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Would it be workable to put Windows 7 on an old AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.8 GHz) with 736 MB of RAM? Or would this be really slow?

What are the experiences with a comparable system? (I am not interested in Aero stuff, etc.)

Update: After reading the answers, I decided NOT to install Windows 7. I reinstalled Windows XP instead.

Sathyajith Bhat
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Rabarberski
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  • why would you want to do this? – davr Dec 21 '09 at 02:01
  • @davr: the pc has xp on it for 5 years, but is getting dead slow (no surprise, I've never encountered a system running XP for so long), so a reinstall of XP is necessary anyway. Was wondering if Win7 wouldn't be a good option if I had to the the reinstall anyway... – Rabarberski Dec 21 '09 at 14:33
  • "Was wondering if Win7 wouldn't be a good option if I had to the the reinstall anyway". not on this system, it wouldn't. stick to XP or upgrade the system memory to 2 GB, RAM is cheap. –  Dec 23 '09 at 00:28

4 Answers4

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Seriously, It may just work - but I wouldn't.... (I don't think you can install with less than 1GB of memory - personally, I wouldn't use it with less than 2)

736MB of memory just isn't a lot, and by the time you disable enough services and features (such as Aero) in order to give more free RAM, there isn't much point in running Windows 7 for the sake of just running it.

I would personally just use it for XP and be happy.

If you still want to go ahead, try running the Windows Upgrade Advisor.

William Hilsum
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  • "I don't think you can install with less than 1GB of memory" no problem to install Windows 7 on a system with only 512 MB. –  Dec 20 '09 at 19:27
  • Must of just been Vista then - I will retest a bit later - just remember a warning stating that the machine does not have enough memory. – William Hilsum Dec 20 '09 at 19:38
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    not sure bout Vista's requirement now, XP won't install on 64 MB or less, which can be circumvented, e.g. via nLite ("disable minimum memory requirement") –  Dec 20 '09 at 21:37
  • +1 for suggesting the Update Advisor (which I didn't see at first). – ChrisF Dec 20 '09 at 21:38
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    just testing with a 32-bit Ultimate DVD in VBox, Windows starts fine with 256 MB, no dice with any lower settings though :) –  Dec 20 '09 at 21:49
  • "Starts with" is not the same as workable and usable... And, just tested in a VM, 512MB is the smallest size setup allows - http://i49.tinypic.com/jqg5zr.jpg – William Hilsum Dec 20 '09 at 22:13
  • you can install if it doesn't meet the requirement. All windows installer will do is just give you a warning – Jonathan Dec 21 '09 at 01:08
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It will work, I have the same CPU in my laptop and ONLY 512 MB of RAM. I installed Windows 7 Ultimate, and it runs just fine for the Internet but as expected, it is slow for anything else.

Peter Mortensen
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  • What do you mean by anything else? In my case, anything else would be Word, Excel and Picasa. I think that is about it. – Rabarberski Dec 21 '09 at 14:37
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It shouldn't be a problem, Running Windows 7 on a Dinosaur proves that Windows 7 can run perfectly even on a 128 MB RAM with a Pentium II CPU.

I personally have an AMD Athlon 3000+ with 1.5 GB RAM. It runs even faster than my Intel Core 2 Dual T5300 at 1.73 GHz with 2.5 GB RAM.

Peter Mortensen
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Jonathan
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It would work all right, but even if you tweak the living daylights out of it (e.g. with vLite), it won't be as fast as Windows XP.

Is it feasible to buy a US$100 OS for such an old clunker? That's your call :)

Peter Mortensen
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