Let's run Win10 on really really old hardware

hennmann said:

My second attempt at running Win 10
on my 2009/10 Acer Aspire One AO533 is running again.
This $h!tbox is stampeding along like a herd of Turtles using an Atom N455 1.66ghz and 2 GB of RAM
My first attempt was in 2015 using the first version that came out and it was somewhat slow. I yanked it out and went back to Win7 Home Premium that ran quite well but being discontinued in Jan 14 made me feel like attempting 10 again. My thumb drive has a newer version from 2018 and I installed it hoping updates would get me to 1903 but instead it's a version 18362 Windows 10 Pro 64 bit.
I guess a fair comparison of performance would be like having Windows 7 Starter Edition and 1gb of RAM. It was pathetic with 1 and 2gb smartened it up including tossing the 250gb 5400rpm spinner for a Western Digital Blue SSD.

Currently it it is a dual boot with Ubuntu 18.04.3 and it's a bit faster on Linux as well considering they recommend a dual core processor at 2ghz or better with 4gb or more of RAM.

To to attempt to make Win10 run faster in settings I have it set for best performance instead of balanced sacrificing battery life.
What else can be used to speed up this Turtle? Is Win10 Home faster than Win10 Pro? I have had both on this netbook but again that was 2015. I selected pro for more options of what I could select or disable unlike Home edition.


Other than this for older hardware my socket 939 4800+ dual core was somewhat disappointing because my MSI K8T Neo2-F only supports AGP video and my FX5700LE TD128 worked very well with XP and Win 7 Pro but drivers were an issue on 10 causing the system to run unstable.
Other attempts included my Dell Dimension 4600 with a 2.8Ghz processor but the CPU didn't meet the requirements.
Other attempts included an MSI AM2 K9N6P which ran extremely well with a smaller quad core but RAM is expensive so that didn't go very far.

Have you turned off transparency? That tends to speed things up quite a bit. Don't think it makes any difference if it's home or pro in terms of speed, in my experience. There's not a lot extra in pro re installation.

Currently have 1903 running on a Samsung (atom) notebook with 2gb ram. It is never going to be lightning fast but nippier with transparency turned off. Also check which background apps are running in settings. Most of those can be turned off and they just kick in as and when used.

For best performance for old systems with 1GB or 2GB RAM, I recommend to avoid 64-bit Windows, stick with 32-bit and then go to Control Panel, System, Advanced System Settings, click on Performance "Settings" button and select Adjust for best performance. Then click on Advanced tab, Virtual Memory "Change" button and make sure there are no custom values, but system managed size instead. Click on Set to make sure and restart. This should make the PC a lot faster. Do not forget to make sure you have installed a graphics driver. Check the Display Adapter in Device Manager. If you see Microsoft Basic Display Adapter, it will be software-only and VERY slow. Make sure you install Windows 10 or 8 or 7 or at least Vista drivers (WDDM). Needless to say you should disable any startup applications you don't need (such as Adobe Flash Updater, Java Scheduler, Skype, uTorrent etc). You can always start them manually when needed.

Also you could blow the dust from inside the computer and even replace the thermal paste on the CPU so it doesn't overheat. If the CPU overheats it slows down to avoid damage and so it is much slower. And of course make sure you are free of spywares/malware that drain system resources and also make it slow as hell. Download and run Hard Disk Sentinel or similar tool to check your hard disk health. An unhealthy (damaged) disk is very slow.

ohhh interesting. I need to dig out my old Dell 13" laptop that my dad handed down to me years ago. Not sure of the year, but it's early-mid 2000's and I'm pretty sure it's still running Windows XP at the moment.

Hi all...first post! This thread prompted me to take my (almost!) 15 years old pc purchased in June 2005 and see if it can run Windows 10. Original specification:-
Compaq Presario 1539UK, AMD Athlon 64 3500+, 1gb ddr ram 400mhz, 2 x 320gb hdd, Geforce 6200 turbo cache gpu, 300 watt psu, Windows xp 32bit.
For this test, I "upgraded" to 4gb ddr ram 400mhz, 1 x 60gb ssd (small I know but this is just an experiment), evga gt 730 1gb ddr3 gpu. Correct me if I am wrong but I don't think the ddr5 version or a better gpu would be worth it on that cpu/power supply. I already had this gpu anyway.
Tried installing windows 10 32 bit from usb stick. The whole process just took ages and ages. Got the oobregion error various restart attempts to no avail. I resorted to installing on the ssd using parts from an i5 socket 1150 build. Put the drive in the compaq and success! Installed the gpu drivers and a couple of games. Ran a few benchmarks. Works very well. Not updated the o/s or taken it online yet so that's the next step. I am very impressed. Will report back.

