Let's run Win10 on really really old hardware

Success !

See post 12 at Windows 10 on 2004 PC?

Then I put the pictures, but it's running perfect on my wife's computer that stays in her office, with the following specifications:- AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ (2.8 GHz)- 4 GB RAM- Nvidia QUADRO FX 1700- 120 GB SSD for Operating System and Applications- HD SATA 320 GB @ 7200 RPM- Gigabyte ga-ma69vm-s2 systemboard- PSU Corsair 430 Watts

tops said:

Then I put the pictures, but it's running perfect on my wife's computer that stays in her office, with the following specifications:- AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ (2.8 GHz)- 4 GB RAM- Nvidia QUADRO FX 1700- 120 GB SSD for Operating System and Applications- HD SATA 320 GB @ 7200 RPM- Gigabyte ga-ma69vm-s2 systemboard- PSU Corsair 430 Watts

In older Windows versions mixing AMD with NVidia usually meant trouble, but in Windows 10 you can even combine two graphics cards (such as one onboard AMD and one discrete NVidia) with DirectX 12 and boost performance! I'm not sure of how you do it, I haven't done it (yet), but I'm sure you can find the answer in an appropriate thread in this forum. To maximize performance and enable all features I recommend installing latest drivers directly from AMD and NVidia, not Windows Update. WU is your last resort if official drivers don't work (rare incompatibility).

It wont run on older graphics. When Microsoft offer free upgrade to Win 8, it said my graphics card was to old, it was ATI Radeon Xpress 1200.

If you can find at least Vista drivers (WDDM version 1.0), then you can install them in Windows 10. Older computers have 32-bit drivers but usually not 64-bit. If running the setup (in Vista compatibility mode) fails, then you have to extract the driver files in a folder and then manually install the driver from Device Manager (see my older posts for details). That's why I insist on installing 32-bit Windows on old machines. Even if you can upgrade the RAM to 4GB, you will see little benefit using 64-bit Windows and you most likely have trouble finding drivers. So if your old machine has less than 4GB RAM, don't think about it, 32-bit is a safer bet.

PS: Official AMD's site is too useless when searching drivers for old ATI and AMD cards. Try this unofficial site to find what you need very easily: http://www.amd-drivers.com/

spapakons said:

PS: Official AMD's site is too useless when searching drivers for old ATI and AMD cards. Try this unofficial site to find what you need very easily: http://www.amd-drivers.com/

Interesting.
I'm glad I found this post haha I might be able to make use of it.

Just checked, ATI Mobility Radeon Xpress X1200 has Vista 32-bit and Vista 64-bit drivers (download them here: AMD/ATI drivers for mobility / notebook graphics and Microsoft Windows), so you can install either version, provided you can find 64-bit drivers for the rest hardware. But I would go for 32-bit version if RAM is up to 4GB to maximize compatibility. It' up to you.

PS: It is a good idea to also install DirectX 9.0c runtime for older games that look for specific DirectX 9 DLL files. Newer games should play without it. I always install it to maximize compatibility with older games and video applications that work in DirectX 9 mode. While installing DirectX 9.0c runtime you should see a prompt to also install dotNET FX version 2 and 3. Of course you do it! This also maximizes compatibility with older dotNET-based applications that seek for specific dotNET version and do not realize you actually have 4.x version!

eric9000k said:

Interesting.
I'm glad I found this post haha I might be able to make use of it.

I did some inquiring with ATI on their drivers for the ATI Radeon Xpress 1200, they informed me ACER modified the drivers for their notebooks making newer drivers unusable on Vista Home Basic.

MrHudson said:

I did some inquiring with ATI on their drivers for the ATI Radeon Xpress 1200, they informed me ACER modified the drivers for their notebooks making newer drivers unusable on Vista Home Basic.

Vista Home Basic doesn't support aero feature (custom colors, 3D toolbars etc), so native Vista drivers (WDDM) do not make any difference over Windows XP drivers (XPDM). To see any difference you must have Vista Home Premium or higher version. The same Vista drivers also work (99% of the cases, exceptions are rare) in Windows 7 and 8 and 10. If you cannot install them directly by running the setup in Vista compatibility mode, then you can always force them manually from Device Manager.

PS: There is a registry hack to enable aero in Vista Home Basic, but this only enables custom colors, not all the aero effects. I don't remember how it is done, you can google it. I had done it when I had Windows Vista Basic in my work PC and hated the light blue/gray color on the taskbar. Enabling the aero at least let me choose a custom color. Needless to say that the hack works only with WDDM drivers, not XPDM.

So, as an experiment, I decided to install the latest Win10 32-bit version on my old Fujitsu tablet (running Intel 915GM) and while it surprised me by actually working, without useful video drivers, the experience using it was painfully slow.

I did read the thread here about that processor and downloaded all the drivers linked to in that thread, but none of them would install. I had expected that to be the case, but I thought one or more might, anyway.

So now, it's back running win7 and using its XPDM video driver -- and working fine.