figger out which xp files to copy.

Outbound firewall configuration requires way more understanding than
I have...installed comodo.

And how about god mode???
GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}.
remember that number ;-)
Seems like an increasing number of "fixes" involve some magic number
that can't be determined unless someone decides to tell you that the
option exists and the big-ass number to input.

Much of the configuration utility stuff is still there, they just
renamed and moved it to a different location to keep us guessing.
Much of it can be put back to the way you "KNOW", but it's a hassle
that didn't have to be.  The rest is just SECRET and you have to
rely on someone to tell you about it.

I'm sure there's lots more, but I don't remember it all.

One thing that helpers don't seem to realize is that configuring
any software is relatively easy the SECOND time you do it.
Assuming you had the presence of mind to document what you did.

Googling a problem or objective gets you 2 million hits.
And 1.999 million of those relate to some pre-release pirated
version of Vista. Most of the rest are just plain WRONG for
the production version of win7.
The needle is probably in that haystack...
somewhere.
And a vista solution works on win7...except when it doesn't.
XP drivers work in win7...except when they don't.

Update the hardware is not a realistic expectation.
I've got hardware that predates windows 95.  The functionality
no longer exists at a rational price.  The drivers know how to work
the hardware...it's windows that can't talk to the drivers.
There's a HAL, why the heck can't the HAL make the legacy hardware
work seamlessly?

I'm sure somebody had very good reasons for making it incompatible.
But that's no consolation when my PAL programmer don't work.  I've got
GPIB interface cards that require ISA slots.  Nothing that can't be fixed
with (lots of) money.  It's cheaper to keep another machine around
with ISA slots and running an older OS.

Most of what I do can be done it windows 2000.
For MS to stay in business, they MUST FORCE me to buy a new OS.

The way MS changes the way programmers have to work, it's not profitable
to write code that supports legacy hardware.  So, legacy hardware doesn't
have modern drivers.  Legacy applications don't support the new OS
bloat.  Incompatibilities keep the competition to running hard
just to keep up.  World domination is assured.

New bloat requires more horsepower.  More horsepower enables new bloat.
World domination is assured.

My test system has plugin drives and runs multiple operating systems.
It's getting to the point that I can't have a single set of hardware
that's fully compatible with different OS's.




> 
>>
>> It's been almost a year, but now that I've got it working much like
>> XP, I like Win7 ultimate a lot.
>> I recently ran an experiment with win7 starter. They disable many
>> of the configuration utilities and it's maddening.
>>
>> If you like useless "eye-candy", win7 is the ticket. It'll be fun
>> for half an hour, then you'll start trying to figure out how to get
>> rid of it to get the performance up. I bought a new video card so I
>> could enable "aero". Then had to figure out how to disable it.
> 
>  XP has a lot of useless eye candy, too.  The first thing I do when I 
> come across an XP system is to  turn off all the pretty crap... just 
> like I do with Vista and Win7.  All you have to do is go to advanced 
> performance settings and set it to "best performance" vs "Let windows 
> decide."
Yep, pretty simple the SECOND time you do it.
> 
>> Do I need to say, "invest in a backup program so this doesn't
>> happen again?"
> 
>  Always good advice!

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Thread

Installing Window 7 on a 4 year old laptop question? "ghelf" <ghelf@sbcglobalDeathToSpam.net> - 2011-07-09 17:55 -0700
  Re: Installing Window 7 on a 4 year old laptop question? Pen <nospam@spam.none> - 2011-07-09 22:28 -0400
    Re: Installing Window 7 on a 4 year old laptop question? Bob Villa <pheeh.zero@gmail.com> - 2011-07-09 21:27 -0700
    Re: Installing Window 7 on a 4 year old laptop question? BillW50 <BillW50@aol.kom> - 2011-07-10 12:14 -0500
  Re: Installing Window 7 on a 4 year old laptop question? lmarco@panix.com (Lou Marco) - 2011-07-10 04:44 +0000
    Re: Installing Window 7 on a 4 year old laptop question? lmarco@panix.com (Lou Marco) - 2011-07-10 04:46 +0000
  Re: Installing Window 7 on a 4 year old laptop question? "Ryan P." <rdeletepaque@wi.rr.comm> - 2011-07-10 00:43 -0500
  Re: Installing Window 7 on a 4 year old laptop question? mike <spamme9@gmail.com> - 2011-07-10 00:22 -0700
    Re: Installing Window 7 on a 4 year old laptop question? Bob Villa <pheeh.zero@gmail.com> - 2011-07-10 05:09 -0700
    Re: Installing Window 7 on a 4 year old laptop question? "Ryan P." <rdeletepaque@wi.rr.comm> - 2011-07-10 17:39 -0500
      Re: Installing Window 7 on a 4 year old laptop question? mike <spamme9@gmail.com> - 2011-07-10 23:15 -0700
        Re: Installing Window 7 on a 4 year old laptop question? "Ryan P." <rdeleteyannewguy@gremovemail.com> - 2011-07-11 12:45 -0500
          Re: Installing Window 7 on a 4 year old laptop question? mike <spamme9@gmail.com> - 2011-07-11 21:01 -0700
  Re: Installing Window 7 on a 4 year old laptop question? Tazz <dmswaine@gmail.com> - 2011-07-10 23:57 -0300
  Re: Installing Window 7 on a 4 year old laptop question? "ghelf" <ghelf@sbcglobalDeathToSpam.net> - 2011-07-10 22:18 -0700
    Re: Installing Window 7 on a 4 year old laptop question? mike <spamme9@gmail.com> - 2011-07-10 23:49 -0700

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