Let's run Win10 on really really old hardware

CountMike · 07 Nov 2021

spapakons said:

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.

Well. I used AMD most of the time, ever since 386/486 and it was a tossup with Intel most of the. They were never much behind and price was right, price/performance always favored AMD. At some times they were ahead like with Athlon vs. P4, first dual and multi core CPUs. Phenom series were really good and most except few were unlocked for OC. FX series were lacking in single core performance because of stupid architecture, (2 cores per module) but always had more cores for price.
What puts me off with Intel is their attitude and some times unfair practices. Yes they were better at some times and some CPUs but not 1007200/300 0r more $$ better.
Ryzen changed a lot performance wise with low TDP and power requirements and became truly modern CPU while Intel gave some more of same stuff thru several generations and had to lower prices substantially just to stay competitive.

eLPuSHeR · 08 Nov 2021

I agree with CountMike. Even though Alder Lake seems to be a good thing, my next setup will be AMD. I regret having paid 1000€ for my current i7-5960x

spapakons · 08 Nov 2021

Let's not start an Intel vs AMD debate here... Your current system is far from obsolete. Mine is a third generation i7, bought used of course, I would not afford it new. I replaced my i3 s1155 with i7 and upgraded RAM from 8GB to 16GB. This was the cheaper possible upgrade, otherwise I would change motherboard. RAM and CPU. In applications where single-core performance is more important than number of cores, my 4-core 8-thread system is more than enough. Yours even better. I would think twice to betray Intel and adopt AMD just for the number of cores. I would rather upgrade to a new i3 than buy AMD. "Wearing a holy robe doesn't necessarily mean you are a real priest", as we say in Greek. Similarly having too many cores, doesn't necessarily mean an AMD is faster than an Intel with the same frequency and less cores. No every single application or game activates all cores, so I value single-core performance and backwards compatibility with older applications/games much more than the absolute number of cores. For the wise guys out there ready to flame me, I just remind that most Adobe creativity applications, including Adobe Photoshop rarely engage many cores. The same goes for many games. So true performance comes from single-core speed, not number of cores which after a certain number they are useless as they are rarely activated. It's like driving a Ferrari inside town for shopping. Its vast power goes unused, so useless.

PS: For anyone needing proof, read this article: What Processor for Photoshop | Lightroom | 2018 | Punch Technology

spapakons · 11 Nov 2021

I have an old Pentium 4 socket 478 computer that I would like to sell. Normally I cannot install Windows 8 or 10 32-bit on it, as it doesn't support NX/PAE. There was a utility called patchpae that could path some system files and bypass system compatibility checks. However, this utility is too old and doesn't work in builds of 2017 or newer. Does anyone knows of a new patch that can at least work with v1903 or newer? I would like to know if I can do it before I eventually install Windows 7 32-bit.

Thank you in advance.

PS: The old patch can be used to install Windows 8.0 (not 8.1), but I would rather install Windows 10, if possible. Thanks.

jowaju · 22 Nov 2021

spapakons said:

I have an old Pentium 4 socket 478 computer that I would like to sell. Normally I cannot install Windows 8 or 10 32-bit on it, as it doesn't support NX/PAE. There was a utility called patchpae that could path some system files and bypass system compatibility checks. However, this utility is too old and doesn't work in builds of 2017 or newer. Does anyone knows of a new patch that can at least work with v1903 or newer? I would like to know if I can do it before I eventually install Windows 7 32-bit.

Thank you in advance.

PS: The old patch can be used to install Windows 8.0 (not 8.1), but I would rather install Windows 10, if possible. Thanks.

The newer comments on this page seem to indicate there is something out there that works on the newer Windows 10 versions, there are even some download links if you are brave enough.

PAE patch updated for Windows 10 – wj32

- - - Updated - - -

Yesterday I had my first ever successful Windows 98 / Windows 10 install on the same machine. It was a Dell Precision M20 Laptop from ~2004. For Windows 98 I had to leave it at 1GB ram. Clean device managers with everything loaded except Wifi on the Windows 98 side. This model has an ATI Firegl v3100 video card with 64MB ram. Pentium M 760 (so Windows 10 32 Bit only). I used a 160GB 5400rpm IDE drive and it had a Dell Wireless 1450 card as well as Bluetooth. Neither Windows 98 nor Windows 10 has a working driver for the v3100, but I used a modded Radeon x300 / x600 driver which has the same underlying chip and it worked with full acceleration shown in DXdiag on both loads. It was definitely no powerhouse but it ran surprisingly well for an old Single Core machine with 2GB ram and an old, slow IDE hard drive.

