Will Windows 7 speed up my notebook? I currently have Vista.

My GF's notebook feels pretty slow. I was thinking it might just be Vista slowing everything down.
I try to update her notebook too and it says that it cannot update because there is a corrupted file in her operating system.
Will a Windows 7 upgrade fix this problem?
I was thinking maybe upgrading the RAM and downloading Windows 7(64-bit)?

Any ideas guys?

Here is the notebooks information.
Dell 1420
CPU- Intel Core 2 Duo 1.5GHz
RAM- 2GB
OS- Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit
HDD- 160GB

 

More memory would help, so would a new clean installation of Windows (any version).

 

I would just reinstall Vista, since you already own it.

Upgrading to 7, adding RAM, and perhaps getting a faster hard drive can all help, but they all cost money. (Of course, if you don't mind spending it...)

If you can't update the OS, that's a huge problem. You need to either reinstall Vista or install 7.

btw, I'm running Vista 64-bit with 2 gb RAM and a 2.2 GHz C2D processor, and it' quite snappy. Sure it would be even faster on Win 7, or with more RAM, but it's pretty fast right now. You have a slower CPU but I doubt it'll be a huge issue.

Oh yeah, if you reinstall Vista, update it to SP1 and then SP2 first thing... Vista RTM is really slow.

 

even with your 2meg, win 7 64 bit will be faster than your vista
my old hp 2meg vista laptop was a lot snappier with win 7 64 bit

 

How do I go about reinstalling Windows Vista?

 

You can also try win 7 for the jeck of it before you go reinstalling vista.
You can user win 7 (any version) for 120 days using the rearm command (100% legal and blessed by MS).

So, I would try win 7 ultimate and see what goodies are there

 

Vista per se isn't slow at all.

But if you already have a corrupted file who know what else has been broken on it - i.e. fresh Vista would be much better.

 

VISTA IS A PIECE of ****!! try 7.....ull never go back and ull feel like u got her a new noteboook

 

In my experience .... Win7 has always been faster than Vista and XP. I've had all three on multiple notebooks, my desktop and my netbook(Vista sucks on netbooks).

Your going to have too do tweaking/cleaning to get Vista as snappy as default Win7. And even then it's a crap shoot.

 

Some methods:

See if there's an OS disc that came with the computer.
Request a disc from Dell: Dell - Support
Restore from the restore partition (I think you press F8 when booting or something), and then uninstall the crap that comes preloaded on it.

Regardless of which method, install SP1 and SP2 immediately... then install/update the drivers.

 

Another method you could use would be this:

Find Windows Vista Home Premum (32bit or 64bit) with already slipstreamed SP2. Install it, and use the OEM key on the back of your laptop to activate it.

It's much better to just install Vista like that instead of downloading the service packs and installing them separately on a RTM version (that doesn't have any service packs).

In order to install Windows OS, you have to go into BIOS by pressing F2 button immediately after hitting the power button to activate the machine.

Find the Boot options and make sure your optical drive (DVD) is set as the first boot device.
Input the Vista Home Premium SP2 (32 or 64bit) into your optical drive.
Exit the BIOS by saving the changes and once you are prompted to press any button to jump start the DVD, do that, and finally follow the on-screen instructions.

Here are instructions that can help you in detail:
Installing and reinstalling Windows Vista

Best to do a clean-install of Vista because you will eliminate the bloatware that came originally with the machine.
Although, I would probably recommend you do download and store the necessary drivers for the laptops devices onto a separate partition (same thing would go for any critical files your gf might have stored).

 

7 > Vista > XP, IMO.
7 and Vista are actually same.
Just that 7 is like a tweaked Vista only.

 

MS actually admitted that 7 is what Vista was supposed to be...but due to their release schedule they never had the chance to actually get it done before release.

 

I remember early screen shots of the unofficial Longhorn looked more like W7 than Vista.