Windows 7 doesn't like older hardware

[Joel Crane]

I see myself as the resident old-hardware guy here on the site. Recently, I was given a copy of Windows 7 RC and a page of product keys. I took the plunge and installed it on my 933mhz PIII laptop with 700-something megs of RAM.

I was amazed at how smoothly it ran. I did however run into some problems with drivers. I still haven't located a sound driver for the 6-year-old laptop, the default driver works but sounds terrible.

I was so impressed with Windows 7 that I installed it on my home-built desktop, only to find that graphics drivers for my Radeon 9200se aren't available. I was able to make XP drivers work, but there's no Aero. Even worse, the PC bluescreens every time I shut it down. Hibernate doesn't work, it seems to simply reboot the PC.

It's frustrating for users like me, because Windows 7 DOES run well on slow hardware. It just doesn't support older sound and graphics adapters, and it's doubtful that hardware manufacturers will write the needed drivers. I suppose that this is the price to pay for progress though, I can't really expect Microsoft to sacrifice innovation and performance for old hardware and software support.

I might have to revert to Windows XP, which is too bad, because Windows 7 really is an excellent operating system.

[Sven Johannsen]

Feel your pain, but appreciate your acknowledgment that there is only so much legacy support that we should expect. I have loaded Win 7 on some older stuff as well, with a little better results than you, but have loaded it on some recent hardware with some support issues. One in particular was an HP tablet with a fingerprint reader. The reader was recognized just fine, but the management software wasn't compatible. The Win 7 compatibility checker said that up front, but I took a shot. Fortunately in this case, a newer version of this laptop had a different reader management software available under HPs support downloads for Vista, and it actually did work on Win 7.

Sometimes it takes some playing with alternatives, but if you aren't willing to do that, I would advise the less savvy or patient upgraders to wait until their PC maker posts updated driver updates for Win7, and make darn sure they have the stuff to revert back to what they started with, just in case.

[Joel Crane]

I think I'm going to eBay an old Pentium II laptop of mine and use the cash to buy a 35 dollar graphics card off NewEgg. As long as it is DirectX 10 compatible, has dual outputs, and is AGP it should work. I think 35 bucks is worth to price to have Windows 7 running smoothly until the Release Candidate expires.