I have this old P4 Dual Core 3.0 GHZ desktop, not bad for such an old machine.
I found out, Vista had a starter edition, so for the fun of it I decided to install it on the desktop cause let's face it; Vista's look still had a nice appeal to it.

Well, There is no audio, and despite my best efforts I can't seem to find any audio drivers that work, any suggestions? It came with WinXP

Also. I'm thinking for the hell of it, I'm going to install Win7.
Now, I installed Win7 Ultimate x64 on a netbook. I was wondering if this desktop was capable of such a thing. It has hyperthreading.

Upgrade XP to Vista maybe by using Vista Basic. Starter has too many limits like only allowing you to run 3 applications at time.

It no longer has XP on it. (XP crashed long before I installed Vista Starter) Is Vista Basic slower than Win7 Home? Cause if so, I'd much rather 7 over Vista.

Ok, try Windows 7! It may work even better

Aha. But there's no suggestions to finding the audio plugin?

Windows 7 works wonderful on my P4 HT 3.0Ghz. Windows 7 is much more optimised than vista.

do u remembr d manufacturer name?

It's Medion, but I've already downloaded the driver from their site. It doesn't work.

Have you used Device Manager and located the inf file for it to install Manually?

More information, please. Does it give an error? Tried using compatability mode?

First of all, give us more details. Full spec listing please such as the motherboard itself (a quick look in Everest Home Edition will do the trick or your trusty screwdriver will). Tell us the sound controller too, I may have some spare drivers somewhere...

Try to install driver manually.... use XP drivers and put on folder, browse to this folder and finish installation...
Many times Xp drivers working on Windows 7 (manually mode)

first of all, I would recommend you to return to XP. because 7 and Vista are resource hungry OSes(tried installing both in an Pentium 4 2.26 and 1,25 gig of RAM, none capable to run as smooth as XP SP3.).
to get sound? try fetching those drivers via Device Manager. It sometimes worked like a charm finding your drivers...

If you would have read the first post:

You would have found out the guy was doing this for fun.

And don't advise people to return to a 10 year old OS. NT 6 is far better than XP in a lot of ways.

You can go for Vista/7 Home Basic they can be great OS's on tight resources

I'd say stick with XP. Vista and 7 are both much slower then XP. I've been trying to install XP on my HP Mini 110 and it won't recognize my hard drive, so I'm forced to stick with Vista or 7. Consider yourself lucky you're able to run XP at all

whoops, missed that line...
he did this for fun? then get Home Basic for decent use(starter editions have major limitations, some removed in 7.)
NT 6 does better than XP in many ways, I admit. But it has one bad thing: inability to run decently on low hardware resource, such as the Pentium 4 family(socket 478, 775 performs slightly better)

Eh, I've run Windows 7 on a Socket 478 Pentium 4 with only 1.5GB RAM and it did plenty well enough.

NT 6 flies with any dual core
and with any single core above 3 GHz

if he has more than 1.5 GB RAM then avoid XP in all ways

It needs SATA drivers, one of the downfalls of a 10 year old OS. Installing XP on a netbook can be a pain. I just upgraded a Compaq Mini 110 to Windows 7 and it seems to run just as well as it ran XP on only 1GB of RAM. The nice thing about 7 is its optimized for the netbook/laptop hardware and it comes with SATA drivers and almost all the other drivers. The Windows 7 sleep mode, wifi connection window, etc all make the on the go netbook experience so much nicer than XP.

Even Vista runs smooth on a netbook so I don't see the reason to not to upgrade.
Personally I wiped XP when I got my netbook.

clockspeed of the processor please....
mine is 2.26 and its as slow as a snail in the Windows 7 Home Premium environment...(with 1,25GB of RAM)
did well on XP though, although I'll buy a new stick of RAM (to get 2GB) and a graphic card(current, a superweak S3 onboard graphic, it struggled to even run counter-strike 1.6...), to see if Windows 7 can get more speed out of it...
and did you use SATA/IDE? I think my 7 year old IDE was the cause of the slowdown.

for the thread starter: sorry, forgot you got a dual-core P4 3.0Ghz CPU...
get a decent IDE(or SATA, in any chance, your system might have 1 or 2 plug for it) drive, make sure you have a good GPU(want aero? then no onboards, and just be sure the current GPU can handle mid-low games decently) and you should be ready.
and x64? just make sure you are ready for it...(you have the drivers, utilities, and softwares for your computer available for it, it's not easy to find with, especially that you're planning to run x64 on an ageing system...)

The clockspeed was 2.8GHz. I also have run Windows 7 on a 2.2 (or maybe it was 2.6) GHz Pentium 4 with only 1GB RAM and even that performed quite well.


No SATA, just IDE.

if it is 2.6 and above, then maybe its good for me to stick with XP for my P4 system...
if it is indeed 2.2, i'll look to some new drives(mine is 7 years old, and may fail soon...)
or, maybe its because my drive was just 40GB? I would like to upgrade to Windows 7, if it is possible to run fast enough in the computer...
and do you mean decently, as in explorer being stable for long-term use? in my computer, it stops working frequently, and quite irresponsive(it took a pretty long time to load a folder)....