[SCouch]

I have a 5 year old Gateway GT 5032 with a AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.2ghz. Gateway installed 32bit Windows XP, but I'm contemplating upgrading to XP 64bit Pro, or Windows 7 64 Pro. I checked a year or so, and there were complaints about W7 and compatibility with hardware and software when upgrading older computers. I'm thinking these have probably been dealt with now, and with the W7 XP mode there shouldn't be problems with my existing software.

I ran the W7 upgrade advisor, and the only problem it found was Ram, which I have already have ordered 4gb, the max my MB will handle.

So, should I upgrade to XP 64 pro or go ahead and plunge into W7 64 pro?

Thanks!!!

Edited by SCouch, 09 August 2011 - 10:40 AM.

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I checked a year or so, and there were complaints about W7 and compatibility with hardware and software when upgrading older computers. I'm thinking these have probably been dealt with now, and with the W7 XP mode there shouldn't be problems with my existing software.

I would doubt problems from a year ago have been corrected. Compatibility with legacy (old) hardware and software is NOT a Windows or Microsoft problem - Windows 7 looks forward not back. The problems of the past would need to be fixed by the makers of the legacy products, not Microsoft - and most hardware makers dropped support for their legacy stuff long ago.

Understand XP's support for legacy hardware and software is a MAJOR cause for XP's poor security, for which MS was bashed relentlessly for the next 10 years. In fact, they are still be bashed for XP - even though the security programs were caused by badguys, not Microsoft or XP.

Sticking with XP is sticking with a 10 year old operating system designed to support legacy HW and SW from the DOS era. It is time XP be retired.

That said, I would not attempt to do that with a 5 year old system as clearly, that HW is XP era stuff. If you still wish to move to Win7 with this old HW, I would run the advisor again after you get your new RAM in.

[Digerati]

I checked a year or so, and there were complaints about W7 and compatibility with hardware and software when upgrading older computers. I'm thinking these have probably been dealt with now, and with the W7 XP mode there shouldn't be problems with my existing software.

I would doubt problems from a year ago have been corrected. Compatibility with legacy (old) hardware and software is NOT a Windows or Microsoft problem - Windows 7 looks forward not back. The problems of the past would need to be fixed by the makers of the legacy products, not Microsoft - and most hardware makers dropped support for their legacy stuff long ago.

Understand XP's support for legacy hardware and software is a MAJOR cause for XP's poor security, for which MS was bashed relentlessly for the next 10 years. In fact, they are still be bashed for XP - even though the security programs were caused by badguys, not Microsoft or XP.

Sticking with XP is sticking with a 10 year old operating system designed to support legacy HW and SW from the DOS era. It is time XP be retired.

That said, I would not attempt to do that with a 5 year old system as clearly, that HW is XP era stuff. If you still wish to move to Win7 with this old HW, I would run the advisor again after you get your new RAM in.

[SCouch]

Thanks!
I will build a new system later this year. I wasn't going to upgrade this system untill I figured out that I had a 64 bit system with 32 bit OS and only 1gb ram. So I'm thinking I can make a substantial improvement for this computer.
I was fairly competant with computers in the DOS days, but lost touch with windows, now I am going thru the learning process again. So another reason I am upgrading this system is the learning process, and have a backup for my business after I build the new computer. I will take your suggestion and test with upgraded memory. If W7 doesn't work on this computer, I can install XP 64 and use W7 on the new computer.

Edited by SCouch, 09 August 2011 - 12:30 PM.

[Digerati]

Sounds like a plan.