Let's run Win10 on really really old hardware

PatrickGSR94 said:

lol wow, even more of a reason to just use Linux. I've never had a Vista license on anything.

Fortunately the upgrade to Vista did not ask for a licence, nor the upgrade to W7. It was the upgrade to W10 that required W7 to be activated before it would proceed. The biggest problem was finding any Vista install media.

You can use any compatible (for example Vista Home Premium for Home editions or Vista Business/Ultimate for Pro editions) media you had from an older computer or laptop. Even if you did not have one, you can find the Vista ISO (hopefully without any crack, just the ISO) at the internet. But it is not worth it go from XP to Vista to 7 to 10, unless you want to keep all your old applications and data. Clean install Windows 10 and do not activate it. Make sure you choose the version (Home or Pro) for which you can find or buy a key. Pro is more expensive obviously. You have 1 month to test compatibility and speed and decide if you want to keep it in your system. Then you can buy a Windows 7 or 8 or 10 license whichever you can find cheaper. Go to Activation, Change activation key, input the Windows key and activate. So simple. I work in a computer store and we sell refurbished PCs with similar specs. Yes, they can run Windows 10 even with 2GB RAM, but 4GB is of course much better. If you can increase that to 8GB, even better, but then you should install Windows 10 64-bit to take advantage of all the RAM. Remember that a Windows 7 or 8 or 10 Home key can be used for activating Windows 10 Home both 32-bit and 64-bit, doesn't matter. Also a foreign language key (for example Greek), can be used to activate any other language (for example US English) of the same version (Home or Pro). So you can use any 7 or 8 or 10 key you can find that is the same version (Home or Pro) with the Windows 10 you want to activate.

PS: Even after the month Windows 10 will allow you to login and use the PC albeit with some intentional delay and too many reminders to activate, so don't worry, you won't be locked out as was the case in XP.

spapakons said:

Don't purchase 10. Just install it to check compatibility first. Then you can buy them or use a Windows 7 or 8 or 8.1 key to activate (provided this key is not used anymore in another machine).

Not exactly on using legit activated Windows 7 or 8/8.1 keys!
That window has closed and is no longer an option and I know what I'm talking about because I personally went through this a couple of weeks ago with a clean install on hardware that never had 10 installed. It stopped and said these keys won't work. In other words were they entered correctly?, yes they were and no they didn't work because they were Win 7 and then 8.1 I tried later. This option WILL WORK with your legit ACTIVATED version of Win 7&8.1 and that is to use Windows Media Creator tool. You must first upgrade your working activated copy of Win7/8,8.1and then it's registered to your hardware with a NEW reassigned product key. After you do this you can then do a clean install selecting "I don't have keys" or if you use Magic Jellybean Key Finder or the Windows command to get the keys. Once registered you don't need them anyway. If you formatted and removed Win7/8 you have to reinstall it and go through the activation process and once it indicates it's activated genuine Windows it will be happy and upgrade you using the Windows Media Creator tool. For those that say the 7/8 key works, well perhaps 10 was on the hardware before and the keys were entered and not required and Windows let it slide on through?
Now if you ran out of keys like I did due to all the hardware I got laying around well then just go onto eBay and pay $5 or less for Win 7 keys and do the same procedure but DO IT QUICK! I got burned last year purchasing a copy of Win 7 Pro and yes it activated nicely when I purchased but several months later I replaced my hard drive and it wouldn't activate! I contacted Microsoft and they told me my keys were blacklisted! The seller sold hundreds/thousands of the same key and Microsoft blacklisted it! If it works right away and activates AND if you quickly upgrade to 10 and activate it, it will be permanently be registered to your hardware and it won't matter what happens to your 7/8 keys after this.

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spapakons said:

Who said about installing Windows 7 first? I would go straight for Windows 10. Forgive me Linux guys but I believe with Linux you never get 100% of your system's potential. You cannot expect the same performance and hardware/application compatibility with Windows. You are using at best 70% of the hardware capabilities. I always prefer to install Windows, even XP, than install any Linux. It might be slow but you get 100% of its features. I consider installing Linux to a former Windows machine as "sacrilege". Sorry.

Sorry but I strongly disagree about not getting 100% performance out of Linux👎
Right now I'm running an Acer Aspire One AO533 with an Intel Atom N455 1.66ghz that is also a 64 bit CPU and 2GB of Ram. It is running with Win10 Pro 64 and Linux Mint 19.2! I had Ubuntu 18.04.3 and it had its hands full and was working harder than 10. I switched to Linux Mint and it is now out performing 10 and is performing like it did with Windows 7 Home Premium.
Windows 10 was somewhat chugging along and I selected set Windows for Best Performance which sacrificed a bit of battery life but made it more usable. After doing this it then out performed the Ubuntu and one fellow on the Acer forum suggested I try Mint which I did.
As for performance it depends on what version of Windows or Linux you use on any given hardware. A great example was Vista! That POS would bring good hardware to a crawl!! Nothing more than a resource hog and 7 was just a sweeter tasting Lemon! This anemic little Netbook is an ideal test because it is working at a make or break capacity at the present time for Win10 and the Ubuntu.

