GA-MA78GM-S2H ver 1.1 BIOS rev F5 Slow With Win7

[i_am_jim]

I've been using this MB with XP Pro SP3 for two or three years.  About two weeks ago I wiped and installed 64 Bit Win7 Home Premium.  Things are running much slower than on XP.  I can simply open a folder and the headings appear after a wait of 1-3 seconds and the file listing appears after another similar wait -- all this was instantaneous on XP unless the folder contained images.  This is just one illustration of the slowness I hoped you could relate to.  My apps load slower and my mailreader takes up to 10 times longer to do a mail check.  In summary, everything is slower.

Either Win7 has added a lot of extra baggage or something about this MB must be unhappy with it.  Anybody else having this problem?  Anybody know what the problem is?

Edited to add:

AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core Processor 5000+
4 Gb of RAM
60+ Gg of unused space on main drive
GPU -- came on the MB
PSU -- Antec 500 Watt
DVD -- Optiarc DVD RW AD-7200S


There have been no hardware changes between XP and Win7

[Dark Mantis]

Hi Jim and welcome to the Gigabyte Forum.

I expect that the main thing slowing your system down is a lack of RAM. Yopu haven't posted your system specs but I would imagine that form what you have said you don't have a massive amount of memory. Win 7 needs more memory than XP to run happily but other than that is normally quite responsive.

[i_am_jim]

Hi Jim and welcome to the Gigabyte Forum.

I expect that the main thing slowing your system down is a lack of RAM. Yopu haven't posted your system specs but I would imagine that form what you have said you don't have a massive amount of memory. Win 7 needs more memory than XP to run happily but other than that is normally quite responsive.

Thanks for your reply. 

I have 4 Gb of RAM and 60+ Gg of unused space on my main drive.

[Dark Mantis]

Can you list your system specs so that we might have a better idea of exactly what is involved?

[i_am_jim]

Can you list your system specs so that we might have a better idea of exactly what is involved?

I edited my original post to add stuff.  Help me know what's missing?

[Dark Mantis]

Motherboard?
CPU?
Memory?
GPU?
PSU?
Hard disk?
Optical disk?
anything else you can think of?

[i_am_jim]

Motherboard?

The  Subject has that.

CPU?
Memory?

I edited my original post to add these.

GPU
PSU?
Hard disk?
Optical disk?
anything else you can think of?

The GPU is the one that came on the MB.
PSU -- Antec 500 Watt
DVD -- Optiarc DVD RW AD-7200S


There have been no hardware changes between XP and Win7

[absic]

Hi there,

The BIOS for your Mobo is now at F12B. I would update your BIOS to at least F11 (if you don't want to run a beta BIOS) but I would do it in a few small steps. Remember to use the QFlash Utility, rather than @BIOS. If you're not sure how to update your BIOS check here first: http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,2441.0.html

[i_am_jim]

The BIOS for your Mobo is now at F12B. I would update your BIOS to at least F11 (if you don't want to run a beta BIOS) but I would do it in a few small steps. Remember to use the QFlash Utility, rather than @BIOS. If you're not sure how to update your BIOS check here first: http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,2441.0.html

I upgraded to F11 yesterday.  I was kind of waiting to see if it changed anything.  It does seem to run faster but it will take another day or two to see if it returned to the XP performance.  The mail reader doesn't seem to be improved, but so far I'm not seeing the wait to display folders and contents, and other pauses. 

I guess I hadn't upgraded the BIOS because it kind of makes my hair stand up a little to do that.  When upgradable BIOSes first came out, a very capable friend did an upgrade and it bollixed his MB.  Since then I've been leery of doing it, though I've probably done it successfully five or six times.

Thanks.

[absic]

Pleased that your BIOS update went OK. I know what you mean about flashing BIOS though and I still remember the early days when it was fraught with danger. The first couple of times I did it my hands were shaking from fear.

I'm surprised that Windows 7 seems to be causing you problems but you have to remember it is a different beast to XP. There are a lot more processes running automatically in the background and this can make things slow down. Compared to Vista though, Windows 7 is much better.

One thing I have discovered and I don't have any explanation for, is that sometimes the install process isn't uniform. I do a lot of re-installs on my own rig and different Mobo's due to testing and swapping out components and occasionally, for no apparent reason, Windows seems to be less responsive than other times. Normally I just re-install and the problem disappears. Strange but we are talking Micros**t here and I have learnt to expect the unexpected when it comes to the relationship between hardware and software.

[i_am_jim]

I'm sorry to say, it seems like performance has returned to the way it was before the BIOS upgrade. For several hours it seemed better but now, not so much.

[i_am_jim]

One thing I have discovered and I don't have any explanation for, is that sometimes the install process isn't uniform. I do a lot of re-installs on my own rig and different Mobo's due to testing and swapping out components and occasionally, for no apparent reason, Windows seems to be less responsive than other times.

One odd thing that happened during the install, it left some of the things installed in the root directory.  They wouldn't work because they no longer had their supporting dlls etc. but the program files remained in folders in the root.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi
There is just one thing I would like to clear up and that is your hard drive. In your original post you listed it as:

60+ Gg of unused space on main drive

Is this the complete drive or is there partitions on it?

[i_am_jim]

There are partitions

[absic]

When installing Windows 7 or any OS actually, it is better not to create extra partitions on the primary drive. Windows 7 will create a small 100 MB one for System Reserved stuff and on a mechanical HDD that is OK.

If you have done an upgrade, Windows will Back-up the old OS and store it in a folder on the hard drive. Once the upgrade has been completed you can safely remove this Back-up folder and, it is a good idea to do so to prevent any problems.