So today I installed Windows 7 on a 5-year-old Compaq Presario 2175us with an IGP 320 M graphics card. If you have no idea what that means–it means there’s hope for Windows. Lots of it.

This laptop has an ancient AMD Athlon XP Mobile 2400+ processor (1.79 GHz). (Though it does have 1GB Ram) ATI stopped making drivers for its graphics card years ago. You could never install Vista on this thing, and XP wasn’t even that snappy.

But Windows 7? Somehow it’s putting right along. The average Joe would never pull this one off due to trying to find compatible graphics drivers, but it is possible. And if this computer can run it, probably so can yours. Are you suffering through laggy Vista? Windows 7 will probably fix your problems.

If you’re trying to do the same thing, with the IGP 320 M, and can’t get out of 640×480 plus 16 colors, here’s what I had to do:

• Download the wxp-w2k-8-082-041130a-019577c.exe file from ATI. (Look under Legacy XP drivers)
• Install it, but after it extracts itself, cancel.
• Under Devices, right-click your video card to update the driver
• Manually select the driver, navigating to the place you unzipped your ATI stuff to (Usually C:\ATI\Support\…).
• Select one of those drivers (not sure if they both work, but the first one I grabbed did)
• From the list, find Radeon IGP 320
• Install and Reboot
• Windows 7 keeps the same HAL issue as Vista, so if you can’t find a BIOS update to fix this (I couldn’t, but if you do, let me know!) go into Devices again and disable the PCI-PCI bridge. (under “System devices”)
• Reboot, go to display settings, and kick those up

Pretty sweet, huh? I haven’t gotten my audio drivers to work yet (haven’t tried), but things look promising. It floors me how well this runs on such ancient hardware.

Sorry, can’t help you get a hold of the Win 7 pre-beta. I will say though, that if you happen to have your old Vista Beta or RC activation code from Microsoft, it will work with the Win 7 iso you might find lying around under that, um, torrent of dirty socks in your closet. Ya feel me?

Oh, yeah, and the System Experience Index rating? Couldn’t even complete the test Impressive…