Let's run Win10 on really really old hardware

I have three monitors in my computer, one connected to VGA (primary), one to DVI and one to the HDMI. Two monitors are active each time. Either the VGA and HDMI or VGA and DVI. When computer boots it defaults always to the HDMI. If this is disconnected it goes to DVI first. If both these are missing it displays to the VGA. This priority is hardcoded in the graphics card BIOS and cannot be changed without special tools to edit the BIOS. Once into Windows the primary monitor changes to VGA as I have set in Nvidia Control Panel. So unless you disconnect the secondary monitor every time, there is no easy way to make the default monitor the VGA. But you can set the desired primary monitor in Windows Display settings or the graphics card control panel. Just make sure you install latest graphics drivers from the manufacturer to get the control panel. Windows Update usually installs only the driver with minimal functionality.

If you upgrade from Windows 10 64-bit to 11 or from Windows 11 21H2 to 22H2, for an unsupported computer you do all the above (don't forget to disconnect from the internet or upgrade will fail) and also replace the hidden file C:\$Windows.~BT\sources\apraiserres.dll with an empty dummy. To create the dummy file, right-click on the desktop and create a new text document. Then rename it to appraiserres.dll

Challenge: Upgrade an old Lenovo 3000 C200 (Intel Core Duo T2350 1.87GHz, 1GB RAM, Intel GMA 945G graphics) from Windows 10 v1607 32-bit to Windows 10 v21H2 32-bit. If you read my previous post, I treated it as if I was upgrading an unsupported computer to Windows 11. I disabled all non-Microsoft services and startup applications, I disabled Windows Defender and disconnected from the internet before upgrading. Upgrade was successful and the laptop booted into Windows 10 v21H2 32-bit. However there were too many devices not properly configured (yellow ! in Device Manager). When I tried to install some drivers I got an error that there are no available resources for the device to function! After many failed attempts to fix the issues by updating the drivers, I tried to return to the previous version, Windows 10 v1607 32-bit. However the old installation was a mess, so Setup could not successfully restore the old version, it was stuck in a BSOD and restarting again and again. I decided to clean-install Windows 10 v21H2 without formatting the disk, so my customer data would be preserved in Windows.old folder. I will post details once finished.

Clean installation of Windows 10 v21H2 32-bit finished, but again there were many device issues in Device Manager difficult if not impossible to solve due to the insufficient resources error. So it is official, old systems like this are incompatible with Windows 10 v1903 or higher. I will attempt to install Windows 10 v1809 32-bit which will hopefully work, and that's it. The time has come to replace his laptop.

False alarm! I recently had a customer's laptop that could not boot into Windows 10 v1607 32-bit (see my previous posts). I managed to boot indirectly by booting the Strelec's boot USB and selecting the option to find Windows installation on disk and boot it. I could do an in-place upgrade/repair of the same version, but I decided to upgrade to Windows 10 v21H2 32-bit as well. I then had problems with drivers and insufficient resources. Naturally I thought that the hardware was not fully compatible to run v21H2, (not even with a clean installation as the issues persisted), so I tried to install an older version, v1809. I did a clean installation without format so I would preserve the user data in Windows.old folder. The issues persisted in this version also. I even tried to install v1709 without making any difference. So it turns out that there is no problem installing Windows 10 v21H2 32-bit in that CPU, but that specific laptop had some damage in the motherboard, that is why I couldn't make all devices to work. So if you have a similar laptop, don't hesitate to try upgrading to the latest version (see my previous post for details), you may succeed.

I have upgraded several computers to Windows 10. Only one was not successful. The thing the successful upgrades had in common was they all started with at least Windows 7.

When Windows 10 was released some people upgraded their computers to Windows 10 from computers that originally had Vista. I suspect that eventually the computers that started with Windows Vista stopped being able to upgrade to newer releases of Windows 10. An example, is a computer that had Windows 10 1809 but was not allowed to upgrade any further.

That is why I think it may be a waste of time to try to upgrade a computer older than about 2009 to Windows 10. Even if an older computer is successfully upgraded it will prove to be slow at best.

As far as I know, you can upgrade from Windows 7 or 8 or 8.1 to Windows 10. If you have Windows Vista you must upgrade to Windows 7 first and then to Windows 10. As for speed if you have WDDM graphics driver (Windows Vista or higher), then you have full hardware acceleration and performance should be similar to Windows 7. If there is no WDDM graphics driver you are stuck with Microsoft Basic Display Adapter with zero hardware acceleration and very slow. Even with WDDM graphics driver you can make the computer faster by disabling transparency, fades, animations and shadows under icons and text. The next step is to disable all startup applications (except those refering to the graphics card, audio and antivirus). Also disable non-Microsoft services such as Adobe updater, Google updater, Mozilla Maintenance etc. You will make a big difference in performance and a slow computer will become much more responsive.