Alright everyone,
This is sort of 2 questions in one so any advice you could give me with either of them i would appreciate.

So i've got a Scan 3XS laptop (i7-4710MQ - 16gb RAM - Windows 7) that i've been using for 6 years, lately (i'd say the last year or so) when i'm loading projects up, it just can't handle it, i'm getting spikes everywhere when using certain plugins, (meaning i have to bounce out audio which is a pain) or even projects that don't have many plugins, it'll start spiking and going all stuttery and glitchy on me. So my first question relating to this is that i'm currently running Windows 7, Do you think i'd be able to upgrade to windows 10 smoothly (like all my plugins running as they do now etc..) I feel like one of the issues i could be facing may be that because i'm still on Windows 7 some of the VST's aren't running as efficiently as they could. So i just want to try and upgrade to Windows 10 without losing everything (or cocking stuff up!) Any advice on this would be appreciated as i'm really unsure.

My other question was for advice regarding upgrading my actual system, as i mentioned above i've had this laptop for about 6 years now and i think i'm due an upgrade but i really don't understand like what i should be looking out for (like what sort of processors i should be looking into) My plan is to get a desktop and then use this laptop as my "on the road" studio when i'm working away from home.

Any advice would be appreciated because as you can tell, i'm a bit clueless!

 

It seems that it is a computer loaded with an old Windows 7,if it is forced to upgrade to Windows 10,it is estimated that it will fail (actually I have not done an upgrade from an old Windows 7 to Windows),but about Windows upgrade,this is recommendations from my colleagues.

 

Last edited: Apr 9, 2021

Bump! (For some proper help from a WIN person. Not me.)

Also:

I LOVE working on a project when everything is bounced! After all, your destination is for everything to be printed!?
We've been commiting to audio as soon as possible for the last 20 years! This is the way.
I wonder if it's only people that can't commit to a take, and keep wanting to change MIDI info during a project until the last minute, that like to keep ALL VSTs live and never bounced?
We've seen a lot of change in daws over the last 20 years, but just because we're now able to have all these plugs and instruments runnning at the same time doesn't mean that you have to!
Out of the two, daws love working more with audio than MIDI and tons of automation happening.
My thoughts are: commit all that to audio and free your daw.

 

mine is older, hp dm 1 pavilion, amd zacate, 8gb ram.. upgraded from win 7 to win 10 during free upgrading offer years ago.. still run smooth for non heavy internal fx on kontakt based libs and reaper daw.. lots of track freeze ofc on workflow to manage cpu workload.. i cant only enjoy modern fx and major synth vstis.. i decide to move on to modern cpu when i realize i'm in need.. my advice is before investing to upgrade, check if you can get new one with modern pc specs at more or less equivalent price.. i wasted alot upgrading my old laptop because i'm about newbies at the time hehe..

 

@Kev Willow Just thought: you could make a bootable clone of your drive, so that you are safe and can experiment...

 

6-year old laptop deserves some proper cleanup:
means vacuuming all the dust from fan and cooling ribs,
then dismantling entire cooling system, cleaning old paste and applying fresh new thermal paste on cpu(+gpu) heatsink,

then performing clean Windows installation - I can only guess your current drive is either older HDD, or small-capacity SSD, so you might actually buy a new SSD to replace it, something like 1TB or so, which would let you perform clean Windows install without erasing your current drive

about Windows 7 vs Windows 10 choice - at first make sure to check if there are drivers for your laptop to download from manufacturer/seller website - if both W7 and W10 drivers are available, then I'd say go for W10, there's no advantage of using W7 with most software manufacturers recently dropping support for W7, also do note Windows 10 is already 5 year old system, so most bugs should have been fixed by now (talking about third-party software and plugins)

 

My issue with this is alot of my music has a lot of automation in, when bouncing stuff out and then deleting the plugin, if it didn't save properly or if i want to do something else i won't be able to (i just like to be safe) i've always worked like this, and i only ever bounce out stuff that is causing like insane problems for me (usually pianos as Waves Piano Centric causes my projects to go mental!)

Yeah i get what you mean, did you get a new laptop in the end? or jut continued to upgrade your old one?

My brother actually mentioned this to me, but i didn't really understand how to go about doing it, and how would i know if everything is in working order (just due to the vast amounts of plugins i have installed) i wouldn't have time to just sit down and go through them one by one to make sure they're all working fine.

I'd actually never even heard of Thermal Paste until reading this so i'm definitely going to look into doing the advice that you've mentioned and i like the idea that due to W10 beind relatively old now bugs may of been ironed out.


Thanks for your help everyone, it's appreciated, i'll let you know how i get on!

 

Oh well. Was just an idea. You'd obviously have to test it!

 

Last edited: Dec 8, 2020

As long as you make a FULL backup (block level) AND prepare a bootable media to recover it, there is no problem.
you can try upgrade.

But Win 10 will change NOTHING about glitches : it is hardware related

Test DPC with "LatencyMon"
If there are spikes with NO app running, you probably get ACPI trouble

Use MAXIMUM power setting in Windows (maximum CPU frequency)
Disable ANY CPU throttling in BIOS (if any) : FULL frequency

Test DPC again. See what is still creating spikes, it is written.

 

1) Do not upgrade to Windows 10 on your Windows 7 computer. It will not fix your performance issues, just make everything worse. You will find plugins & programs that used to work on Windows 7, not working on Windows 10, forcing you to spend time tracking down newer versions. When the Windows 10 free upgrade was in effect, the company I worked for made me upgrade all the computers to Windows 10. We wound up reverting everything back to Windows 7.
If you are tempted to try Windows 10, invest in a new machine & keep your current computer so you can still access your projects as is.
2) To address the performance issues, back up everything and reformat.

 

Have to agree here. Did all advised on a Dell Inspiron 15R N5010 that would thermal shutdown when starved of air flow. After a thorough cleaning and repaste , the fan rarely spins up. Ran on Windows 8.1 until Windows 10 1909 was released. Upgraded & applied recommended tweaks. My son-in-law somehow made it through BCIT with this unit.

 

At this late stage, wait if you can to buy a new desktop or laptop. both AMD & Intel will have new CPUs released between January & March of next year. Availability & pricing should also be sorted out by then.

 

Unlike most laptops, desktop systems are easy to take apart. As you never heard of thermal paste before (it is necessary to apply something in between CPU and CPU socket on the motherboard for reasons of heat transfer), probably better not try to open up that laptop. Might get to a point of "should have never opened it up". Of course, if done right, this is the way. Check a video on your specific laptop and decide for yourself.

My advice:
A) Buy two new systems, desktop and mobile, if Windows then go WIN 10 (search for WIN 10 Lite + Oprekin, don't just go with any full blown Windows). If that's no option then
B) Buy one new system, decide for priority of mobile vs desktop. If that's no option then
C) totally agree with @tzzsmk :

adding in WIN 10 lite + Oprekin
have that on two systems thanks to recommendations of sweet @The Pirate and others here
Cheers

 

about Oprekin images, two versions I think are most solid are:
1) 1809 LTSC LITE - most stripped down, but lacks things like changing keyboard for ex.
2) 1909 PRO LITE PLUS - moderately stripped down, things can be eventually re-enabled in case of compatibility issues

I'm planning to try achieve stripped down Windows 10 on my own though, this way looks especially promising: