Windows 7 Re-install - Slow Browsers, what the hell?

Hey guys,

My windows 7 install broke (startup repair was launched every restart and eventually just started shutting down during video playback) so I downgraded to XP while I had some assignments due at college. Now, I've decided to go back to Windows 7 but something's wrong and I don't know how to fix it.

I use Chromium as my web broswer, the open-source version of Google's Chrome browser. I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with it. However, ever since my Windows 7 re-install, it's been being very slow. I don't just mean generally - it's been quantifiably slow.

On Futuremark's Peacekeeper Browser Benchmark, I used to get scores of 2200+. Now, with a newer version of Chromium (essentially Chrome 5), I struggle to get past 1300. That's a huge drop off - flash videos play jerkily, pages load slowly.

All the animations in the browser are jerky, including the new tab animation and the download popup. I don't understand because everything is the same as my original install and I have the latest drivers.

What's really puzzling is I used to underclock my GPU and undervolt my CPU in my last install. I thought that might be the problem so I stopped doing that and it's still painfully slow.

Does any body have any advice?

Cheers

 

that's a fresh windows 7 install you did (after reformat) ? or did you install it over the xp (that was a downgrade from 7) ?

 

I just installed it over the top of XP. I figured the drives would already be formatted for NTFS.

bad move?

 

yeah, it's always a good practice to install windows on a clean partition
i bet this will resolve all your issues.

 

I'll give it a go and report back tomorrow, cheers for the advice

 

good luck mate!

 

Well, I bet it fixes your problem, but not because you did an upgrade install.

Windows 7 upgrade install IS NOT LIKE a Windows XP upgrade install.

Windows 7 upgrades are image based, not file based. You are essentially getting a clean upgrade with windows 7 image based upgrades.

Now, there may be some degradation of performance because in a normal upgrade when the windows 7 installation finishes it then imports programs and settings from the previous install....it is those imported things that explain the degraded performance.

Now, all that said, the OP said he upgraded from Windows XP--that is not an upgrade installation.

Windows 7 cannot be upgraded from Windows XP--so this was not an upgrade installation. Something is wrong here, but given the info it is difficult to tell.

A botched chromium install from a nightly build seems most likely...

 

DO NOT assume that the hardware drivers present on the Win7 install DVD are the most current available for your machine. The driver library in the install DVD was frozen in place 9 months before the OS was released, more than a year ago now.

As with other MSFT OS releases, you need to go on a driver hunt after the OS is installed. Start by making sure that your machine BIOS is up to date. The in this order, go find and install the latest drivers for:
chipset
video
disk
network (wired & wireless)
other things

Doing chipset FIRST is important as that provides the basic config and definition info necessary to find and install all of the other drivers.

 

On the advice of you guys, I went and made sure I had all the latest drivers. I was missing a few but after installing everything up to date the browser is just as slow (benchmarked on multiple networks).

It's not a bad Chromium install either, as I've tried with multiple snapshots.

Format required you reckon?

Thanks

 

Definitely format. You'll waste much more time figuring it out. Keep those drivers you downloaded, you are going to be needing them after the format.

 

Re-installed, formatted drive, browser now benchmarks at over 3000 which is my best result ever.

Thanks!

 

Told ya