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</p>
<p>Judging by your specs, your present machine should have no problems running Windows 7 and fulfilling all of your computing needs well barring hardware issues. </p>
<p>Then again, I have had Windows 7 running swimmingly on machines with specs like:</p>
<p>Intel P4 1.7 Ghz (Machine released sometime in 2002-3)
1 GB RAM</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>Intel Pentium M (Notebooks released sometime in 2005)
1 or 2 GB RAM (Various notebooks I’ve used, rented out, or worked on for clients)</p>
<p>I’d look around and see if you can find a Windows seven desktop, with a solid slate drive. I built mine last year andsit’s just amazing. It cost me about five hundred bucks,plusWindows. </p>
<p>So far I have defragmented the disc drive and run all scans, no faster. will speak with the folks who built my computer on Monday to clarify why they think I need a new one. Clearly, I’ll stick to Windows 7. Thanks, everyone.</p>
<p>Sudsie,</p>
<p>What percentage of your hard drive is free space? </p>
<p>Also, what were the results of checking for accumulated dust/dust bunnies around the vents/fans of your machine?</p>
<p>Here’s another thing you may want to try to check for a bad/failing hard drive:</p>
<p>Go into accessories, right click on “Command Prompt”, select “Run as administrator”, and type “chkdsk /f” and when it prompts you to reboot, do so. </p>
<p>Check to see if there are any bad sectors on your machine’s hard drive. If you find any, it’s time to consider buying and installing a replacement or if you find that too troublesome, get a new machine. </p>
<p>I had to do the Windows 7 on new system research for a friend who bought a laptop with 8.1 and hates it. What I found was that Lenovo does sell corporate-grade desktops with Win7 installed. Not many, hold on let me check my mail… </p>
<p>ok… </p>
<p><a href=“Lenovo M Series Tower| M920, M70t, M90t | Lenovo US”>Lenovo Official US Site | Laptops, PCs, Tablets & Data Center | Lenovo US;
<p>go for i5 processor and Win7 Pro 64 I’m looking at $730 or so, pretty much what it costs to build. 3 year warranty.
Or get a basic AMD based system for even less:</p>
<p><a href=“Lenovo Official US Site | Laptops, PCs, Tablets & Data Center | Lenovo US”>Lenovo Official US Site | Laptops, PCs, Tablets & Data Center | Lenovo US;
<p>The Thinkcentres are enterprise desktops but you can get them for home. Both my wife and older daughter have Lenovo Thinkpad laptops and have beaten the daylights out of them. Well built.</p>
<p>Unless the OP’s machine has some serious underlying hardware problems, I’m thinking the best thing for OP to do is to install Win 7 on his current setup and use it for some more years. </p>
<p>Especially considering the major failure of Windows 8/8.1 means there’s a strong possibility Microsoft may move up the release of Windows 9 as soon as sometime next year or even late this year. </p>
<p>Plus…if OP waits, he/she’ll get a more technologically capable machine at the same/less cost than if he/she opts to purchase a new machine in the near future. </p>
<p>Cobrat, that’s a good point. I will ask them about that tomorrow. 67% free space on the disc drive. I can’t run that admin thing because I don’t recall ever password protecting the machine as a whole (sits in my home office) but it keeps asking for password! </p>
<p>If they install a new operating system do I need to reinstall software too or does it just roll over?</p>
<p>OP is a she, BTW.</p>
<p>Sudsie,</p>
<p>Technically, they can perform an upgrade install which can retain your current software installations. </p>
<p>However, I strongly DON’T RECOMMEND that as you will be setting yourself up for system issues and headaches down the road. </p>
<p>Better to backup all important files and applications, do a complete format, install Win 7 from scratch, and reinstall all applications. You will need to reinstall all applications and files from backup if you do this. </p>
<p>One note: when I went from a Vista machine to a new machine with 7, I found that some of my old software wouldn’t run under 7 at all. It wasn’t a catastrophe, but there were some things (mostly games) that wouldn’t work any more. OP is going from XP, so there may be some similar issues. Just a heads-up.</p>
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<p>Good point. </p>
<p>However, on the basis of her computer’s hardware specs alone, she should have no problems running Windows 7 on it. </p>
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<p>If you still have that Vista machine and you don’t care about the present Vista installation, format it clean and install Win 7 on it. </p>
<p>Unless something’s really off, you will experience a notable increase in speed & responsiveness. </p>