I can't get windows 10 64x or 32x to run

Berton said:

There are some posts on the Internet that Win10 introduced in 2015 won't run on DDR2 RAM introduced in 2004. An example:
https://vtechinsider.com/is-ddr2-com...th-windows-10/
Some suggest changing to DDR3 but that usually requires changing the motherboard because of the physical differences, shouldn't interchange in the sockets. I have Win10 on a Gigabyte board with an AMD Phenom II X4 965 with 16GB DDR3.

Memory bandwidth isn't precisely the best feature of Phenoms. Even in benchmarks there's little difference between DDR2 and 3 with these processors (800 vs 1333 I mean).

Can sw get the DDR generation in an int variable through some method? (or in assembly) Would MS bother?

At least one thing that article says is incorrect: DDR2 RAM features a 64-bit data bus, which is twice the width of DDR RAM’s 32-bit data bus. False. It's 64 bit for all DDR 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. What it's true (afaik) is that DDR1 uses 2x 32 bits chips per range, DDR2 4x16 bits and DDR3 8x8 bits. Possibly DDR4 and 5 introduce optimizations to the "classic" scheme of banks (logical/physical), pages (rows) and columns (I'm now reading that each DDR5 DIMM (range?) has two inner 32 bits width "channels" and While the data width is the same (64-bits total) having two smaller independent channels improves memory access efficiency ( DDR4 vs DDR5 RAM: All the Design Challenges & Advantages -Rambus ).

As for DDR2 compatibility with Win10, one case suffices Windows 10 needs 1gb of ram per 32 bit os 2 gb ram per 64 bit os I ran a old emachines with it 3 gigs of ddr2 ram it ran sweet on a old e8400 intel cpu hope this helps. ( Is DDR2 compatable with Windows 10? | Tom's Hardware Forum )

Berton said:

There are some posts on the Internet that Win10 introduced in 2015 won't run on DDR2 RAM introduced in 2004. An example:
https://vtechinsider.com/is-ddr2-com...th-windows-10/
Some suggest changing to DDR3 but that usually requires changing the motherboard because of the physical differences, shouldn't interchange in the sockets. I have Win10 on a Gigabyte board with an AMD Phenom II X4 965 with 16GB DDR3.

Oh my goodness, and that article above is labeled "here's the truth"??"
It is certainly possible, but if a MoBo supports DDR2 (and few if any MoBo's support ANY but a single generation of DDR, whether DDR, DDR2, DDR3, or DDR4) it's almost always one or the other. If a MoBO supports (i.e. designed for DDR2) it has the timings, electrical signals and (most importantly) the sockets for ONLY that type of memory. ( DO remember, back in the old daze, when a few MoBo's could use either of two types of memory, but NEVER in combination; that's back in the K-6 days.) I have an AMD Phenom (Quad Core) with an early design MoBo, and it allows no more than 4 GB of memory in two sockets (more memory simply wouldn't work.) But to think that DDR2 memory can't be used, as long as it's with a MoBo designed to use DDR2 is simply misleading, and more of a (dubious) solution (or article) looking for a cause, but to say bluntly that DDR2 does not support Windows 10 is patently FALSE.

I didn't deny DDR3 is "faster' or somehow "better' than DDR2, but I take great umbrage at the statement "DDR2 is not usable in Win 10."
Case in point; I had a Phenom (Quad Core, Model 9550, original, NOT Phenom II) laying around because a "client" didn't want the system he wanted me to build (for monetary reasons.) SO I had to "pocket the loss" and had the processor and MoBo (already with 4 GB of DDR2 memory) lust laying around in original boxes. Retired, I decided to put it together (it was already sitting unassembled for over 15 years!) and while it ran Win 8.1 quite well, (for several years) when Win 8.1 (32 bit) support ended, I tried to "upgrade," and was told "this computer can not run Win 10." (I was trying the "MS Media Creation tool for Win 10.)
On a whim, I swapped out the original HDD with an (SATA) SSD, and with a CLEAN install of the MS Win 10, it worked! (And with DDR2 memory yet!) And now, the AMD Quad Core runs the latest (April 2024) Windows 10 updates, on the par of an i5 (dual core) laptop, and faster than an Intel Celeron (# cores?) running Win 10. (Of course, the SSD in the Phenom has a lot to do with THAT! The point is, DDR2 is NOT a barrier to running Windows 10, (although there might somehow be a motherboard problem, with maybe a way to configure the memory differently to allow it to function with a 64 bit system???) but I doubt there will ever be a way to run such a computer on Windows 11; not because of a memory type problem, but a myriad of other incompatibilities.

MisterEd said:

I had a laptop that I bought in 2004 that had an AMD Athlon64 CPU and 2GB of DDR RAM. It failed to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10. However, I was able to do a clean install of Windows 10. Even though it booted half the hardware had red Xs which meant no drivers were found for it. Much of the hardware had default Windows drivers which meant they were slow. I tried for several days but could not find any working drivers. The lack of drivers was the reason I gave up. The DDR RAM worked just fine.

