Let's run Win10 on really really old hardware

spapakons · 11 May 2020

As said on many occasions, Vista and 7 drivers also work in Windows 10 with few exceptions. First compatibility check is that you can find at least Vista 32-bit graphics drivers (WDDM 1.0). Next is that CPU supports NX/PAE so you can at least install Windows 8/10 32-bit. RAM should be at least 1GB with 2GB recommended. It is weird to run Windows 7 32-bit but not 10 32-bit. Just install Vista or 7 32-bit drivers and you should have no problem.

Bree · 11 May 2020

My oldest machine that runs W10 without any limitations dates back to 2009. It automatically got a full set of drivers from Microsoft courtesy of windows update. It's System Two in my specs below, a Samsung R519 with a Celeron T3100.

MisterEd · 11 May 2020

spapakons said:

As said on many occasions, Vista and 7 drivers also work in Windows 10 with few exceptions. First compatibility check is that you can find at least Vista 32-bit graphics drivers (WDDM 1.0). Next is that CPU supports NX/PAE so you can at least install Windows 8/10 32-bit. RAM should be at least 1GB with 2GB recommended. It is weird to run Windows 7 32-bit but not 10 32-bit. Just install Vista or 7 32-bit drivers and you should have no problem.

A couple of my old computers have never had any official drivers for Windows Vista or newer. They both run Windows 7 OK. Th only drivers I needed to install were video drivers. I installed the Windows XP versions of them. Windows 10 was different. The previous Windows XP drivers that worked with Windows 7 would not do so with Windows 10.

The old computers that run Windows 7 have the following CPUs:
Desktop built in 2002: AMD Athlon XP 2800+ (Thoroughbred B, Socket: A)
Laptop bought in 2004: AMD Athlon 64 3400+ (ClawHammer, Socket: 754)

1GB RAM is not enough for Windows 7 or 10. I consider 2GB RAM a minimum with 4GB RAM even better.

Even my old laptop with Windows 7 requires about 900MB at idle and between 1 and 2GB under load. My new laptop with Windows 10 uses almost 2.5GB RAM at idle.

Steve C · 12 May 2020

Bree said:

My oldest machine that runs W10 without any limitations dates back to 2009. It automatically got a full set of drivers from Microsoft courtesy of windows update. It's System Two in my specs below, a Samsung R519 with a Celeron T3100.

I have two 2006 PCs running the latest version of Windows 10 - see system spec 2

eLPuSHeR · 12 May 2020

My bad with maths. The computer is from 2005-2006. Max ram size is 3GB. I don't know which was its original OS, probably WinXP.

Damun · 12 May 2020

Just installed windows 10 on a 10 year old HP Pavilion dv6-1220 laptop (Intel Pentium Processor T4200 (1M Cache, 2.00 GHz, 800 MHz FSB), 4GB DDR2). It originally came with Vista and i upgraded it to 7 after a couple of years. I also changed the SATA HDD to a SSD some years later.

Apart from some yellow marks in device manager (a search identified them as jmicron card reader and IR port) everything seems to be ok. Everything in windows is kept "stock". It is a bit slow - but that's ok.

On a side note: I installed LibreOffice as i didn't want to spend money on a new MS-Office license.
Never tried LibreOffice before but it is really great and free. Check it out here: Link

eLPuSHeR · 12 May 2020

Damun: use Snappy Driver Installer to install/update missing drivers. Make a Restore Point first, though.

Damun · 12 May 2020

eLPuSHeR said:

Damun: use Snappy Driver Installer to install/update missing drivers. Make a Restore Point first, though.

Thanks. I'll try it out.

spapakons · 12 May 2020

The point of this thread is to test compatibility of Windows 10 (usually 32-bit) in old hardware (15+ years old). Speed is not absolutely necessary, but of course is desirable. Any system with a CPU supporting PAE/NX (anything at least dual core or better) and at least 1GB RAM should run Windows 10 32-bit, even with missing drivers. If the graphics card also has WDDM drivers it will be even faster. The more RAM the better. So a typical laptop with at least Intel Txxx CPU or AMD equivalent and 2GB RAM should be able to run Windows 10 32-bit. Use Snappy for the missing drivers, although I would rather download them from the manufacturer.

PS: We sell such refurbished laptops and we even install Windows 10 64-bit on them. Of course we first maximize the RAM to 4GB to be as fast as possible. In some cases we replace the original mechanical 2.5" SATA hard disk with a 2.5" SATA SSD to achieve the maximum possible performance that laptop can provide. It is really fast and you can use it for office work, social networks, YouTube and Netflix at reasonable resolutions (480p or 720p). You can even play some casual games (not very graphics demanding). If you have one such laptop, don't discard it! Maximize RAM, replace the disk with an SSD and you will be amazed! If there is no HDMI output, you can use a VGA-to-HDMI adapter to connect at your TV or projector.

erpster4 · 14 May 2020

erpster4 said:

I'm looking at the release notes for win10 build 18353. might have something to do with an issue with memcpy that they fixed in that version as that was mentioned. i'm not sure if that will be backported to 1809.

a follow-up of this "problem" about a year ago - v1809 even up to now (year 2020) still has never worked with certain old CPUs (Intel Core Duos from the "Yonah" series as well as Pentium Ms from the "Dothan" series). Microsoft has not figured out how to fix this with 1809 even with recent cumulative updates for 1809 and still refuses to boot up with these old Intel mobile CPUs.

edit - it's now a safe bet that the 1809/RS5 (build 17763.x) release totally broke support for these old mobile Intel processors and I don't see MS restoring or fixing this anytime soon for 1809

just run a Win10 version between 1803 & older or 1903 & later (avoiding the 1809 release including LTSC 2019) on these specific Intel laptop cpus.