Let's run Win10 on really really old hardware

cldriver said:

I was able to get it to run at 2.33ghz using 'method 4' here (power settings related):

FIX: CPU Not Running at Full Speed in Windows 10. - wintips.org - Windows Tips & How-tos

At work I use a laptop with Intel Celeron N2840 CPU with base frequency 2.16GHz. When I went to that key in Registry, the value was 3 and CPUID said the CPU was running at 2.53GHz. I tried to change that to 4, restarted and the CPU was fixed at base frequency 2.16GHz no matter what! I set that back to 3, restarted and now it works again at 2.53GHz, so try 4 and if that doesn't work try 3. I don't know what is the difference between the two settings, but I hope that helps you.

TV2 said:

Yes, it was the Pentium 4 Prescott that first had the NX bit architecture.

You probably mean Pentium 4 Prescott socket 775 (models 5xx), not the original Pentium 4 Prescott socket 478! And even if the 478 one supported NX/PAE, no socket 478 motherboard supports NX/PAE in BIOS (always OFF), so you cannot install Windows 8/10 on socket 478 systems, only socket 775 and newer, as I have already said in my previous posts. Don't waste your time, you must patch winload.exe and ntsoskrln.dll to do it and, no, that doesn't count as successfully installing Windows 10 on s478 because it is cheating.

you must patch winload.exe and ntsoskrln.dll to do it and, no, that doesn't count as successfully installing Windows 10 on s478 because it is cheating.

I must disagree with this; finding workarounds in "no way" situations is the most entertaining activity and successful installation is the best reward regardless of your labeling it as "cheating".

spapakons said:

...so try 4 and if that doesn't work try 3. I don't know what is the difference between the two settings....

The value of Start has the same meaning for all services, it sets the startup type.

0 = Boot
1 = System
2 = Automatic
3 = Manual
4 = Disabled

cldriver said:

I was able to get it to run at 2.33ghz using 'method 4' here (power settings related):

FIX: CPU Not Running at Full Speed in Windows 10. - wintips.org - Windows Tips & How-tos

which GPU u have? I have a dell inspiron 6400 but windows 10 is running real slow. A lot of high cpu usage from "Desktop Window Manager". Even games from the year 2000 are running slow on Windows 10. With windows 7 everything was really smooth.

Do u use specific drivers?

If you install Windows 10 the first time, it will discover most drivers automatically through Windows Update. That doesn't mean these drivers are the best. To make sure I have the latest official OEM drivers that maximize performance and enable all features, I would go to notebook's support site and download them, or even go to Intel (and all other devices' manufacturers) and download them from there separatelly. I would avoid using Windows Update or any other tool to find drivers for me. And of course if there are no Windows 10 drivers, I would download Windows 8 or 7 or even Vista, if the system is too old.

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.

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.

Perhaps try the 32 bit version of Windows 10 which can use up to 3GB RAM?

Using the Windows Key and R indicates 3.1gb of Virtual Ram and 900 megs of installed ram available. My guess this virtual memory is the same as when I had Windows 7 and my SD card was used for this resulting in my hard drive light always solid blueunless I pop this card out. It is used as a PST file backup for my Microsoft Office 2007 Outlook and is large enough for virtual memory. Eventually I will see if a 4gb stick will work in it and the local shops let customers try a stick in their shop to see if works because some systems are temperamental or perhaps limited. This Netbook is specked out at 1gb because due to licensing BS with Win7 Starter, Starter doesn't allow anymore than 2 and many other makes and models with this Atom N455 were sold with Win7 Starter and a lousy 1gb of Ram.
Also I have a Gigabyte AM3 motherboard and the manufacturer states it is maxed out at 8gb but I tried 16 and BIOS and Windows/Ubuntu indicate 16 so perhaps this netbook can accept more. It is a 64 bit computer and I also never see this mentioned as well.
Updates are still being installed as well so I can wait and see.