Tzap said:

Hi all...first post!...

Welcome to Ten Forums. Yes, W10 can run surprisingly well on 'old' hardware (he says, typing this on a 10 year old laptop). I assume you have something more modern too.

Bree said:

Welcome to Ten Forums. Yes, W10 can run surprisingly well on 'old' hardware (he says, typing this on a 10 year old laptop). I assume you have something more modern too.

Thanks! Modern kit is i5 4690k, evga gtx 1060sc 6gb. Build is about 5 years old (gpu 3 years old) Ok for now but this compaq w10 build has taken over a bit lol

PC originally came with Pentium 4 520 processor (still installed) 512MB of DDR2 Ram (upgraded over time to 4 GB, which is all it will support) 160 GB hard drive (replaced somewhere along the line after a failure with a 500 GB HDD (not SSD), and a 128MB PCI Express ATI Radeon X300 SE graphics card.

It originally came with Windows XP, then upgraded to Windows 7. With Windows 7 End of Support I didn't really want to keep it running long term. We really only use it for email and a few other minor tasks, and as a print server, but it has a lot of data, pictures, etc. going way back. I've also used it for taxes and didn't want to install tax software on it now that Windows 7 is EOS. I was assuming that I'd either build a replacement, budget desktop and put the 4700's HDD in as a second HDD, or copy content to a relatively old laptop that's already running W10 and retire the Dell.

For the heck of it I decided to see if it would take a W10 upgrade. I was always under the impression that it wouldn't from some of the compatibility testing in the past, but I took a shot. I used the Media Creation Tool and selected to upgrade with existing settings and apps, took a while but it actually worked, I was very surprised!

Performance seemed to be about the same as under Windows 7. I did notice that it was using the "Microsoft Basic Video Adapter" then read that it's software only and could slow down the system. I tried a driver update and no drivers were found. I had an old PNY GeForce 8800 GT that had come out of a PC that had been scrapped years ago, so I decided to throw it in. I had never bothered before since the Dell 4700 was OK for its use and I assumed that it would be retired at Windows 7 EOS, but since the PC seemed to have a new lease on life, I installed the card. After rebooting and trying driver update Windows 10 did find updated drivers for the card and installed them.

Graphics performance is much better now, need to keep an eye on the PC to see how it acts, since the old graphics card didn't require any power other than the slot; the PNY required power. I had to disconnect one of two DVD drives in it to get power, I have ordered a splitter so I can reconnect it.

I'm happy that I'll be able to keep this Dell 4700 running a while longer and the performance is better than it was thanks to the graphics adapter swap. As positive an outcome as I could have hoped for!

Welcome to Ten Forums @Longs2517

Performance seemed to be about the same as under Windows 7...

Yes, my experience with older machines is that W10 runs at least as well, if not better than their original W7. Only one of my machines was slower, but that had a single core/single thread cpu. Your Pentium 4 520 has two threads and W10 runs all the better for it.

it was using the "Microsoft Basic Video Adapter" then read that it's software only and could slow down the system.... I had an old PNY GeForce 8800 GT ... so I decided to throw it in...

I have an old netbook with an Intel Atom N2600. No graphics drivers for that beyond W7, and no chance of upgrading the graphics. But it runs well enough for a 'holiday take-away' machine, and Youtube is watchable if I view it in a window rather than full screen.

I hate to see old kit going to landfill, so well done on giving yours a new lease of life.

Longs2517 said:

I'm happy that I'll be able to keep this Dell 4700 running a while longer and the performance is better than it was thanks to the graphics adapter swap. As positive an outcome as I could have hoped for!

I have Windows 10 on a 2006 PC and installing a SSD made a huge difference. You can get a 512GB SSD for c. £50 or less if you can manage with a smaller drive. You could install a 120GB SSD for £20 for Windows and programs and keep the data on the hard drive.