So, I’ve got the one PC, running W7 Home Premium 64 bit. I don’t have a disk for the OS, just a sticker with the serial number on it.

Now I’ve also got my laptop, running XP 32 bit.

I’d like to install W7 over XP on the laptop. As I don’t have a disk for W7, am I supposed to download it and use the serial I already have (assuming I’m allowed to have the one OS on two machines?)

If so, do I download 32bit or 64bit? The license is for a 64bit OS, but will the laptop take a 64bit OS?

yawn…

Cheers

the license is only for the install on the PC, it won’t let you use that serial for the laptop (it’ll “phone home” & check)

also the serial will be 64bit OS specific, and your laptop almost certainly won’t be able to run the 64bit version (it’ll probably struggle with the 32bit version tbh)

Oh.

Balls.

Thanks for the reply 🙂

If you’re not interested in the Windows Updates, you can still install a hooky version on your laptop and not register it. It’ll just say “This version is not legitimate” on your desktop but only you are going to see it. I have a Home Server running this way.

Hmm, if I’d have thought about that in the first place…

The PC is offline (music making rig), the laptop is my interweb portal.

My rule of thumb is, as far as possible, use the OS and applications that date from when the laptop / pc was new. Anything much newer will slow it down, usually to an unacceptable degree. The exception is that everything that talks to the web will need upgrades for security, and these will gradually slow the machine down. So if I have a machine with XP on, I leave XP on it; it’s not that different to 7. XP won’t be supported by MS after next April, so there won’t be any more security patches but if you keep your AV up to date, only run as admin when you need to and generally think before you click the risk is low.

After a weekend trying to fix, patch and update a Windows 7 machine I can say categorically that it is in no way an upgrade over XP

I’d disagree with both of the above posts, Windows 7 is ace and run brilliantly on older hardware (I don’t own a PC under 4/6 years old), much better than XP IME. Where-as vista runs like a dog without a decent hardware setup, Win 7 will run really well on under spec kit. I’m a big fan of XP, but it was surpassed by Win 7, so there no reason to use it.

Since z1ppy has actually done that with XP and 7 I’ll accept it as an exception to my generalisation, which I still think is valid as such. But on my new machine I’m finding that while 7 has advantages over XP, it still has a few pitfalls once you get past the basics, eg, my USB bluetooth works fine under XP but is intermittent to dead under 7 (no errors shown, just doesn’t work)

When I asked around the IT dept about putting W7 on my 2.8Ghz P4, the consensus was that as long as it had 4gb of RAM, it would be fine. They said that it wasn’t as dependant on raw processing power as it was on lots of RAM.
Not got around to putting it on yet though, so this is all hypothetical.

My preference would be to install the 64-bit OS.
Windows 7 32-bit can only address 4gb max memory.
But you also need to check you cpu to make sure it is 64-bit compatible first.

With regard to putting newer operating systems on older systems…i put Win 7 on my OH’s laptop that came with Vista and was unusable, even though it had had a fresh Vista install.
Win 7 transformed it even with only 1gb of RAM.

I would be surprised if a win XP laptop would be equipped with a 64bit CPU and even if it did was able to have much more than 2GB or 3GB of Ram installed.

32bit Windows 7 works really well and runs great with just 2GB of RAM. As I’ve said on other threads before 32bit apps actually use less memory than 64bit apps. and 32bit apps running under WOW on a 64bit OS will always use more than on a native 32bit edition of Windows.

If you want to be off XP (and I’d understand why) and don’t want to fork out for a new OS licence for an old machine then Ubuntu or Mint Linux is where you should be looking.

To be honest, I don’t think I’ll bother now. The laptop’s only got 2gb of RAM anyway, and it works fine with XP.

The logic behind installing it on both machines was that I’d get to learn W7 much quicker. I use the laptop every day, whereas the PC mainly gets used at weekends etc. I’m a bit confused with W7 tbh, my mouse keep freezing, with messages about ‘USB device has stopped working’ etc etc…

Win 7 ISO downlaods

To answer your original question you can download an ISO file of the Win 7 from the above link. You should be able to run it for 90 days without a product key so you could always test it out and if disappointed revert to XP or if not just buy a copy and activate it.

BTW You can activate Windows several times, this allows for people who have the ‘full’ product and want to transfer the licence to a new machine or for people who upgrade a significant component in their PC. If you only have an OEM licence it is restricted for use on the machine it came with but can still be reactivated post hardware upgrades. Also whilst your machine is usually activated ‘online’ it does not deactivate if it never goes back online after that.

The logic behind installing it on both machines was that I’d get to learn W7 much quicker. I use the laptop every day, whereas the PC mainly gets used at weekends etc. I’m a bit confused with W7 tbh, my mouse keep freezing, with messages about ‘USB device has stopped working’ etc etc…

That sounds like a hardware or driver issue rather than a Windows 7 issue. If you are using an external USB hub of any kind (keyboard/Monitor/external adapter) try without it or check if it can have a PSU plugged in.