Windows 7 with 512 MB Ram Review

Hey guys I just installed Windows 7 last night finall after getting a key.

I installed it on my Toshiba Satellite M70, Celeron M 1.7 gigahertz, 512 ram, 64-128 ATI x200m.


Now, I thought I was delirious installing it with only 512 megabytes of ram, as I used to have a Vista laptop with 1 gigabyte, and it's performance was unbearable. I returned it after a week. I said, hey, I'll take a break from not doing homework and install it, and let my brother and my girlfriend know how it is.



This is what I said to them...


Wow, Microsoft struck gold. Not only do I have a fast boot time, but performance is amazing, and I am able to use the desktop as soon as it shows up. This OS is truly the greatest OS I have used (better then XP, and my brother and I were true first day adopters of XP, so we've been using it for a while).

Let me just tell you, if you haven't tried it out yet, TRY IT NOW!
Drivers autoinstall, so I had wireless auto ready, ethernet auto ready, sound auto ready, now I just need sandwich autoready.


So that is /endrant, thanks

 

That's promising. Maybe once I get a new laptop I'll try it on this computer...

 

Excellent, I wouldn't expect Aero to work with less than a gig of ram but it's nice to see that 512 MB actually results in a useable system, something that probably cannot be said about a Vista Home Basic machine where that amount of RAM is a min. requirement.

 

Forgot to add aero doesn't work, but at least it's usable. Home premium wouldn't be bearable with a gig. Now I just have to convince Microsoft to keep letting me use beta until the full version comes out

 

still waiting for a test machine... look at cheap desktops

 

Just make a partition on your hard drive, 25 gb dedicated to windows 7. It has a built in boot manager so you can switch between Vista and 7

 

512 mb huh? That's awesome, nice.

And I absolutely agree with you 100%, best OS by Microsoft to date.

I've been completely hooked on 7 since early November when build 6801 came out, and even in that PRE BETA, let me tell you, it was still unbelievably stable and smooth, that's impressive.

Just imagine what the finished product will be.

 

A product that will completely blow all those mac commercials out of the water.

I just enabled aero, I was just a noob.

OSX, prepare for the worst.

 

Will this work with XP?

 

Yes it will.

 

If I create a 25GB partition and install Win7 there, what else do I have to do to have a dualboot system? How/where do I switch between XP and Win7? Thanks for the help.

 

What do you think will happen with a 1.6 P4 and 256MB ram?

 

I have this funny feeling that we are going to find out...

 

Im so impressed with Windows 7 at this point, but still scared Ms will screw us on release.

 

Probably not install as the minimum requirement is 512MB of RAM.

 

I'm gonna try it, I've got it downloading right now.

 

I'm very happy to hear it works well with such a low amount of RAM (well, low for these days). I remember when 512MB was like... OMG!! I have a lot of RAM!!

Haha. I'm not sure I'd push it to 256MB. I mean, XP was slow as mud on 256MB.

 

Same here

Come on, they even screwed up on their BETA RELEASE. BETA. lol.

On a more serious note, hopefully MS gets it right [not perfect, just right] this time!

I guess Windows 7 on netbooks will have Aero disabled then.

 

I dunno.

With chipsets and IGPs getting smaller, and more capable (ie the X4500m from Intel, the HD3200 from AMD/ATI, and the 9400m from nvidia), I think we'll see Win7 in it's full glory on netbooks.

 

Good point.

Most netbooks nowadays come with 1GB RAM anyway. I wonder when an IGP better than the GMA 950 reaches the netbook category...

 

Yeah.

I'm a bit puzzled as to why atleast the X4500m hasn't hit them yet...

 

If you install it, it's pretty much plain sailing from there. Once installed, when the computer boots, you have a screen which gives you an option to choose which OS to go into.

 

A couple of updates:

Aero works very nicely while in "balanced" power mode.

256 might just be pushing it, but the apparent minimum from Microsoft's site is 1 gigabyte, and hey look, I'm running 512!

If anyone has any questions just post them here. Netbooks will become very attractive being able to push Microsoft 7 to the maximum.

 

Thank you for the reply. I'm going to give it a try later tonight when I have the time. I have Partion Magic 8 from Powerquest, before Symantec bought them. Is this still good to use or should I get GParted?

 

DiskPart will work fine or going into administrative tools->computer management>disk management

I perfer the second option, you can just right click to shrink it by x MB and then format the partition you created from shrinking your current partition.

 

Well I'm back with the results, and alas....this is my story. I began downloading the iso from microsoft and left it on all night. In the morning i realized that I didn't have any blank dvds on hand and that I wouldn't be able to get one until the next day. So I then set out searching far and wide to find out how to create a new volume and install Win 7 from my secondary hard drive.

