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Hello,

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? Perhaps somebody can tell about 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 XP instead.

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why would you want to do this? – davr Dec 21 at 2:01
@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 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. – Molly7244 Dec 23 at 0:28

5 Answers

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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.

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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. – Molly7244 Dec 20 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. – Wil Dec 20 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") – Molly7244 Dec 20 at 21:37
+1 for suggesting the Update Advisor (which I didn't see at first). – ChrisF Dec 20 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 :) – Molly7244 Dec 20 at 21:49
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it will work, i have the same cpu in my laptop and ONLY 512mb of ram. I installed windows 7 Ultimate and it runs just fine for the internet but as expected, it is slow for anything else.

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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 at 14:37
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it would work alright, but even if you tweak the living daylights out of it (e.g. with vLite), it won't be as fast as XP.

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

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shouldn't be a problem this proves that Windows 7 can run perfectly even on a 128 MB RAM with P2 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

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Molly,

It would probably be best to ensure compatibility hardware and software wise via A.) The Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor available here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/upgrade-advisor.aspx or B.) Microsoft's Windows 7 Compatibility center available here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/windows-7/en-us/default.aspx

Jessica Microsoft Windows Client Team

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thanks, Jessica, but I can assure you i have installed and tested Windows 7 on quite a number of systems that failed the Upgrade Advisor utterly. while it is a viable means to check a system it's not the final word in 'compatibility' :) – Molly7244 Dec 22 at 23:40

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