Windows 7 Ultimate 64 - Slow and broken.

[Duderooni]

I've installed Windows 7 64 bit on an empty formatted Samsung Spinpoint f3 and it just feels sluggish and crap. I've spent most of the week complaining that I must have a dodgy hard disk but its becoming increasingly clear that's not the case.

I've updated as many drivers as I can find, unless anyone can point me in the right direction to find some 64 bit Samsung f3 drivers?

The whole experience feels lethargic compared to XP and I just don't understand why. Games all perform much worse apart from WoW for some reason. Dirt 2 looks like its on kangaroo juice, juddering around (dx 9 mode as well as dx 11), it was a solid 60 fps with no slow down before.. And the worst offender is outrun coast 2 coast which takes over 30 seconds to load a stage which would take 5 in XP.

I don't pretend to know much about Windows 7 as Im still getting used to it, any help would be much appreciated! I never tried vista as it was so badly regarded, well if its worse than what Im experiencing now Id dread to think what its like!!

 

[Duderooni]

I'm sorry for the confusion, my wording has opened a can of worms, will edit my OP! I did a fresh install of Windows 7 64 Ultimate from an empty FORMATTED drive. I do have 2 gb of ram but getting 8gb in the post tomorrow. Slightly concerned about the macbook 2gb performing well...... I have a thread in the Hard Disk section here, have a look to see what you think about my HDD numbers.. - http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18281879

 

[Duderooni]

I have the latest Nvidia drivers which came out this week (Windows 7 64 version), I thought that may have been the problem too..

Yea I have a pair of vengence dual channels coming tomorrow to replace my 3 year old kingston ddr3 kit so I'll be sure to let you know of any differences! I'm betting it all on this ram to be honest because if this doesn't sort it, I'm totally stumped. I guess I'll have to reformat again I guess... (which is such a pain to do when your not familiar with the OS!)

 

[Duderooni]

In the thread about my HDD I've noticed that when I installed windows my bios didnt have AHCI enabled. I asked whether this would help performance in the other thread, but I guess it applies here too, do you think Windows 7 would seem quicker if I reformatted with AHCI on?

And yes SSD is definitely on the radar for my next upgrade..!! Haha

 

[Duderooni]

Nah, would not make a difference tbh. Are the motherboard drivers latest version for manufacturers site?

Yeah the latest and greatest from gigabytes website for the mother board, etc

I've used both 7 and XP, but I still use XP because its more responsive. Updating to W7 SP1 hasn't improved it, and microsoft noted that no performance increases should be expected from it either..

Wow, thats a bummer. I have to agree with everything your saying though. I went straight into SP1 with W7, and at times its like walking through treacle.. Yet with my 8gb of ram coming tomorrow I feel like I've got to gutt it out on 7 and hope the extra memory improves things really, as opposed to XP not seeing half my ram

 

[Duderooni]

Well to show my journey of failure from XP to Windows 7 in greater depth, I've uploaded a video of my pc trying to load Outrun 2006 here. There is no hard disk thrashing or.. Well anything really, its weird. As I said in the OP, on XP the level would load in like 5 seconds on my old seagate HDD. This is the sort of time it should usually take! I've tried putting that relic back in here as a secondary drive with the game on it and it takes just as long (over 30 seconds), so the guilty party definitely seems to be Windows 7 and not the disk drive.. Has anyone else had problems where they've noticed game performing worse after upgrading to windows 7 and what did you do to fix the issue?

 

[Duderooni]

With regards to OutRun 2006, you aren't alone with the long loading problem and I really have no idea what is wrong as well to be honest. Running Windows 7 x64 on a Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB myself.

It's certainly not the hard drive or anything else in my system since everything is running perfectly fine. I even installed the game on another partition on the same hard drive which is running Windows XP and it loads very quick.

So yeah, I guess it is just Windows 7 and old game compatibility problems.

Yeah it seems to be the case, I'm glad someone else is having the same problem so its less of a risk that I have some form of hardware failure.. Strangely enough, I've just been trying to run the game in 'compatability mode' for XP and its no different.

 

[Duderooni]

Well my 8gb of memory came, doesn't work properly. Should have guessed really shouldn't I.. Haha. Here is a thread I've made regarding my latest and greatest hiccup with Windows 7. Bloody nightmare.

 

[Duderooni]

An update - I've reinstalled Windows 7 64 with my 8Gb of RAM inserted and its actually working now. Turns out it was an ancient USB modem tripping the system over. That'll teach me for using prehistoric components.

So now all the components seem to be sorted, and lack of ram isn't an issue, Ive been trying to look into why my version of windows 7 seems sluggish. I've done a few tests and come up with some interesting results. I'll use the setup file of CPUZ as an example of the issues I'm experiencing, this is what happens:

When ONLINE - I double click the .exe file and the cursor turns into a spinning circle for aprox 4-5 seconds.. Then the setup screen comes up and I can proceed as normal.

When OFFLINE - I double click the .exe file and the cursor turns into a spinning circle for a split second, then the setup screen comes up, etc.

So I've come to the conclusion its searching online, or communicating with something which is slowing everything down. I have my routers firewall on, as well as the windows one, so I'm doing my best trying to stop this. Or maybe this is the problem? It's taking longer doing whatever its doing because I've blocked it? I'm really baffled about this, why do MS (or someone more sinister) need to know when I'm running setup files? What are peoples thoughts, do you agree that this is problem or is it something else? And has anyone else noticed this problem themselves?