Desktop PC - Total system restore

[PeteXXX]

As this is a cycling forum, I'll post my computer issue.
I have a Dell Inspiron 530s 32 bit running Windows 7 and it's slower than me up a 1:4 hill (there's the cycling bit...) I've dumped all the rubbish and unused programs, defragged, registry scanned, anti-virussed, stopped unwanted Startup programs etc etc. I've reinstalled things I need afresh.
It's still desperately slow. My plan is now to start from scratch with a re-install.I've backed everything up to an external drive and Cloud so I don't need to keep anything on the hard drive.
Problem is, it was running XP, now unsupported, when I got it. I know that it'll run all the updates (for several hours probably!) if I press the' restore' button.
Once it's updated, will I have Windows 7 on it or what?

 

[cyberknight]

I am guessing it would return to the factory default of win xp, you would need to reinstall win 7 and then restore your back up .

 

[marzjennings]

You won't go back to XP if you do a factory reset. Win7 is now the default os and the reset is only go to reset win 7 back to factory defaults and not the PC.

 

[drummerbod]

There is some confusion around your statement. If on boot you have an option to restore your OS to factory build then it will be XP.

If you are referring to windows restore function then it will be W7 but you will have a choice of restore points - none of which, I believe, will be a fresh W7 install.

 

[Markymark]

The cleanest way is a factory reset which will put it back to the day you took it out of the box. Xp.

However running w7 on a an xp old machine means it will always run slow.

 

[drummerbod]

That model is a Core 2 Duo CPU running as a minimum 2.2Ghz and 2GB RAM. The limiting factor is the memory. I have a machine running Core2Duo with 2GB of RAM and it's ok. It's not worth investing any money in to improve it unless someone has a spare 2GB stick of DDR2 RAM they can give you for free to make it 4GB in total.

 

[ColinJ]

Has it ever been ok with Win 7? (I.e. did it start off ok, but has now slowed down, or was it slow right from when you replaced Win XP?)

See if THIS POST helps ...

 

[PeteXXX]

Thanks for the replies.
To clarify, It came with XP, Dell stuff & drivers installed in a separate partition (Recovery D
It used to run just fine with Windows 7. I can't remember if I upgraded to 7 or if just happened via all the updates.
It has got progressively and ridiculously slower recently. If I right click on summat, I can go and pour a beer and drink half of it before any action occurs. If I change tabs in a browser (both FF and IE) it takes ages for anything to happen. Even if I just scroll down the page, it is not instant as it should be.

My main Q is, will, if I restore the PC by using F8 on boot-up, will I be on XP or 7?

 

[PeteXXX]

Has it ever been ok with Win 7? (I.e. did it start off ok, but has now slowed down, or was it slow right from when you replaced Win XP?)

See if THIS POST helps ...

I checked some of that stuff out, thanks, I ran Process Explorer v16.05 and didn't understand a durn thing it was telling me

 

[Octet]

Possibly an issue with the Hard Drive, over time... like us, they get old and slow and no matter how many disk defrags you do, how much spring cleaning, they'll still be slow.

It might be worth running some tests, mainly looking at Input/Output (IO) and seeing what the results are. Do you notice that the HDD light is constantly on?

 

[fossyant]

When upgrading XP to Win 7 it requires a fresh install, it won't do an upgrade. Do you still have the Win 7 cd. You can install fresh from there if you've got everything backed up.

 

[ColinJ]

I checked some of that stuff out, thanks, I ran Process Explorer v16.05 and didn't understand a durn thing it was telling me

You can see unusual activity such as something hogging the processor or the hard drive.

When my laptop was playing up I discovered that interrupts were taking up a ridiculous amount of CPU time. Normally they should use well under 1% most of the time. That led me to discover what I described in the post of mine that I linked to. I dealt with the offending bad block on the disk and the laptop has worked fine ever since.

Click on the CPU title at the head of its column to sort by percentage of CPU (processor) time used. Normally very little processor should be in use when the system is idling so the System Idle process uses (say) 99% of the time. Watch what goes on in the Process Explorer window when your browser is trying to do its thing.

If you have a fault like the one that I had then I don't think restoring the system would help and it would take forever to do!

 

[PeteXXX]

I've dug out the original discs etc and have a Windows 7 Home Premium (official) upgrade disc.
I'm going to bite the bullet and click that button soon.

What can possibly go wrong?

 

[fossyant]

It will be fine.

Be prepared for 500 updates though.... That was the biggest issue I had when we upgraded our XP machine to Win 7. Some of the updates crashed progress. When I restarted it it picked up again.

We stripped all the non essential software off it, and it runs rather well as the main machine we use for emails and photo storage. We have two win 8.1 laptops and a top end gaming PC that my son has, but this old one is the main machine for essentials.

 

[cyberknight]

When upgrading XP to Win 7 it requires a fresh install, it won't do an upgrade. Do you still have the Win 7 cd. You can install fresh from there if you've got everything backed up.

As above
When i upgraded to win 7 it was a fresh install .