Eventually I got it done. I then restarted, hit F2, set it up to boot from the second drive and then saved. Then it started loading, I was real excited, I saw the new splash screen coming up and kept wishing that it would work. Then the screen said, click here to install Windows 7, I did, it asked me for my language then I hit enter. I was grinning from ear to ear....then BAM. "Windows has detected that you have 256MB ram, but 512MB is needed to install. Setup will not continue."

I screamed out "NOOOOOO!!!" And proceeded to sob in a corner. (I didn't really do any of that) But yes, the moral of the story, unless you're extremely proficient with voodoo incantations, Windows 7 will not install with 256MB.

 

I've got it running on 512MB too. I haven't played with it too much, I'm still loading a few programs so I can try it out. I have a P4 2.8 processor and a Radeon 9200 video card with 128MB. It scored a whopping 1.0 on the graphics test! This system is over 5 years old and on the original install of XP. Thanks for the help on getting it installed.

 

It might be due to higher power consumption. The GMA 950 uses less power than the X3100, which resulted in it being kept on some notebooks with very high battery life instead of the X3100 for that reason. I don't know how the X4500 comes in relative to those two, but it might also be higher than the X3100.

Other possibilities are higher cost (it is newer after all), and higher heat production.

Too bad it didn't work with 256 MB . I don't suppose there's any way to enter Setup with command-line parameters? It was either 3.11 or 95 that had an option to bypass the minimum requirements if you put in the correct (undocumented) command-line parameter. They didn't have it in Windows 98, though (I tried), so I rather doubt you'll find it now.

The other possibility, if you have the right combination of RAM sticks, is to install it with 512 and then swap the 512 for a 256 and see if it'll still run. I don't know if that would work or not. In Windows 98, you could only boot in Safe Mode with half of the minimum requirement (I tried that, too), but perhaps Win7 would still work in regular mode.

I'm a bit surprised it runs well with 512 MB, really. The lowest RAM usage I've seen on mine (64-bit) is 966 MB or so, and I haven't even put any security software on it yet (not optimized, either, though). Are you guys running 32-bit or 64-bit with 512 MB of RAM?

 

Even if it doesn't install on 256MB, it could although run on that amount.
I remember having read an article some time ago, where some guys tried to run XP on machines with 120 MHz 486 CPUs with 16 MB Ram and stuff.
They had the same Problems with installing it, so they just added just more RAM during Setup and removed it later again.

So one of you Guys with 512 MB RAM could remove one stick and try it out... just for fun.

 

I can't select sleep mode. The option is there but disabled. Is this due to my system being inadequate or am I missing something simple?

 

Hey my desktop have 512 ram with nvidia grforce 4000 mx ...
can i install windows7? can aero work on with 512?

 

Aero will not work because you need a video card that supports at least DirectX 9.

 

I'm about ready to give up on running W7 on my system. No sleep mode, screensaver won't work, monitor won't shut off, buggy mouse performance etc. Can someone confirm that most of these issues are due to an inferior graphics card? When I do a driver update check in Device Mgr, it says that I have the correct driver. I really don't know much about video cards or if it is even worth upgrading mine. Any ideas?

 

That all sounds like a lack of the correct display driver. I don't know if the Vista driver with a modified inf file will work or not, it should do as the drivers are the same I believe.

If Windows 7 is this much better than XP I can see it being used as the default O/S on alot of net books as it should provide better power management support giving longer run times.

 

When I check for drivers on the ATI site, there are none for Vista with my card, so they must be the same as for XP? I'm not knowledgeable about this at all. The only downloads available for my card are for XP. Am I screwed on running W7 on my machine? My graphics card is a Radeon 9200 if anyone has any knowledge about it. Again, thanks for the replys.

 

i don't know how the windows 7 graphics drivers are for ATI, but i feel Nvidia put all of their cards on the .inf so it would install on any nvidia graphics solution in the windows 7 beta drivers.

i'm assuming ATI has done the same thing, as a user today in the Alienware forums mentioned ATI had drivers for their cards for windows7.

technically, you can have the CPU on your machine run the graphics, so you would be able to install it provided you have enough RAM and CPU for the requirements.

 

Isn't the radeon 9200 a directx 8.1 card? That could be why you are seeing some of the issues you are having. According to ATI the highest windows version that supports that card is windows XP. There is no vista driver and hence no win 7 driver.

 

That is how I understand it too. So there is no way it is going to work with Win7. . I was hoping I could somehow update the drivers. I guess it's time for a new computer. How about that new Gateway desktop with the Core i7 processor?