Now if you want a real eye opener on what flavor of OS and performance, I was given an absolutely Mint HP Omnibook that was sold new with either Win98 or 2000 and RAM in the low Megs. Slap a Win95,98,2000 CD in it and it runs like a champ. Attempt newer and it stumbled and crawled being unusable.
I stuck in a same vintage of Mandrake Linux 7.0 which was early 2000's as well and it also flew like an eagle. Because it was an extinct OS version my only other option was an early version of Puppy Linux and it could not run live! Running live is entirely run in your RAM and I got 256 megs.
I was forced to partition the hard drive using a large SWAP partition that is used like RAM and then this same flavor of Puppy performed like a champ!

At the end of the day install Windows 10 and Linux both on the same hardware, install it and set it up PROPERLY and compare! Both are good and both are bad. They both have their good and bad points.
Yes I prefer Windows XP and I used it til the bitter end.

spapakons said:

... it is not worth it go from XP to Vista to 7 to 10, unless you want to keep all your old applications...

I did, it had my only installed and activated copy MS Office 2003 for which I had no install media or key. I like to have old versions of office available for support purposes and I didn't have that one on any other machine.

As mentioned there are two sides to this story for upgrade vs clean install regarding the Win7/8 upgrade. My keys wouldn't work being Win7/8 so I had to use Windows Media Creator tool and get the 10 this way AND then as for clean install use this Media Creator tool and create a bootable USB installer or download the ISO image so you can either burn a DVD or create a bootable USB and I use Rufus for this. IF you have the ISO you can keep making a USB tool or burn a DVD. You can keep the ISO and free up a thumb drive or replace a damaged DVD.

What others including myself have discovered is if the Win7/8 keys don't work and IF the OS to be upgraded is filled with crap from years of use or perhaps malware or virus, just use this mess to perform an upgrade WITH the Microsoft Media Creation Tool, get Win 10 registered to your hardware and once it's activated and happy, nuke the contents of your drive and do a clean fresh install.

BTW be warned drivers can be a surprise! A good example of this is my previously mentioned Acer Aspire One AO533!
First back in 2015 I upgraded and this was an early ground floor edition that just came out. I wasn't satisfied and also didn't do research on how to improve performance, didn't give it a chance to perform ALL updates and plain and simply didn't give it a chance.
I ripped it out and put 7 back in! Years later which is a month ago I read they did performance improvements as well and decided to give it another try. This time I swapped the harddrive preserving my Win7 Home Premium and Linux and did a totally fresh install with fingers crossed.
The result was smooth as if it was meant to be there like the first time BUT my SD card reader was not detected and no drivers were installed!
Well! What are we going to do? Acer only provides Win 7 drivers so what the heck I downloaded the SD Card reader and other driver utilities, installed the utility for the SD card reader and Bing I now have another drive appear working just great! Win 7&8 drivers sometimes work, sometimes not as was the case of a VGA GPU that I have that works awsum but these drivers will not work on 10!
My suggestion is when you do the update IF there are any driver issues, this is when they may pop up. Okay if the installation goes smoothly as my first attempt did BACKUP the drivers!! If there are driver issues search high and low for drivers and you most likely will find one that works.
There are free software utilities that totally scan your entire system and totally backup all of your drivers. Save them and make them accessible to a thumb drive so drivers can be installed later. Also download ALL drivers from whoever manufactured your hardware and keep it handy.
Dont forget that quite often your Ethernet or Wifi will quite often not work so how are you going to download drivers??
Depending on hardware a clean install will involve manual installation of drivers.

Other surprises are a Gigabyte motherboard I have. All is great but of all things the onboard VGA or onboard Video chipset is not supported by Win10 and the chipset manufacturer and Gigabyte didn't provide a Win10 driver! It created a totally unstable mess even though I have a PCIe GPU installed. The system would crash a few minutes after starting up creating a boot, crash reboot continuous cycle.
I had to enter Bios and disable the onboard video. There were 3 options, PCIe only, PCIe and VGA both enabled or only Onboard. Disabling onboard totally solved this problem.

