Let's run Win10 on really really old hardware

I'm already a member of elevenforum.com and have posted some interesting posts. Follow me there too.

Compatibility hint: Screen flickering when opening Settings and how to stop it.

Recently I saw a weird incompatibility at an old laptop with nVidia GeForce Go 7400 graphics. Everywhere else the screen was stable, it passed Burnin Test, played video and games without any issue. But when I tried to access Windows Settings, any section, Display Settings, Personalization, Windows Update, the screen flickered after a few seconds and I could do nothing. This flickering stopped when replacing the nVidia drivers with Microsoft Basic Display Adapter (no acceleration). No nVidia driver would fix the issue, neither official Windows 7 driver, nor the one from Windows Update. So first I thought the graphics card had been damaged and needed repair (airflow). But when I disabled transparency in Personalization the issue disappeared! It seems that the graphics card could not render the transparency effects properly causing the flicker. Once the transparency effects is disabled, everything is OK. So if you experience something similar, try disabling transparency effects.

spapakons said:

Compatibility hint: Screen flickering when opening Settings and how to stop it.

Recently I saw a weird incompatibility at an old laptop with nVidia GeForce Go 7400 graphics. Everywhere else the screen was stable, it passed Burnin Test, played video and games without any issue. But when I tried to access Windows Settings, any section, Display Settings, Personalization, Windows Update, the screen flickered after a few seconds and I could do nothing. This flickering stopped when replacing the nVidia drivers with Microsoft Basic Display Adapter (no acceleration). No nVidia driver would fix the issue, neither official Windows 7 driver, nor the one from Windows Update. So first I thought the graphics card had been damaged and needed repair (airflow). But when I disabled transparency in Personalization the issue disappeared! It seems that the graphics card could not render the transparency effects properly causing the flicker. Once the transparency effects is disabled, everything is OK. So if you experience something similar, try disabling transparency effects.

you're not alone, spapakons

that was the same graphics problem I experienced with onboard NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 hardware on my old HP pavilion m8417c desktop PC - occurs with Win10 versions 2004 & greater and doesn't happen with 1909 & older

edit - I think I'll stick to running LTSC 2019 (v1809) as that problem never happens on that version and only happens with v2004 & newer

No need to stick with old versions. I would take a full system backup (preferably clone the hard disk to a spare disk) and then upgrade to latest build. I would disable transparency is Personalization and hopefully the flicker should be gone. If not, I would restore the backup (re-clone from the spare drive back to my hard disk) and forget about it.

By the way, I have a humble HP laptop with 2GB RAM running Windows 10 32-bit at work and because it runs a lot of stuff, including SQL client, it was crawling. I disabled transparency and also some useless visual effects in the Advanced System Settings, Performance area and now it is a lot more responsive! You should definitely try these performance tricks in any of your old systems. Even if they seem fast, you would be amazed how faster they can get.

I recently discovered there is a hidden Power Plan, the Ultimate Power Plan that is only enabled in Windows 10 for Workstations by default, but it can also be enabled in standard Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro versions using a command as Administrator. This plan enables the turbo boost of the CPU permanently and avoids any performance drop to maximize performance of a Workstation computer, or in our case on our regular computer. The only drawback is that it will consume more power. For a desktop computer this is not an issue, I believe it will not impact too much the electric bill. For a laptop it will make the battery last less, so I would not do it. But for an old laptop that the battery is useless or dead and we use it mostly connected to the mains, it could give an extra bit of performance. The difference might be small, it might also be a placebo (we think is faster but is the same), but it wouldn't harm to do it anyway.

So if you need to enable the Ultimate Power Plan open a command prompt or PowerShell as Administrator and execute the following code:

Code:

powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61

Then go to Power Settings and select this plan. Bingo! No need to restart. I would recommend it for all old computers, at least all desktop computers. We have nothing to lose, even if it is placebo, I like it.

nah spapakons there's no need for me to upgrade to newer Win10 versions on all my older PCs unless there's a new LTSC version from MS greater than LTSC 2019 that may be released when it will be available

I strictly use recent LTSC Win10 versions now and they get support & updates well beyond Oct. 2025 & that's when most Win10 editions & versions will go out of support

so I will pass on some of your offers - it's LTSC or bust for me as I like to run Win10 LTSC well beyond 2025

spapakons said:

I recently discovered there is a hidden Power Plan, the Ultimate Power Plan that is only enabled in Windows 10 for Workstations by default, but it can also be enabled in standard Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro versions using a command as Administrator. This plan enables the turbo boost of the CPU permanently and avoids any performance drop to maximize performance of a Workstation computer, or in our case on our regular computer. The only drawback is that it will consume more power. For a desktop computer this is not an issue, I believe it will not impact too much the electric bill. For a laptop it will make the battery last less, so I would not do it. But for an old laptop that the battery is useless or dead and we use it mostly connected to the mains, it could give an extra bit of performance. The difference might be small, it might also be a placebo (we think is faster but is the same), but it wouldn't harm to do it anyway.

So if you need to enable the Ultimate Power Plan open a command prompt or PowerShell as Administrator and execute the following code:

Code:

powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61

Then go to Power Settings and select this plan. Bingo! No need to restart. I would recommend it for all old computers, at least all desktop computers. We have nothing to lose, even if it is placebo, I like it.

Hi,
Yeah that's been around for a long long time
Add or Remove Ultimate Performance Power Plan in Windows 10

I don't have an AMD, I didn't know. Is indeed as fast as it says? As I mostly use refurbished computers, I prefer Intel, as any AMD before Ryzen would hardly compare with contemporary Intel CPUs. Most applications and casual games I have use a single or a couple of cores, so single-core performance is much more important to me than the number of cores that remain idle anyway.