Windows 7 End of Life Announcement

[presta]

This any use?
Microsoft lists the Windows 10 minimum hardware requirements as: Processor: 1gigahertz (GHz) or faster processor or SoC. RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit. Hard disk space: 16 GB for 32-bit OS 20 GB for 64-bit OS.

Yes, I'd checked those, but then when I rang Samsung they told me they haven't written any drivers. They said if you want them ask Microsoft, but there's a post about that on the MS support forum saying something to the effect "not our problem, see the OEM". I don't want to take it into a shop because it's had confidential information on the disk, but new laptops don't seem as good as my old one. It's all got put off until now because I'm so utterly hacked off with it.

 

[DCBassman]

Yes, I'd checked those, but then when I rang Samsung they told me they haven't written any drivers. They said if you want them ask Microsoft, but there's a post about that on the MS support forum saying something to the effect "not our problem, see the OEM". I don't want to take it into a shop because it's had confidential information on the disk, but new laptops don't seem as good as my old one. It's all got put off until now because I'm so utterly hacked off with it.

In the search tool bottom left, type sysinfo and hit enter. That will tell you what's in your machine. What model Samsung is it? If it has an AMD/ATI graphics chip, then unless it's less than 5 years old, it needs replacing. Get new laptop, remove drive from old one.
Buy USB 3 drive housing off ebay, £6. Install old drive in it and plug into your new machine. This doesn't help much with other software you might want to transfer, but gets you and your info onto a W10 machine. Screenshot of the sysinfo output would be useful.

 

[MontyVeda]

Step son is sorting laptop at work. I,T company
Free W10 upgrade as 7 is over.

My lappy is a 2011 model and is rarely used but still handy for odd tasks.
Everything takes an age on a lap top.

my laptop's about that old... but a recent £20 upgrade to an SSD means everything goes like shoot off shoovel

 

[MontyVeda]

Win 10 on 3 laptops and 5 desktops at home. Most upgraded from previous Win 7 licences. No issues, and Win10 very stable.

Did you go for the upgrade or fresh install? wondering if you went for the upgrade, did all the installed software still work? Did it retain all your browser data (cookies, log-ins, bookmarks, etc.) ???

 

[presta]

In the search tool bottom left, type sysinfo and hit enter. That will tell you what's in your machine. What model Samsung is it? If it has an AMD/ATI graphics chip, then unless it's less than 5 years old, it needs replacing. Get new laptop, remove drive from old one.
Buy USB 3 drive housing off ebay, £6. Install old drive in it and plug into your new machine. This doesn't help much with other software you might want to transfer, but gets you and your info onto a W10 machine. Screenshot of the sysinfo output would be useful.

Yes I've checked all those details, including the graphics card, and they're all compatible. The issue is that Samsung say they haven't written the necessary drivers. It's an NP350V5C-A02UK: 500GB HDD, 6GB RAM, Core i5 processor, graphics card is DirectX 11 with WDDM1.1.
From what I'm reading, Office 2010 won't transfer over to a new machine, so that's another £120. Also, new laptops don't have a user replaceable battery, so I'll have to take it to a repairer just for a battery change.

 

[DCBassman]

Yes I've checked all those details, including the graphics card, and they're all compatible. The issue is that Samsung say they haven't written the necessary drivers. It's an NP350V5C-A02UK: 500GB HDD, 6GB RAM, Core i5 processor, graphics card is DirectX 11 with WDDM1.1.
From what I'm reading, Office 2010 won't transfer over to a new machine, so that's another £120. Also, new laptops don't have a user replaceable battery, so I'll have to take it to a repairer just for a battery change.

That will eat Windows 10 for breakfast.

 

[DCBassman]

Time to file this under 'redundant'. Received free from Microsoft for being a beta tester waaay back when.

 

[presta]

That will eat Windows 10 for breakfast.

According to Samsung it doesn't have the drivers, and it isn't listed on MS website as one that's compatible, so I've just ordered a new one. For whatever reason it's been grinding to a halt lately, it sometimes takes nearly a minute just to open a window.

