replace Vista with 7?

Hey all!
I got a refurbished HP G60 laptop with Windows Vista in it. It started out well, but in the last week it has gotten very slow and bogs down a lot. I have tried the virus scans(Avira AntiVir Personal) and Spyware Blaster, and no improvement. They didn't find anything. The event I think is either the cause or a symptom was Microsoft Windows Search Protocol Host stopped working. I tried the "find solution online" but that didn't work. I was thinking of dumping the Vista and installing Windows 7. Is there a propietary problem with this? Will it work? Is there a better solution to Search Protocol Host problem?

 

Does that laptop have a recovery partition on it, as it surely did when new? If so, I'd use it to restore the system to factory configuration and then go from there with removal of unwanted proprietary HP software that may be part of that original configuration.

If no recovery partition exists, let's say due to it being refurbished, then my next step would be to contact HP and inquire about getting a recovery disc on DVD. They may have it and, if so, they send it for a small charge, which would be almost insignificant compared to buying Win 7.

If you have some doubt about the hardware being solid enough to warrant a gamble on buying Win 7 and you can't get a recovery disc with Vista from HP, I would install a Linux OS such as Ubuntu, probably in a dual boot configuration, and run that for awhile to get some confirmation that the performance problem you're having with it does not indicate hardware failure.

 

First, the program Spyware Blaster does not scan for viruses or spyware, nor does it remove spyware or viruses. Spyware Blaster creates a "blacklist" of web sites known to host malicious files and/or sites that are known to assist in the spread of spyware, viruses, malware etc. This "blacklist" is used hand-in-hand with your browser to prevent you from even visiting one of these sites, and if you go to a clean site that has been hacked or has a "drive-by" link to one of the "blacklisted" sites, you'll be protected. So- running Spyware Blaster to remove or search for infections is impossible; it simply can't do that.

Anyway, about the slow PC problem. First thing to do is to perform some general maintenance and uninstall any old unused/expired software. I see many people running expired versions of Norton or McAfee, and simply removing them can do wonders to speed up a PC. A good guide for basic maintenance can be found at this link. Follow those steps exactly as described. This should help dramatically. If it doesn't, running chkdsk c: /r may help, but it can take hours to complete, and requires booting to a command prompt from your Windows installation disc. Many people suggest running sfc /scannow from a command prompt within Windows, but I have personally never seen sfc fix anything, but that's me. Something else to try is to run an extended hard drive diagnostic. You can download the free diagnostic program from your hard drive maker's web site. Go to your Device Manager, click the little symbol next to "Disk Drives" to find out who made the hard drive. Visit their support/downloads page, download the diagnostic, and run it as per the instructions at the maker's web site. Faulty/dying hard drives are a common cause of slow PCs.

Upgrading to Windows 7 is entirely up to you. Just be sure you have at least 2gb of RAM or Win7 can get a bit sluggish. If you don't need to save any programs or data, then you could simply perform a clean install of Vista, but I personally think that a clean install of Win7 is the way to go, but you may not have the money to buy a full version or upgrade version of Windows 7. The upgrade version will allow you to install Win7 "on top of" Vista without losing any data or programs, but there is a small chance that any lingering problems will survive the upgrade (this includes, but is not limited to, viruses and malware). IMO, if you're serious about moving to Win7, the best course of action would be save any documents, pictures, downloads, music, etc. Put these things on an external hard drive, a flash drive, burn to CD/DVD, whatever (it really depends on how much stuff you have to back up; smaller flash drives - 2gb up to 8gb - are remarkably affordable and priceless in their usefulness). Then once your stuff is saved, format the PCs hard drive and install Windows 7 clean, that way you're sure to avoid any left over issues.

I hope all this helps a bit! Good luck, and keep us posted!
:-D

 

thanks, that's very helpful. I started by trying chkdsk c:/r and it told me I don't have sufficient privileges!?! What do need to do about that? I thought I had administrator privileges.

 

When you run cmd, in Vista and Win7, there's a "trick". Click the "Start" orb, in the Run/Search box, type cmd but do NOT click OK or press Enter. Wait for it to appear in the top of the left pane of the open Start menu. Right click on it and select "Run As Administrator". When the Command Prompt window opens, type chkdsk c: /r and press Enter. You will get a message about not being able to run it, and do you want to run chkdsk at the next restart. Answer Yes, of course. Then type shutdown -r to restart the PC. Upon rebooting, chkdsk should startup, just let it run. Hopefully this well help the situation.... it certainly won't hurt anything.

(just remember, in the commands above, there's a space before and after the "c:" in the "chkdsk" command, and there's a space between "shutdown" and "-r" also; without the spaces, neither command will work)

 

One other thing - IMO, Windows 7 is without a doubt a HUGE improvement over Vista, and I personally like it better than XP, and I used XP religiously for 7 years and truly believed that no other OS could be better... then came the Win7 Beta... I installed it on a clean drive and set up my PC so I could boot to XP or Win7, and in under 2 weeks I never booted XP on my home PC again; Windows 7 is faster, it's "snappier", it's more intuitive, it is MUCH less intrusive than Vista, and I have had ZERO problems -not one- running any software on my 64bit Win7, and this includes really old software like Office2000 and some really old games like the original Serious Sam from 2001... no problems.... so, yeah, I'm a supporter of Windows 7 and encourage you to install it as long as your hardware is "up to snuff".

 

well that confirms what i thought about Vista and 7. The chkdsk run worked with the "trick". Thanks. It improved things, but I still have some bugs running around in here. I lost spider solitaire and get a strange "Windows Media Center Sharing Service has been stopped" message at start up. I didn't try to use this service before so the error message is a little odd. Anyway it all seems to be a nasty virus I picked up. I figure rather than go through the malware removal procedure I'm going to backup the stuff I need to keep that I trust on an external drive and do a clean install with 7. Can I do an upgrade and be sure of cleaning out the virus? Or should I do a clean/install?

 

Clean install.

 

so I did it! I clean/installed 7. Now its all about getting the settings right. When I scroll, its chunky and movies don't stream, they look like a series of stills. What do I need to change to get this to smooth out?

 

Now you need to update your hardware drivers with the latest versions from the makers, preferably NOT from HP or Windows Update. W7 only installs drivers that have basic functionality, eg. the graphics drivers allow Windows Aero but nothing better.