 

Could you try running 3DMark 2006? Probably would end as an epic fail...

 

On my laptop or his desktop

 

Update. I just installed a new video card, a PNY GeForce 6200 with 256MB. I can select sleep mode now, but it won't go into sleep mode by itself. If I select it manually, it won't come out of sleep mode at all, I have to unplug it. I can also select a screensaver, but it never comes on. Any ideas? I am probably going to give up on this. I don't know if it's a lack of RAM, the video card, or what.

 

It would likely have nothing to do with your video card, and RAM is a possibility, but I'd point my fingers toward chipset and processor, since that is where sleep states are determined, initiated, and carried out.

I might as well give a little review of my experience with Windows 7 and 512MB RAM.

This mini-review uses the following $199 desktop components:

nVidia 610a/6150 Motherboard
AMD Sempron 1.6GHz
512MB PC2-4200 RAM
80GB 5400rpm HDD
16GB PQI SDHC Readboost Card

This is one of our older computers at work; I decided to try 7 on it, since it came with Vista and didn't run so hot. The install of 7 took a while, but once it restarted, it came right up within a minute, I entered some basic information, and it was ready waiting for me to select a wireless network to join. There was no need to install drivers.

Stock, with no applications installed, the system was very snappy and responsive. Internet Explorer 8 loaded right up, only a second or two slower than on my laptop. Overall, a very good and rewarding experience.

I installed some basic work programs, Adobe Dreamweaver, Flash, and Fireworks CS3, MS Office 2007, and some other programs, like Google Earth, Firefox, and Chrome. When I did this, it brought the system to a crawl when trying to load up applications and even navigate windows. I installed Diskeeper 2008 (We haven't upgraded to 2009 yet) without any problems, restarted with a boot time defrag, ran a full defrag, restarted again, and unsurprisingly, the system was far more responsive. It still took a while for things to load, but the experience was overall not bad.

To take things a bit further, I plugged in my 16GB SDCH card (not sure how fast, but I know I've written to it at 115mbps and read at 125) that I picked up for $25 off newegg. I formatted it as exFat, and dedicated the entire device to readyboost. I cycled the computer a few times, loaded up different programs between each reboot, ran a final defrag, and amazingly, the system performed flawlessly. Load times were very fast, responsiveness of the GUI was crisp and clean, and the overall experience was quite impressive. Better that what I would have gotten with XP.

So out of the box, Win7 does pretty well with low end hardware, but with some optimizing, performs quite impressively.

 

I downloaded an update for my mouse and keyboard from the Win7 support site and now the mouse is working fine. I don't know why the screensaver won't go on. It works fine in preview, but it won't activate at the set time. With my old video card I wasn't able to chose a screensaver Same for sleep mode, I set it in control panel, but it won't work.

 

Screensaver works now, monitor will turn off but it won't come out of sleep mode. I have to uplug and restart. Any ideas?

 

I am going to give up on W7 on my system for the time being. My system is lacking somewhere and it is too frustrating to use the way it is. I don't know if more RAM would solve my problems or not. How are the rest of you doing with the 512 MB?

 

I guess I'm a little confused. It's great that Windows 7 is that well optimized, but if you are going to spend the money to buy the OS, you might as well save up a little more ($10-20) to get more RAM along with it. Better yet, save a bit more and get a cheap laptop that will surely have a dual-core processor and 2+gb of RAM with 7 included!

Not to take away from your impressions, though. I'm sure they helped inform many people.

 

I can second that im running it on amd64 single core 1.8ghz cpu with 512mg pc2700 and with an ati xxpress 200m chipset with 128mb shared memory and it runs circles arounf my xp

 

Are you able to go into standby/sleep mode? I am running a P4 @2.8, with 512MB of pc 2700 and a Gefoce 6200 with 256mb and it won't go to sleep mode. The monitor will shut down. but the cpu stays on and the monitor will not turn on again. I have to shut it down by pulling the plug as the power buton won't turn it off. I have none of these issues in XP.

 

Its all in the setup really - I had Vista Ultimate running on 512MB RAM acceptably with Aero on my old laptop.

 

I'm not surprised it works so well, considering feedback I've seen of it running on netbooks just fine, which as surprisingly comparable specs to your Toshiba. Vista was a complete dog on my Asus N10J netbook that even comes with 2GB RAM and a dedicated GPU. XP is much nicer. I'm leary to try 7 on it yet, but may dual boot just for the heck of it.

I installed 7 on my cheapo Compaq for testing purposes (Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz, Intel 4500MHD, 2GB RAM) and so far am impressed as well.