Windows 7 slower than Vista

Windows 7 is slower than Vista (both x64) for me too!!

I have the thorn in my side of a Dell XPS from 2007 (school discount). They sold me BTX after Intel had canceled it. Anyway I have SATA 1.5. I have PCI-E 1.0. I have DDR2 667 MHZ. So my 70 lbs aluminum case with 1000 watt power supply is actaully a prison.

Anyway... to get to the point, and avoid the bitterness of Dell's greed and subservience to Intel, I boot much slower in Win 7. My brother is using an SSD with the JMicron controller and SATA 3Gb/s on a weaker system and boots Win 7 like a dream.

My paging file is 4GB. To me it feels like Windows never grabs and makes full use of my CPU.

A few things of note:
I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate x64
I'm using Norton Internet Security 2010.
I have already stripped the startup on MsConfig.
When my system is crunching and I'm multi-tasking my CPU usage never, ever gets to even half way on the 4 cores. Vista had no problem there.

Page file is hard drive so if you dont have enough ram it will use the hard drive which is slow as molasses in december at the south pole.

What are you're power settings at? Do you have it on high peformance? If not switch it to that.

Norton 2010 is actually much better than previous Norton releases. It's focused on being small on resources and less naggy. It's safely an AV I can recommend again.

As for the original poster, did you do a clean install or upgrade? Most people I've seen that did the upgrade from Vista to 7, their machine slowed down quite a bit.

You're Welcome. I had the same issue you had untill I switched the power settings.

Wait for your Superfetch to catch up. After a new install things don't get optimized until you use it regularly for about two weeks.

And this is why you use sleep mode.

Anyone have a clue?M21inca

[QUOTE="M21inca"]Anyone have a clue?gamer082009

[QUOTE="gamer082009"][QUOTE="M21inca"]Anyone have a clue?Marfoo

got any link? I dont know any good software reviewing sites.

Q6600

4GB DDR2 667

2 WD 750GB in Raid 1

RAdeon HD4850X2 2GB

And yes Norton has returned to competitive rates of system performance.

Ok so I think I may know what the cause might be.... but I'm not sure... If I check the Resource Monitor 1.29GB shows grayed out as Hardware reserved. If I go to Computer -> Properties then it reports 4.00 GB (only 2.75GB usable). I have no idea why or how to free that memory up but I see other threads of people having this issue. Hopefully I find more forums on this topic.

I checked each RAM chip and it is fine. I checked each DIMM slot and it is fine. I ran a intensive RAM test that took over 6 hours last night and no errors reported.

Q6600

4GB DDR2 667

2 WD 750GB in Raid 1

RAdeon HD4850X2 2GB

And yes Norton has returned to competitive rates of system performance.

Ok so I think I may know what the cause might be.... but I'm not sure... If I check the Resource Monitor 1.29GB shows grayed out as Hardware reserved. If I go to Computer -> Properties then it reports 4.00 GB (only 2.75GB usable). I have no idea why or how to free that memory up but I see other threads of people having this issue. Hopefully I find more forums on this topic.

I checked each RAM chip and it is fine. I checked each DIMM slot and it is fine. I ran a intensive RAM test that took over 6 hours last night and no errors reported.

M21inca

Here are a couple, you may be able to find more with a quick Google, but everyone I've read so far has been positive.
Review 1
Review 2Marfoo

i think ill stick with my nod32. its really up there with the good ones lol :)

also vista has gotten much better with the service packs, im on home premium 64bit SP2, and im doing just fine.

probally stupid question but can you clean install the windows 7 upgrade disk/key thing whatever it is or should i just pay like 400 or whatever for the full disk version?

Q6600

4GB DDR2 667

2 WD 750GB in Raid 1

RAdeon HD4850X2 2GB

And yes Norton has returned to competitive rates of system performance.

Ok so I think I may know what the cause might be.... but I'm not sure... If I check the Resource Monitor 1.29GB shows grayed out as Hardware reserved. If I go to Computer -> Properties then it reports 4.00 GB (only 2.75GB usable). I have no idea why or how to free that memory up but I see other threads of people having this issue. Hopefully I find more forums on this topic.

I checked each RAM chip and it is fine. I checked each DIMM slot and it is fine. I ran a intensive RAM test that took over 6 hours last night and no errors reported.

M21inca

I have a similar spec PC and Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit and it runs very smoothly - boots much faster than Vista 64 bit Home Premium, and uses far less system resources.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (@2.4GHz stock speed)
Asus P5Q Pro P45 mobo
Corsair Dominator 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 1066MHz RAM
HD4850 512MB IceQ Turbo
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB HDD (I run Vista on a second HDD - Samsung F1 1TB)

I can see the full 4GB of RAM under both OS, but when I boot my Vista OS it is using around 1.5GB just for background stuff, while on Win 7 it uses between 800MB to just over 1GB. Though I do have Norton 2009 on my Vista install, and that is a horrid system hog - no way am I using Norton again for my clean Win 7 install.

I`ve tested / on my laptop, which was running vista previously... 7 ran well for 3 days.. now boot takes much longer it should be, it is prone to have boot issues if shut down was forced..

Another test, was on my desktop. I was disappointing as well: some games did not run, some, become pretty slower... i desinstalled 7 in 3 days

it is a waste of time