If you have read carefully my posts you would know that Windows 10 is very slow for systems without a WDDM (Vista or newer) graphics driver. For these systems Windows uses Microsoft Basic Display Adapter which has zero hardware acceleration and slows down the whole system. The same happens if Windows fail to install the graphics driver and uses MBDA instead. That explains why Windows 8/10 is too slow on very old systems and you should install Windows 7 instead that can use the Windows XP driver (XPDM) and have some hardware acceleration. Then I always recommend to install 32-bit in systems with 4GB or less RAM. This is because it is more light than 64-bit and that because usually there are 32-bit drivers, not 64-bit for these old systems. And as I have said multiple times, if there are no Windows 10 drivers, Windows 8 or 7 or even Vista should work in 10. You may have to run the installer with compatibility or even manually load the driver from Device Manager, yes, but in 99% of the cases it works. So for the card reader you mentioned, for example, you can use the Windows 7 or Vista driver, no problem! Alternatively you can find drivers with a tool such as Snappy Driver Installer (I usually avoid it and prefer manual installation instead). I hate Linux because of lack of compatibility with some devices and smaller choice of apps compared to Windows, because of the steep learning curve and because generic third-party drivers usually do not expose all hardware features like OEM proprietary drivers. I want my hardware to work at its full potential, not just work! Also there are no wizards, for any action you have to use the terminal and for every problem you have to go to the forums, not really desirable.

Regarding Windows 7/8 keys, yes they work, provided they are Genuine Microsoft keys, not bogus keys from some key generators! And they may not activate automatically the second (or third) time they are used but you can always activate by phone. I do that as a living, so I know it is possible to use a Windows 7/8 key to install Windows 10, not doubt.

Good for you if the Windows 7 keys work!
Mine DID NOT and they are legit NOT randomly generated keys. Two of my keys are on pre installed Windows computers I own and Microsoft activates them if I call in. I personally attempted a free upgrade USING WIN7 Keys and they DIDNT WORK! The Microsoft Media Creation Tool WORKS! I feel it's a total waste of my time and other people's time giving misinformation and bogus facts!! IF your LEGIT and ACTIVATION POSSIBLE keys don't work use the Media Creation Tool
The Microsoft web site I posted explains the program ended and in the past I was able to use my legit keys, not anymore as the Windows 7 key promo has ended. As for speed and hardware my socket 939 Mobo uses AGP video card a prob for drivers and discontinued legacy card support for an FX5700LE card. If I had a PCIe Mobo a modern PCIe card can be subbed. This is reality and even legacy PCIe can be a driver problem as well. Been there and done it and this involves spending great deal of time searching for drivers which can cost more than the hardware is worth if you take it to a computer shop and expect them to search for drivers that may or may not work. Many times it's cheaper to upgrade the card or all hardware.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/...10-upgrade-faq

I never use the MCT, I download the ISO and run the setup from a DVD or USB created by Rufus. And there the keys always work. You can also skip entering a key during install and select the appropriate Windows 10 version (Home or Pro). This will allow you to finish the installation and you can use the key to activate later. All nVidia graphics cards from GeForce 5 FX series up to latest 20 series have a WDDM driver. Latest nVidia driver for GeForce 5 FX Series is this for Vista 32-bit: NVIDIA DRIVERS ForceWare Release 95 WHQL and this for Vista 64-bit: NVIDIA DRIVERS ForceWare Release 95 WHQL If you run the setup as Administrator with Windows Vista Compatibility it will install without any issue at Windows 7 and 8 and 10 32-bit and 64-bit respectively. I have only seen some glitches in Marine Aquarium Screensaver 3, probably due to some incompatibility, not great issue. Running the first Aquarium Screensaver displays OK, no problem. As for the drivers, you can use a diagnostic tool such as Aida64 or Speccy to see the specs of your systems and find out which drivers you need. If it is an prebuilt system (eg Dell or HP or other manufacturer) you can find drivers at their support site. If it is custom-built, you have to visit the support site of the motherboard, graphics and any extra component manufacturer, not a big deal. If you cannot find any drivers or too lazy to search, you can use an automatic tool such as Snappy Driver Installer to detect the hardware and automatically download all the missing drivers for you. I usually avoid the last "easy" solution because I want to make sure I install the latest official OEM drivers, not just any driver and because in some rare cases upgrading unnecessarily the chipset drivers can make your system unbootable! So finding drivers for old systems is not excuse to abandon Windows and use Linux instead. Any more excuses? If you want to experiment with Linux, that's fine, but do not recommend for the average (see novice) user. He will soon get stuck somewhere and blame you for that. I certainly do not want that, I prefer all my customers and friends to be happy and use Windows that I can help them with.

spapakons said:

I never use the MCT, I download the ISO and run the setup from a DVD or USB created by Rufus. And there the keys always work.

same here - I also never use MCT to create an ISO image. I download either the ESD or ISO file directly from MS

btw, just obtained the x86/32bit Win10 20H1/2004 build 19041.84 insider preview ISO file from MS and installed it on the old 2007 Dell Inspiron laptop using Intel Core Duo Yonah T2700 cpu. it actually starts up faster than the 1903/1909 versions (and the "fast startup" option was actually turned off)