Surprising experiences upgrading old hardware to Windows 7

[mikeymikec]

A customer wanted his old machine upgrading from XP despite me recommending to replace it, so here I am upgrading it

Machine spec:
Athlon 64 3200
DDR memory (now 2GB dual-channel)
Board: ABit UL8 (no dodgy-looking caps)
ULi chipset

The first surprise is that the board accepted a WD Black 1TB without any fuss, despite the fact that the BIOS probably hasn't been upgraded since the machine was originally built.

Windows 7 (32-bit) didn't like the SATA IDE mode (BSOD, MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION before any choices during setup, bit surprising), so I switched it to RAID mode, then spent a while hunting down a driver online for it to get through setup

I'm putting on SP1 at the moment, so far so good seemingly.

Another surprise is that Win7 doesn't recognise the GeForce FX 5200 despite having 6-series cards in its own driver list.

TBH I didn't think it would get as far as recognising the disk.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Another surprise is that Win7 doesn't recognise the GeForce FX 5200 despite having 6-series cards in its own driver list.

That is strange. Does Nvidia even provide WDDM drivers for anything that old or is it running an XDDM driver?

Unfortunately that board is AGP, otherwise I'd say you could benefit from adding a GT610 for handling video decoding. I don't think anyone is making a PCI GT610, but you could try and find a PCI GT520. It uses the same GF119 chip, and is by far superior to that ancient FX 5200.

TBH I didn't think it would get as far as recognising the disk.

A SATA drive is a SATA drive, the only thing that could go wrong is the newer drive, or controller, being unable to handle auto negotiation down to SATA1.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I don't think anyone is making a PCI GT610

There are several at Newegg. Zotac makes one.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

There are several at Newegg. Zotac makes one.

Must have slipped under my radar. But thanks for the notice.

(Oddly, I can't seem to find any at Danish retailers. Must be a very niche market... )

 

[PliotronX]

Since I myself am always running newer hardware it had never occurred to me until I installed 7 on my mom's AthlonXP @ 2.3GHz w/1GB RAM and the all important DX9 card (Radeon 9700 Pro underclocked). For what she does (webmail), it is legitimately smooth. I love 7.

 

[vailr]

I'm putting on SP1 at the moment, so far so good seemingly.

Find or create a SP1 integrated Windows install disc. There's even "updated through June 2014" unofficially modded installer discs, available on certain torrent web sites.

Radeon HD 4350 512MB 64-Bit DDR3 AGP - $60:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161318

GeForce 6200 512MB 64-Bit GDDR2 AGP - (refurb) - $32
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125525

GeForce GT 610 512MB 64-Bit DDR3 PCI - $55
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500262

 

[mikeymikec]

I used a Vista driver from nvidia's site to get the card working.

I guess I was expecting to have problems with the SATA drive because of the crappy chipset (ULi is actually ALi - I mistook one for the other initially and found they were actually the same!).

 

[mikeymikec]

Find or create a SP1 integrated Windows install disc. There's even "updated through June 2014" unofficially modded installer discs, available on certain torrent web sites.

I'm hardly ever using the 32-bit version these days, so it's not a big concern. I've got the standalone SP1 installer on a memory stick as well.