From Windows 7 Back to XP on the Toshiba NB205 Netbook
I know I haven’t mentioned it lately, but I started my Mac diet just over a week ago. On Aug. 6th, I got my early access to the final build of Windows 7 and I installed it on a second partition of my new netbook. Since then, I’ve used the Toshiba NB205 as my primary computer — 10-12 hours a day, both at the home office and at various mobile locations. I did upgrade the memory to 2GB earlier this week, which is simple to do. One screw holds the memory cover — simply remove the screw, replace the included 1GB RAM module with a 2GB stick and secure the cover. It literally takes two minutes.
I was humming along with Windows 7 for most of this past week. And then something happened. My browser crawled to a stop yesterday. I’m not sure what changed — if anything — but it was like someone had secretly snuck into my netbook and swapped the 2GB stick with a 256MB module. The CPU kept hitting 100 percent, so browser tabs were taking 15 seconds or more to render content. That’s a productivity killer for what I do, and after a few hours of torture yesterday, I went back to Windows XP. I’ll have to go back and review the situation over this weekend, but I’ll be darned if I can even imagine what happened. It’s a disappointing situation, as my Windows 7 experiences so far have been pretty awesome. Hopefully the cause is both minor and fixable. The first thing I’m going to do is try a few different browsers. I was using Google Chrome as I find it to be one of the fastest for the sites I hit. Internet Explorer 8 was sluggish by comparison at first, so perhaps I’ll go back to IE8 temporarily and then test Firefox.
I know there’s a few other folks that are working with Windows 7 on netbooks right now. Have any of you seen this behavior in the RTM build on your hardware?
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Was this with Firefox? Reason I ask is on our recent business trip to Carmel I had Firefox start crawling on Vista. I ended up switching totally to Google Chrome for the duration of the trip, it was that noticeable. I have seen this happen on various XP systems too.
Firefox works great and then all of a sudden starts crawling. It’s weird.
I’ve been using Windows 7 on my P1610 (with 2GB RAM) if that counts as a netbook?!
I even installed the Office 2010 preview.
I’ve not come across any slow-downs so far. Odd bits are more sluggish than XP, but overall experience is good.
Mind you, I did install an SSD hard disk the other week :)
Grant
I installed Win 7 on my P1610 with 1Gb of RAM and I’m amazed by how good the performance is considering the specs. Shutdown and startup are really snappy and everything else just runs as you’d expect.
The only issue I’ve had is that the battery life is abysmal (i.e. about 1/2 an hour tops) but that could either be the battery or a driver problem. I just need to spend some time investigating but it’s not a top priority as my partner uses that laptop as a kitchen PC and it’s always plugged in.
Unfortunately, (depending on your perspective) I haven’t noticed any browser problems but I only use Firefox and IE.
By the way, if IE8 seems sluggish try turning off the suggested sites feature. That seems to improve performance slightly, especially when opening new tabs.
I have seen the same problem with Firefox on W7 build 7100, and then when you close it, aspects of it remain open, and you have to use Ctrl/Alt/Delete to stop Firefox.
Not sure why either. Chrome while quicker can’t be scripted, which is a real bummer, and IE8 is a non-starter.
I’ve running W7RC on my Wind with 2GB RAM for the last 3 or 4 months. I’ve never encountered any kind of slowdown, let alone the type you describe. I use Firefox predominantly, and only occasionally use Chrome.
I too recently put XP back on my Asus EEEPC 901 (modified with 2GB and 64GB Runcore SSD). It wasn’t slow-downs per se that did it but I started getting some sort of random error about the video driver that seemed to otherwise be working. I also missed that none of my hardware buttons were working on the Asus under Windows 7. I’m sorting of getting bored with the whole OS thing anyway. If I can run the apps I need, I’m getting less concerned about what OS is hosting that app.
I did have a similar problem with Google Chrome on the RC version of 7. I read in Google support forums that you should use the Beta channel versions of Chrome if you choose to install it on windows 7. When I switched to the Beta it worked a lot better. Now I’m running 7 RTM on my 1000he and haven’t had any problems with Chrome beta 3 or Firefox 3.5.2. Chrome does run a lot faster since it doesn’t have to load any add-ons.
I am running W7RC on my HP Mini-Note 2133 with no problems. The netbook has a 1.2gb processor and I have 2gb of ram with a 120gb hard drive. I am running Chrome (stable)and it ‘feels’ just as quick as XP Pro did.
Some time ago, yoiu installed a Mac OS X on the Q1, in my search to find some way of recyclying old devices, I tried the same thing, with no luck, would you be willing to share some tips? I have a dead MBP and would like to keep one device that still keeps Apple on my mind, also it would be cool to get the Q1UP (1.33GHZ) running Mac.
“Viliv killed the Q1″
Thanks
Have never heard of such a thing, but I’d love to read more about your particular config, etc. I’m also surprised, and perplexed that you’d just abandon it for XP so quickly and without any effort at a System Restore or other diagnostic attempt.
Windows business as usual? :)
Yawn…
I lost too much work time with the initial issue, so a reboot and move to XP was the easiest way to get past the pain point. But I haven’t just abandoned it for XP… as I clearly said in the post, I’ll be researching and taking a closer look over the weekend.