 

[DCBassman]

Crossed wires here: as an all-Intel chipset, Samsung doesn't have to write any drivers, they're all in Windows 10, back to well before your model. It should simply work, with the proviso that odd bits like card readers might need the drivers searching for, as Samsung don't make those parts. A PC that gets slower over time does so due to lack of housekeeping, usually. Only other thing that kills speed is if the hard disk is dying, and if you've used it a lot for a long time, that might be the case.

 

[presta]

Crossed wires here: as an all-Intel chipset, Samsung doesn't have to write any drivers, they're all in Windows 10, back to well before your model. It should simply work, with the proviso that odd bits like card readers might need the drivers searching for, as Samsung don't make those parts. A PC that gets slower over time does so due to lack of housekeeping, usually. Only other thing that kills speed is if the hard disk is dying, and if you've used it a lot for a long time, that might be the case.

Wouldn't it show up as a lack of HDD space if it was knackered? Most of the time it's ok, but each day it goes through a period where it becomes unusable. The mouse pointer moves across the screen, but little else happens in less than several minutes. Task manager, when I can get it to open, shows little CPU activity, but the RAM is usually chokker. Re housekeeping, I wouldn't know what to do if Norton/Windows can't do it for itself. Norton occasionally does a 'cleanup', but I'd be very reluctant to delete anything unless I knew it was one of my own files. The HDD is 78% empty.

 

[swee'pea99]

Wouldn't it show up as a lack of HDD space if it was knackered? Most of the time it's ok, but each day it goes through a period where it becomes unusable. The mouse pointer moves across the screen, but little else happens in less than several minutes. Task manager, when I can get it to open, shows little CPU activity, but the RAM is usually chokker. Re housekeeping, I wouldn't know what to do if Norton/Windows can't do it for itself. Norton occasionally does a 'cleanup', but I'd be very reluctant to delete anything unless I knew it was one of my own files. The HDD is 78% empty.

I've been sneered at for suggesting it before, but I maintain all my family's pc's using a program called Advanced Systemcare and another called Defraggler. Installed and used them recently on my father in law's laptop and he said I'd absolutely transformed the thing. If they don't work for you you can easily uninstall them, no harm done. (They're both freeware, in case you were wondering.)

 

[ColinJ]

I thought I would have a go at sticking Linux on my old Dell this evening. I have obviously made a mistake when trying to setup a bootable flash drive because I am getting the error "NTLDR is missing" which sounds like it is still trying to boot Windows 7! It's getting late - I'll try again tomorrow.

 

[classic33]

I thought I would have a go at sticking Linux on my old Dell this evening. I have obviously made a mistake when trying to setup a bootable flash drive because I am getting the error "NTLDR is missing" which sounds like it is still trying to boot Windows 7! It's getting late - I'll try again tomorrow.

Why not later today?

 

[DCBassman]

Wouldn't it show up as a lack of HDD space if it was knackered? Most of the time it's ok, but each day it goes through a period where it becomes unusable. The mouse pointer moves across the screen, but little else happens in less than several minutes. Task manager, when I can get it to open, shows little CPU activity, but the RAM is usually chokker. Re housekeeping, I wouldn't know what to do if Norton/Windows can't do it for itself. Norton occasionally does a 'cleanup', but I'd be very reluctant to delete anything unless I knew it was one of my own files. The HDD is 78% empty.

You've answered part of the problem - Norton.
Uninstall it. You'll see an immediate improvement.
As @swee'pea99 says, run defraggler, after going to the drive properties, and running disk cleanup.
So long as the drive is fully functional, you should have an almost as new laptop. Try it. If nothing else, it will show you how to keep the new one running sweetly. Warning: if your new machine has a solid state drive, DO NOT run any sort of defragmentation program such as Defraggler. It will harm the device.

 

[raleighnut]

You've answered part of the problem - Norton.
Uninstall it. You'll see an immediate improvement.
As @swee'pea99 says, run defraggler, after going to the drive properties, and running disk cleanup.
So long as the drive is fully functional, you should have an almost as new laptop. Try it. If nothing else, it will show you how to keep the new one running sweetly. Warning: if your new machine has a solid state drive, DO NOT run any sort of defragmentation program such as Defraggler. It will harm the device.

Good luck trying to unpick 'norton' from any computer, I think they write a lot of Malware as a sales gimmick.