How to make Windows 10 fast on Old HW? Is it possible?

Hello, this is kind of silly question, I know it's dumb, but I have been using Windows 10 since 2019 with my X220 Thinkpad, and since saturday, after KB5016616 causing boot failed and many attempt repair doesn't work, I flash my X220 with Windows 7. I'm quite amazed with Windows 7 speed (as X220 produced around windows 7 release, 2011), and how it consume less power.

I still love my X220 laptop, especially the keyboard, there are no keyboard that can match X220 keyboard, I already tried to switch many many times, I always come back to X220...

So the question is simple, is there anyway to make Windows 10 use less resources? I still waiting 22H2, but seems each update really increase the power so much to the point I need to tweak the fan speed.

My attempt is always using debloater like PrivateZilla or debotnet. But after increment upgrade, a lot of issue surfaced, like what I wrote before, another cumulative upgrade/update, cause boot loop, and this time is the extreme, I lost quite a lot of data when it bootloop, suddenly the windows wipe out all my user data, I look into cbs.log and other log, but no message why it wipe all the user folder... :/ *but it's for seperate issue, the only answer is nuke install. I'm quite lucky, some of my data are on O365 OneDrive, but I lost my music collection and some of my... Books...

Any suggestion appreciated, thank you!

OP specs say:

ASUS A43SV 16gb ram and samsung 860 evo plus a couple more disks - presumably external

the laptop supports 8gb + 8gb (DDR3-1333(1.5v), DDR3(L)-1600(1.35v/1.5v)), only memory module should be with 8 chips on one side.

Upgrade Ram Asus A43S Jadi 10GB - YouTube

Interesting ASUS A43SV supports 16gb. I have seen a few lappies that can take more ram than expected.

Switching off the services, telemetry etc. wouldn't do much. If you want to see some real changes, think about buying a SSD and a RAM.

dalchina said:

My Lenovo t440s Thinkpad is about a year newer than your X220, and
a. I'm happy with it most of the time (takes too long to launch a browser initially, or Thunderbird for example)
b. I've not lost anything over the 5 years or more I've had it.. and it's been to a few countries..

However- yours may still have a HDD and came initially with 4Gb RAM.
The first will make booting much much slower, the second will affect general use- and there you will notice a difference with Win 7.

So if you wish to improve things, get a SSD and increase the RAM.

As you are using an older device, you must be prepared for when Win 10 updates in some manner result in problems - expect and plan for potential compatibility problems. You chose to upgrade to Win 10 on an unsupported device, so the risk is yours.

Therefore...
use disk imaging (e.g. Macrium Reflect/Aomei Backupper - free - plus large enough external storage for image files) regularly and routinely as is endlessly recommended here.

Thus you have a full backup and a means of recovery.

- have a System Restore point created daily on schedule (Tutorial available).


- which? disk space? RAM? CPU? what do you see as being the problem?

- Look at the task manager about 3 minutes after logging in, without launching additional programs.

Ah Sorry, in general, because when idle, seems even after disabling a lot of services, it still power hungry and... not that great in some area, sometimes sluggish. Is that isn't possible to make is more snappy but same time reduce resources? take as efficient as Win7 (in my wildest dream)

My laptop already has Kingston A400 SSD 480, and 12GB RAM ( for TP X220), if I kept plug it in, it's fine, but when I'm mobile, I felt degradation. Anyway, it's first time after 1 years owning X220, since first time I bought it, I already use Win10, just, well.. most of the time, I plug it in, and on one occasion, after update in 2021, march, I remember, it kill my cheap 128 Chinese SSD, which is sad. But now with windows 7, it's okay, not much writing to disk, so seems the cheap SSD can coup with it.

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SIW2 said:

Interesting ASUS A43SV supports 16gb. I have seen a few lappies that can take more ram than expected.

Since 2017, I already put 16gb ram on it, with i3, then I upgrade buy i5, then last i7 (because the board and cpu isn't soldered, it's a luxury for me, when I transitioning, I use my first CC to buy those i5 and i7 with 12 month installment... haha.. you can say I'm pretty poor, and my country currency is very very bad.. against US Dollar)

Hi,

This will help and will not break your installation, I use it all the time.

Windows 10 Decrapifier, 18XX/19XX/2XXX