Windows 7 with older gigabyte motherboard

[nybugger347]

Hello,
I have a secondary PC that is about 4-5 years old and has given me no issues at all. The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-K8U motherboard with a 2.0ghz AMD Processor and 1gb of ram. I have used Windows XP without an issue and i am trying to upgrade to Windows 7 on it for better network support within my work group of 5 other PCs. Overall, Windows 7 seems to run fine and no issues with drivers or anything like that but the one issue thats giving me an major problem is when it randomly freezes and according to the event viewer it says this:

Some processor performance power management features have been disabled due to a known firmware problem. Check with the computer manufacturer for updated firmware

it freezes at random times, but other then that the PC seems to be able to run windows 7 pretty good considering its hardware age. Does anyone know how to resolve this for me, i am using the latest bios for the board.

[absic]

Hi,

If the known hardware fault is due to the Motherboard then the only remedy would be a BIOS update. Unfortunately, checking out your mobo, the last update was nearly 5 years ago!

As technology and software have moved on so much over the past few years, I very much doubt that Gigabyte will be doing any further updates for these older boards. So I think you have to accept the fact that your board will not be able to fully handle Windows 7.

ATB

[Dark Mantis]

Further to absic115's reply you are running with less than the minimum amount of memory for Windows 7 to run properly. Your mother board will accept up to 3Gb so I don't know if you can install some more but it may well help.

[bofh1971]

Hi

there are a few things you can try to get stability, even if a bios update is unavailable.
I had this issue with a customer who had invested heavily in an Asus board only 18months before windows 7 came out

He bought windows 7 not checking the compatibility list, thinking obviously anything capable of running Vista should be fine with 7.

Not so, in his case it was the onboard Audio that was causing crashes and BSOD, so I supplied him with a cheap addin Audio card and his system was fine.

Some people report that windows 7 is more fussy about memory controllers, so older processors might also be a problem.

Try disabling features, starting with power management, then in other tests try disabling onboard audio, lan and if possible video.
you can always get a cheap add in card for any of those three.

As a final note before you go spending money, being about 5 years old, the pc could be reaching its end of life, mechanical parts like the HDD, CD-DVD and Fans could start to fail , and you could end up spending a fair amount of money trying to repair the machine, than just buying new components.

Good luck

[nybugger347]

The computer is fine, the hardware is fine. While it might be old, its still works great. I have done alot of optimizations in windows 7 and overall, im impressed with the speed of win 7 on the machine.

I ran the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor that you can find on google and it passed with good marks. In system properties it gets a 3.0 rating, so its seems pretty valid for that it does support the new OS

HDD and CD rom drive is all good, since i installed those new devices last year and i have plenty of fans laying around so replacing that is easy. A new agp card was installed year due to a stuck pin in the motherboard vga port. I am going to try to disabling onboard audio and onboard lan and see if that works. Other then,  i guess i have to go back to Win XP and try to make it more compatible with my network

I have power mangement set to never sleep, never standby so im pretty sure thats off

[Dark Mantis]

In the BIOS do you have enabled any power saving modes?

[absic]

The computer is fine, the hardware is fine. While it might be old, its still works great. I have done alot of optimizations in windows 7 and overall, im impressed with the speed of win 7 on the machine.

I ran the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor that you can find on google and it passed with good marks. In system properties it gets a 3.0 rating, so its seems pretty valid for that it does support the new OS

HDD and CD rom drive is all good, since i installed those new devices last year and i have plenty of fans laying around so replacing that is easy. A new agp card was installed year due to a stuck pin in the motherboard vga port. I am going to try to disabling onboard audio and onboard lan and see if that works. Other then,  i guess i have to go back to Win XP and try to make it more compatible with my network

I have power mangement set to never sleep, never standby so im pretty sure thats off

Before you throw in the towel and go back to XP, have you double checked that your RAM is OK. You have only said that you have 1 gig and haven't said what make or rating it is nor have you said what the actual CPU is that you have.
Bofh1971 mentioned that:

Some people report that windows 7 is more fussy about memory controllers, so older processors might also be a problem.

Although they work OK in XP they could be causing the problem in Windows 7, despite passing the checks made by the upgrade advisor. If you could supply further details about these components it would help.

[nybugger347]

here is specs as seen in CPU-Z:
Processor:


Main Board:


Memory:



Module Name: Corsair Value Select VS1GB400C3

Graphics:


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I just finishing running the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool in Windows 7 and it detected no memory issues. Last night i ran both a disk defrag and error checking tool. I am running Windows 7 with the themes service disable so it is like windows classic, as well i set windows performance/visual effects for best performance. Overall, it seems the system seems a bit faster with 7 then XP. Just strange on how i get this error. In the bios, there is no power settings enable, everything is disabled. I also disabled the serial and parallel port too since i dont use them. On board nic is disable since i use a D-Link DFE-530TX+ PCI Adapter for ethernet connection. Onboard sound is enable. Hard drive and DVD rom drive is both IDE
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Processor is not under alot of stress, since this pc is mostly for every day tasks and not games. Overall, the system seems modern for me since still has 2.0ghz+ processor and 1gb of ram which seems to be the common spec for most softwares. I could pick up another gb of ram on ebay or somewhere for cheap if needed be

[Dark Mantis]

Just as a bit of extra background information until recently I was running a backup machine witha similar spec apart from it was based on an Asus board. The AMD 64 3000 and then udated to a AMD 64 3800 engineering sample  all the while running Win 7 with no problems. Like yourself I cut back on all unused items in the BIOS. I was however using the full 3Gb of RAM and that definitely made a big difference. The other thing is I always set the size and location of the swapfile myself and not leave it to windows. Maybe some of this may help.

[nybugger347]

thanks for the suggestion, ram is cheap so i guess i could add in another gb of ram. Will replacing the IDE harddrive with a sata drive help as well too?

[Dark Mantis]

It certainly wouldn't hurt as then you could free up some more resources. I will help with anything I can but I am afraid it will have to be from memory as my board had a fatal accident not long ago.