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I was wondering since I only have 2 gb of RAM for win 7 could that be the reason why I see my mouse pointer spin like a clock when I am trying to do certain things like run virtual pc 2007 and say firefox instance or two? Plz let me know? thx

Ouch....Win 7 2 gigs and something running in Virtual PC also? Yikes....how can you stand that kind of pain? I'd want at least 4 gigs to run a virtual guest and leave some usable RAM for the host OS.

There are of course an incredible amount of other variables here...motherboard chipset, the hard drive, drive controller, video controller, antivirus of choice, overall health of the system, etc etc etc etc

YeOldeStonecat wrote:Ouch....Win 7 2 gigs and something running in Virtual PC also? Yikes....how can you stand that kind of pain? I'd want at least 4 gigs to run a virtual guest and leave some usable RAM for the host OS.

There are of course an incredible amount of other variables here...motherboard chipset, the hard drive, drive controller, video controller, antivirus of choice, overall health of the system, etc etc etc etc

So Cat, the obvious answer is yes? plz help me out as I am tired of this spinning? Do you need more info?

Add more RAM.... that's your best option. 2GB is a bare minimum to run Windows 7, the more RAM the better, I would recommend upgrading to 8GB.

24giovanni wrote:So Cat, the obvious answer is yes? plz help me out as I am tired of this spinning? Do you need more info?

Uhm.."Install more memory" is the quick and cheap way to help things....but without knowing a TON of more info.....I'm not sure there are additional causes to your poor performance.
*Motherboard type/chipset
*How well was Windows installed, drivers, etc
*Is this computer "healthy"? Or infested with adware and tool bars and other performance sapping things like that
*What else is running on this computer? Including little things running in the background...
*Hard drive..type, health?
*Software firewalls?
*Antivirus installed on this rig?
*Has this rig been scanned with quality and updated malware tools recently?
*What is running as your virtual guest? And what is it doing?

....there are other variables...but those are just a couple of quick ones that come to mind. But my first target would be the memory...2 gigs for Windows 7 is sorta like only 512 megs for Windows XP these days...it's sorta enough to "run"....but it ain't gonna be a ball of fire....

mnosteele52 wrote:Add more RAM.... that's your best option. 2GB is a bare minimum to run Windows 7, the more RAM the better, I would recommend upgrading to 8GB.

My mobo only supports 4 GB of RAM. Do you think that will help my PC somewhat?

How much RAM are you giving to the virtual machine?

24giovanni wrote:My mobo only supports 4 GB of RAM. Do you think that will help my PC somewhat?

My first reply:

YeOldeStonecat wrote: I'd want at least 4 gigs to run a virtual guest and leave some usable RAM for the host OS.

mnosteele52 wrote:Add more RAM.... that's your best option. 2GB is a bare minimum to run Windows 7, the more RAM the better, I would recommend upgrading to 8GB.

Ohh hell yes this... if its max of 4 then go to 4 if it will go higher than by all means 8 runs just sweet!! I just upgraded a Win7 PC from 4 to 8 and noticed a nice increase..very pleased.

Gotta be careful too with what you read as max.. I've seen some Dell models that were sold with Linux a while back say only 4 gigs max - well the reason is cause of the OS but if you stick Win7 64bit on that sucker it will go double that but they are not saying this which is stupid so look real hard before accepting the truth.

Sava700 wrote:Ohh hell yes this... if its max of 4 then go to 4 if it will go higher than by all means 8 runs just sweet!! I just upgraded a Win7 PC from 4 to 8 and noticed a nice increase..very pleased.

Gotta be careful too with what you read as max.. I've seen some Dell models that were sold with Linux a while back say only 4 gigs max - well the reason is cause of the OS but if you stick Win7 64bit on that sucker it will go double that but they are not saying this which is stupid so look real hard before accepting the truth.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/docu ... 00412#N284

From that link, it looks like the hardware limit is 4 gigs max, 2 gig per slot. Windows 7 32 bit can only address 4 gigs so your actual usable RAM will be slightly lower than 4 gigs. If you go 64 bit you should get full use of that 4 gig. Does this PC have onboard Video or a dedicated add-in Video card? That can make a big difference as onboard Video usually uses a chunk of your installed RAM and would subtract from your already boarder line 2 gigs. Whats your Windows Experience index look like, it graphics is rated low that will be part of your problem too.

EDIT: As a temporary fix you could try turning off Transparency, or turning off Aero all together. If you press the Windows key and the pause/break key you'll open the system screen. On the left you'll see advanced system settings. In there under the Advanced tab click settings under performance. Selecting "Adjust for best performance" may speed things up for you but will kill all the cool Windows 7 Aero features.