If you’re using Chrome, hit Shift+Esc to bring up the Chrome task manager. It will show you which tabs or plugins are hogging CPU time. I’ve actually had some bad experience with Flash pegging the CPU at 100% which brings everything to a crawl. (Although, I haven’t noticed this happening as much in W7 as in Vista.) Given the ubiquity of Flash, this could be happening with what seems like normal browsing.
Cool – thanks for the tip. Like all Chrome features, this is clean and quick. Love the “Stats for Nerds”
I was having probs with both ie8 and firefox, switched to Opera for both XP and Vista and things work better. I miss some features in Firefox but Opera’s speed is a plus.
i have also experienced this with win7 rc build 7100. i can’t use it to play video streamed in a browser and even mp3 playback with wmp stutters and pushes the cpu up. i have googled this and the root cause seems to be with how win7 is managing audio. i disabled my audio card and things run fine, but i can’t hear anything. no solution.
I will add by 2 cents, I have been running Win 7 for some months with no side effects as described earlier. Though I would use caution in my expectations when Win 7 & netbook used in the same sentence. MS will be filling this sector of the market with a cut down version – this should work perfectly. I say well done Microsoft for finally getting a decent XP replacement!
I just got my Lenovo S10-2 this week and installed 2GB of RAM. I am running the final version of Windows 7 and the latest beta build of Google Chrome. I am very impressed by Windows 7 so far. It was by far the easiest Windows install I have ever gone through. I did not install a single driver other than installing the AT&T Communication Manager disk for the USBConnect Mercury adapter. I have not seen any of the slow-downs that you mention.
I also encountered slow-downs with a new installation of 32-bit Firefox in 64-bit Win7 after I moved my old Firefox profile from 32-bit XP.
The culprit turned out to be one of the extensions. I can’t remember which one it was, but disabling it fixed the problem.
Hopefully this doesn’t happen to my Toshiba NB205 with Windows 7. So far after a week with Win 7 its running great.
Wow, I totally just skipped the comments with this one, but I TOTALLY AGREE WITH THIS ARTICLE!
I’m running the RTM version as well on my Sony UX380N and I noticed that with power management installed, the past 2 installs I’ve used on my computer, my CPU speed does not throttle at all! it stays at 800mhz (vs 1.3ghz) and is extremely slow (slower than normal 800mhz I think!)! Once I removed Vaio power management (through safe mode because normal windows is too slow to do anything!) everything went back to normal. I’ve confirmed this on multiple occasions.
I’m thinking about holding off on Win7 until that power consumption/slowness issue gets fixed because without power management, my UX consumes 4 more watts than normal, and I loose 2 hours of battery life with my extended battery!
With XP reinstalled on my Asus I’m still having a problem and I think it’s due to Google Chrome. The machine freezes up. I can see the cursor move around and the cursor responds to the mouse but it doesn’t respond to clicking on anything. I don’t seem to have that problem with IE8 so Chrome is gone for now.
Lowbar,
Thank you for evaluating Windows 7 and it’s great to hear that you are enjoying your experience so much! If you are planning on purchasing Windows 7 when it is released it may be helpful to know you don’t have to wait until October to reserve your copy of Win 7! You can pre-order your copy of Windows 7 Home Premium or Windows 7 Professional today. For more information, see the Windows 7 Pre-Order offer page here: http://tinyurl.com/nldc8p
Jessica
Microsoft Windows Client Team
I am running windows 7 rtm on my NB205 with no issues. I also have 2 gigs of ram and am using a 2gig sd card for readyboost. it runs great!
I’ve got a NB205 running XP and it seems to run great overall, except it doesn’t like Firefox. I haven’t pinned down if it’s because of Flash or because of the IPv6 issues I’ve read about elsewhere, but it often comes to a complete halt for several seconds when loading pages, like it’s choking. Eventually it swallows and things are fine, but only until the next page load. The fan does rev up, but when I check the task manager, Firefox isn’t taking up more than 50% of the processor’s power. Not sure what to make of that.
I’m using a Toshiba NB205 stock and I have been having similar problems with Firefox 3.5.
It will work fine on some sites, but doesn’t seem to like Google Reader. With Reader, it just stalls out and won’t even load some of the feeds.
Tried loading my blogger control panel and it goes into redirect and then hangs. Processor seems to hang around 51%.
Haven’t figured out what the problem is. Maybe it’s plug in related, I do have several plugins installed including read it later, zemanta and scribefire.
IE is working OK so I guess I’ll use that for awhile until I have a chance to see whats going on with this.
I do not have similar problems on my other laptop, a Acer ferrari 4000 running XP pro.
Just seems odd to me.
John
Let me see if I understand this. You had a problem with the browser, a program. So you ditch the entire OS? God help us.
I’ve had the same FF/IE browser slowdown problem on my NB205 under the factory-installed XP. I subsequently installed Win7 RC and haven’t (yet) seen a return of this issue.
Hi:
I have a Toshiba NB205 with 2GBs of RAM and have Windows 7 installed. Everything works fairly well, but my mouse cursor/pointer frequently freezes up for a few seconds and will also magically select things on its’ own. I have Google Chrome as my default browser. Could that have something to do with it? I’ve been looking for answers on the web without much success. I came across this forum, and though the post is old, I thought someone might be able to help.
Thanks,
CB