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Windows 7 on old hardware problems

R

RAD

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 12, 2009
Messages
489
Hi gang,
I have just finished updating every computer in my house to windows 7 for further evaluation and almost all of them are working flawlessly.

The one system that is throwing me trouble has the following specs (roughly):
AMD Athlon 3000+ XP
Geforce 7600 GS AGP card
2 gb ram

This system is my wife's old hp prebuilt that I have tinkered with over the years, replacing the ram, psu, adding a gpu, etc. It was previously running XP well enough, considering the quantity of malware/nasties it had accumulated. It was definitely time for a complete wipe and start over, lets leave it at that... I would like to use it as the houses hub for devices like printers, etc.

The OS installed: Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit RTM (technet). Complete reformat on the HDD beforehand.

The problem(s):
First of all, the CPU pegs out to 100% utilization constantly, even while doing simple things like web browsing. You can watch the task monitor just jump to 100% the instant you do anything other than idling. It seems to be performing as well as could be expected though so I guess I won't panic too much about that although I am wondering if that is normal and to be expected.

Second of all: (Related to the 7600 GS I am pretty sure) 2 to 3 second black screens when various actions are performed. This may have only started after I installed the drivers from nvidia (just put in the most recent offering they had on their website) Is there a stable driver that is better for Win 7 and these conditions?

The actions:
When at the user log in screen the screen goes black every 10 seconds or so for 2 or 3 seconds then comes back. If I disable user login so it boots automatically to the desktop this doesn't happen.

Starting up the nvidia control panel from a right click on the desktop also causes the screen to go black for several moments, then come back and open the control panel. Starting the nvidia control panel from navigating the system menu doesn't seem to cause this.

Using control alt delete or another keystroke command to bring up the task manager also causes a couple of 2 to 3 second blackscreens.

Thoughts? Advice? Any further information I could give or places I could visit that would help me troubleshoot this?
 
What process is pegging the CPU? Have you installed the latest nVidia drivers. I think the latest Forceware drivers cover GPU's back to the 6000 series.
 
I installed Win 7 on a system with that identical CPU. The CPU utilization was quite a bit higher than I'm used to but remember that it's several generations behind. Even so, it still performed pretty well considering the onboard GPU did not support aero and did not even have a driver for it, just standard VGA adapter, there was no actual graphic acceleration, even with the Basic interface.

Check your task manager and see how many processes you have running. There should only be around 28-30 processes running after a fresh install. If you have 35+ then you have a lot of bloated software installed which is probably causing the slowdown.
 
RAD's rig obviously won't be the fastest thing around but it should run ok and with a 7600 he should have aero as the 7600 has current driver support for Windows 7.
 
It is running 40 processes after boot up but I do not see how there could possibly be bloated software installed. This is a clean install of windows 7. Aero is being supported by the 7600.

The only software installed is:
Avira Antivirus for some common sense protection
Firefox
MS Office
Latest Nvidia Drivers (version 190.38)
Steam (but set to not start on boot up)

Resources are seeing max consumption when you open and run Firefox and that is the application that shows the consumption when it is pegging out.

The black screen issue seems to have fixed itself overnight, which is strange.
 
RAD said:
It is running 40 processes after boot up but I do not see how there could possibly be bloated software installed. This is a clean install of windows 7. Aero is being supported by the 7600.

The only software installed is:
Avira Antivirus for some common sense protection
Firefox
MS Office
Latest Nvidia Drivers (version 190.38)
Steam (but set to not start on boot up)

Resources are seeing max consumption when you open and run Firefox and that is the application that shows the consumption when it is pegging out.

The black screen issue seems to have fixed itself overnight, which is strange.
Click to expand...
Can you give us a full screen shot of the process window with show from all users checked?
 
capturegxj.png

Here is a capture of the process window using win 7's handy dandy snip tool.
 
svchost.exe and your AV are taking up the most of the CPU right now. Just sitting there, 54% is very high. The system I installed on with that CPU sat at 0%, but the CPU spiked significantly when using the OS.

You can download a program called Process Explorer and look at the process and see exactly what's being done. I may just be indexing or defragging the system ... maybe some Superfetch activity... On my main system, I only have 2 of the svchost.exe that are over 10MB, you have 3, which is weird since you have less memory in that laptop. And they are using much more memory. Let the system run for a while to finish up whatever it wants to do and see if it clears up.
 
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