Sorry to say, but an Athlon (even Athlon 64) with only 2 GB of RAM was a bare minimum for Windows 10. But it should have been more than adequate "at the time." Did you try using it with Windows 8.1? Your manufacturer SHOULD have had drivers that were able to work with Win 10; what brand laptop is/was it? Even after 10+ years after the original AMD Phenon (I) was obsolete, there were drivers for most hardware that was available for Win 8.1, and directly usable in Win 10.
Then again I had a "Pentium Dual core" (NOT to be confused with an i Core, core-duo processor) computer that ran head to head to with the Phenom (Quad core) computer, when using Windows 8.1, but was slower than "molasses in January" (at the SOUTH Pole.) with Windows 10, and was abandoned because of that, even with an SSD. It might have taken a bit of investigation, but you should have been able to find the right drivers for use with Win 10, but then again, the performance would have been "lackluster," to say the least. IMHO at least, the Phenom processor WAS a step or two above the Athlon series; it had four cores, AND was a 64 bit processor; it was apparently the number of cores (and the L3 memory cache) that made the difference.
But they ARE all "obsolete" and rendered to memory, (lovingly or not I remember when a 386DX33 was considered "lightning fast,"( Sigh.)
ADDED: The generic Microsoft drivers ARE usually S-L-O-W because they ARE generic. But most times, you can find better drivers from the various manufacturers to at least make the hardware a bit more compatible,.

MisterEd said:

The specs for the laptop are below. Neither the Ethernet or WiFi hardware had drivers so I had to create and use Snappy offline. Even it had no drivers for my laptop. I tried for several days but gave up and went back to Windows 7. No matter now because the video chip on the motherboard went bad. I then only had scrambled video. I had no choice but to give up on it.

I bought this laptop in October 2004 about 2 years before Windows Vista RTM. HP never had any drivers for it other than the Window XP ones. Some of these drivers such as the GPU one worked fine in Windows 7. I never even considered Windows 8 because I think it is a step backwards from Windows 7.

From my limited experience I think having at least Vista driver support would have helped a lot. I suspect that may be a dividing line between what computers supported Windows 10 or not.

BTW, HP said this laptop only supported a max of 2 GB. I wish I had tried more than that to see if it really supported more. If it did then I might have tried Windows 7 Home 64-bit. Finding 64-bit drivers was another matter.

I suspect you ARE correct in a way; Windows up to VISTA was originally deisgned for "x86" processors, and had old DOS underpinnings; Win 7 and later were for the newer 32/64 bit processors like the i Core and Ryzen series, and iF they ran older, 16 bit programs from the DOS era, it was through emulation; even that was left in the dust with Win 10.

If H-P said 2 @B was the max memory for your laptop, that may well be true. XP was fine, with that amount of memory. VISTA was so awful that I refused to use it, (literally, only to activate it, and then to upgrade it.... Although I had the installation disk (DVD) for Win 8 PRO, when I installed it, Microsoft immediately said "Winn 8 is no longer supported; you are being updated to Win 8,1., so I never had a chance to see how bad it was.

Win 8.1 proved to be stable on the two computers I used it with. I never even used Win 7, and went straight from XP to Win 8.1. It's curious nVideo didn't have some kind of drivers that would have worked for most parts of the laptop in Win 10, but the 2GB limit, single core, and lack of ANY L3 cache probably made it impractical to consider use with Win 10. (Actually, the Athlon 64-3400+ operated @ 2.2 GHz, roughly the same as my old Pentium "dual core" processor; computer, which could not r could use Win 10 in any practical way; even with an SSD, it took about 3 minutes for the Pentium to boot Win 10, so I'm "downgrading" it ti Win 8.1) It would "run" Win 10 , but a better description would be to "slowly crawl" Win 10, although it ran Win 8.1 quite well. Win 10 apparently NEEDED more than a single core processor (and an L3 cache) o operate.

Laptops are ALWAYS difficult to "upgrade," due to fixed internal hardware, and I feel your pain! (I'll have the same problem even with a desktop with an i7-7700, which was "top of the line" when I bought it, but won't run Win 11, thanks to Microsoft.

Afaik, x64 mode ("long mode") cannot run 16 bits software because it lacks the Virtual86 mode that 32 bits mode has "inside", so it's a hw constraint (that said I've had Vista 32 bits and it run 16 bits sw w/o problems, but I have never used 7-32 or 10-32 to see, because 16 bits sw isn't way enough reason to limit my computers to 3.5 GB). Both x32 and x64 modes are like "buildings" (hw/sw structures like virtual memory pagetables etc) that the OS must build during boot up, different buildings so an OS cannot freely jump between the two.

As for sw, Vista moved all around, likely to do a "clean" or "uniform" new platform for both 32 and 64 bits products, instead of introducing a very different 64 bit standard and developing both at the same time, or carrying some legacy flaws to the 64 bits world, and created a jump. But successors from 7 to 11 are still following its same "rules" and Vista drivers might work in some cases.

Later "jumps" like UEFI or enforcing SHA2 (the latter "killed" XP and Vista usability for the net at the same time, although Vista has more SHA2 than XP) have been created to increase security. A Win8/8.1 driver has more chances with Win 10 or 11 because some latter features started there (for example in my Win10 motherboard I can select "Windows 8" for it or higher, or "Other OS" for Win7 or lower, this setting has other embedded ones to select or not CSM and its options).