I work as Computer Technician. I use to have a small driver collection (some Intel and AMD chipsets, some nVidia and AMD graphics drivers etc), including the most common or some hard to find network drivers. I run Aida64, find what is the network or WiFi card, install the driver (if I have it) and then install the rest drivers. If you have access to another computer, you can use Aida64 to find the hardware and use the other computer to download the drivers.
Just got Win10 working on an Intel C2D T7400 based laptop. Not really a challenge but still a pretty old machine. I’ll use this as the donor machine to get an install onto the Pentium-M that won’t run the installer. The donor machine is SATA while the host machine is PATA so I’m going to use an mSATA SSD and adapters so I can transfer the drive over. Plus the SSD helps the older machine be a bit less annoying to use.
Pentium M might not support NX/PAE to load Windows 10. The graphics card shouldn't have WDDM drivers. You are stuck with Microsoft Basic Display Adapter which has zero hardware acceleration and will be VERY slow (you don't want to find out, trust me). If you still want to do it, you need a SATA 2.5" to USB case or a SATA to USB cable adapter. Connect the SATA disk from the newer computer to the old computer by USB, so you have access to both disks, and then clone the disk with Acronis Rescue CD or other bootable utility. It will probably have USB 1.1 ports (VERY slow), so leave it complete as much time as it needs. Then shutdown, remove the USB and the CD and start the older computer. Chances are that you wasted your time due to compatibility issues, but you never know. I would install Windows 7 32-bit instead with the Windows XP graphics drivers (they should have full hardware acceleration and make it as fast as with XP).
Don't need to clone. mSATA SSD will go into a dummy 2.5" SATA enclosure onto the donor system. In the target system the same mSATA drive will go into a 2.5" mSATA to PATA enclosure. I've already planned it out. Win7 WDDM drivers exist for my GPU.
The target system is much older and has an IDE 2.5" disk, not SATA. So you either find an IDE 2.5" to USB enclosure\adapter to connect the old disk to the new computer via USB and clone, or you find a SATA 2.5" to USB enclosure\adapter to connect the new disk to the old computer and clone. The second is cheaper and easier to find and has the advantage that you can then connect any other 2.5" disk as a second to expand the old or the new computer storage space. In fact it would be a good idea to keep Windows and some basic applications on the original 2.5" IDE disk on the old computer and put all other applications games and data to an external USB disk. Why buy a USB disk when the SATA 2.5" to USB enclosure\adapter plus a disk can do just the same job? That's why I recommend connecting the new disk to the old computer and not vice versa.
Just thought of a smart upgrade scenario: You can buy an 2.5" SATA SSD to replace the mechanical disk of the new computer. Then use the old mechanical disk connected via USB as a second for the old or the new computer, or to share data between the two. In that case, remove the mechanical disk from the new computer and connect it to the USB eclosure\adapter. Put the SSD inside the new computer and then proceed to clone the disk on the SSD. Make sure your computer boots and loads Windows without any issue. It should be at least 10 times faster! Then you can use the old disk to proceed with the Windows installation you want to transfer to the old computer. After everything is complete, you can then wipe the mechanical disk and use it as you wish.
Dude are you even reading my posts? mSATA to PATA adapter enclosure. There is a translator chip. Takes any mSATA SSD which is going to be much cheaper/faster/bigger than a native PATA SSD. They're like $10.
I've already bought all the hardware. It's already running fine in the target system. No way I'm going to run a native PATA spinning drive in a single core Pentium-M system with a modern OS like Win10. That would be way to slow.
Sorry, I hadn't read carefully your post. It must be very fast.
Aida64 just verified the information I already knew. I have spent hours trying to find drivers that work with Windows 10. I have found none. I can find plenty of drivers for the devices I have found but none of them work with my laptop. I have the original HP OEM drivers and their updates but they were developed for Windows XP. I have tried some of them with Windows 10 but they simply don't work.
It looks like Windows 7 did a fair job with backward compatibility with old hardware. Unfortunately as Windows 10 evolves it will probably be leaving more and more old hardware in the dust.
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