Let's run Win10 on really really old hardware

Hi all. I've done an intro video to my 2005 Compaq Desktop pc (see earlier post). This was prior to the Windows 10 upgrade but gives you an idea of the specification I was working with. I will be doing another soon together with some benchmarks. It plays older games such as Doom 3, Quake 4 and the Serious Sam series. Struggles with Crysis though which is always a good benchmark to try! I am thinking maybe it would run on Windows XP better? General web browsing is fine and office work. Youtube playback is restricted to 480p. It can do 720p but there is a lot of stuttering. Link here Compaq Presario

As long as the graphics driver is up to date, you won't see any better performance in Windows XP. YouTube video is limited to 480p because the graphics card cannot accelerate fast enough for 720p or higher. 480p is not bad at all. Also if you connect an external monitor you should see difficulty with resolution higher than 1280x1024 which is not bad either. I once tried 1080p and was very slow. Your performance is normal, don't worry.

Hello thread I started 5 years ago. I guess I probably shouldn't even bother trying to install the latest build on my Pentium-M laptop?

Berton said:

I was given one of those a few years ago for parts, the latest Linux Mint it would run was Version 13 [we're up to 19 now] so it did go for parts, HDD and RAM. It was something about Centrino and PXE but not recalling exactly what.

Yeah I noticed 32bit builds of linux are going away but there are still some around and the discontinued ones aren't that old (yet).

What is the graphics card? If there is a Vista 32-bit (WDDM 1.0) driver for it, you could try installing Windows 10 32-bit. If it is Intel, probably your chipset is a pre-915G and there is no WDDM driver. If it is ATI or nVidia, you might be in luck. If there is no WDDM driver, the maximum Windows version you can install is Windows 7 32-bit and use the XP graphics driver (XPDM). It's no bad though, better than XP.

Pentium M can run Windows 10 32-bit, but the problem is the graphics card (intel 865G in my case) doesn't have WDDM drivers (not even Vista). This means Windows 8 and 10 will use the generic Microsoft Basic Display Adapter driver which has ZERO hardware acceleration and makes the computer 10 times slower than it really is. To get the best performance and be as modern as possible you must install Windows 7 32-bit SP1 instead which can accept the Windows XP graphics driver (XPDM) and provides some hardware acceleration. This should have the same performance as Windows XP SP3 but with much better compatibility with newest devices and applications. You can install latest Firefox or Chrome or Microsoft Edge for example. The same goes for VLC and other applications that latest versions no longer work in XP and you rely on older versions. So the golden rule is: Does your device has WDDM drivers? If yes, then you can at least install Windows 10 32-bit. If the CPU also supports some certain instructions (plus you can find 64-bit drivers) you cal also install Windows 10 64-bit. If there is no WDDM (at least Vista) driver for the graphics card, then the maximum Windows version you must install is Windows 7 32-bit or 64-bit, avoid Windows 8 and 10, unless you don't mind to kill performance and make it much slower.

Fafhrd said:

Thanks @shaocaholica for starting this thread 5 years ago, still my favourite read here. Regarding your Pentium M, I would think it could still run current Windows 10 versions, see my experiences with a much less well specced Celeron M, at various times in this thread. They are both from the "formerly Dothan" Intel product line.

However, I haven't been able to run Windows Setup, or use Windows Update to upgrade to the next version since the Anniversary Edition, on this old and battered hardware, but can get it to run up till at least last years edition by deploying an image using dism.exe.


I suppose now that we are on lockdown I can try the same for a more recent version, on this venerable slowcoach.

Haha thanks. I just tried to start the latest 32bit installer and it BSOD on the installer. I'm giving up for now and going to Win7.