Photo-Nov-19-11-32-55-PM — ImgBB

Photo-Nov-19-11-30-48-PM — ImgBB

spapakons · 23 Nov 2021

The PAE patch from wj32 didn't work for 1909 or newer. I would prefer to install a new build. Would patching the old build system files and replace the new build files with them work? I don't have time to test it. If anyone has already done that, please report.

erpster4 · 23 Nov 2021

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.

turning on Winaero Tweaker's "Increase taskbar transparency level" option in the Winaero Tweaker app also seems to work on geforce 6xxx/7xxx graphics on Win10 v2004+ in stopping those flickers

since there was a new LTSC version (LTSC 2021 based on 21H2) that came out a week ago, I may go with this new LTSC release; gets updates until at least 2027

spapakons · 24 Nov 2021

If you install the same graphics driver most likely the issue will be still there with the new Windows 10 build, but you have nothing to lose.

jowaju · 24 Nov 2021

After attempting unsuccessfully to upgrade the Anniversary Edition 1607 that was working on my Precision M20 from above, I think I have found a way to install Windows 10 versions newer than 1709 on these old, unsupported machines. I used the following items to successfully install Windows 10 21H2 on my Pentium M 2.0 Ghz laptop with 2GB ram.

RUFUS USB Creator Tool Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way
USB to PATA / SATA adapter cable
* I also used Snappy Driver Installer Origin to download and install the drivers that Windows didn't have built in. No more searching for hours trying to find the right driver for your old hardware. https://www.snappy-driver-installer.org/download-page/

First, download RUFUS (there is even a portable version if you do not want to install it). Open RUFUS , on the right hand side there is a drop down menu that says Select, click the dropdown and choose Download. Then Click the button that now says Download. Choose Windows 10, choose which version you want to download, in this case I chose 21H2 Build 19044.1288 - 2021.11. Choose your Edition, Language, and Architecture (aka 32 bit or 64 bit), then choose download. It will prompt you for a location to store the ISO installer File for your chosen options.

After the ISO file is downloaded, you need to have RUFUS and the ISO file available on the same machine running Windows 10 already. I simply ram it from another Windows 10 laptop I had in the house. You cannot run this next step on Windows 7 / Windows 8 / Windows 8.1. I removed the hard drive from the laptop I want Windows 10 on (Precision M20 IDE PATA laptop drive) and connected it to the USB adapter. Plug it in to the Windows 10 computer you have RUFUS and your ISO file on.

Open RUFUS, click the Show USB Devices check box, find your target hard drive in the Device Drop Down box at the top of the window. Change the Download selector back to Select, then click Select to choose the ISO image you just downloaded. Choose the Image Option drop down menu and select Windows To Go instead of Standard Installation. Change Partition Scheme to MBR, Target System Bios or UEFI, Uncheck the Use RUFUS MBR box, and set your Volume Label to your desired name (It will default to the Volume name of the ISO image you are using, this is just the name that Displays beside your hard drive in Windows, it can be blank or any text you wish, e.g. Windows). Double check all your settings are correct. Triple check all your settings are correct. Click start to begin loading Windows To Go onto the target drive.

Once RUFUS completes successfully you are done, disconnect the drive, re-install it back into the target PC, and let it boot. It will go through a lengthy discovering hardware scan and then take you through the OOBE prompts (some of them timed out on my install but I simply clicked try again and they eventually went through). When you are done it will boot into your Windows 10 install as a normal installation, then you can load any device drivers and do any updates you want/need.

I tried this with 2 different versions, v2004 and v21H2, both worked the same and bypassed the block the full installer does preventing these versions from being installed on older machines. Another note, I had almost ZERO luck using any ISO already had downloaded for RUFUS to use when creating the Windows To Go. I already had pretty much every version downloaded previously but all of them gave an error about unpacking files. Apparently all ISO's made using the Windows 10 Bootable Media tool don;t work with RUFUS, but the built in RUFUS downloader worked every time. If you get errors while creating your Windows To Go drive in RUFUS, it's probably the ISO source itself.

spapakons · 25 Nov 2021

As I said in a previous post, upgrade usually fails if Setup tries to install new drivers and cannot. Before the upgrade I would update all drivers beforehand (if any new) and then make sure I select NOT to use Windows Update while upgrading. In the first screen there is a message "Choose how Windows handles updates" or similar. You click on that to reveal two choices, you select NOT to use Windows Update and then proceed to the next step. To be 100% sure I would also disconnect from the internet during upgrade (of course I always upgrade offline from the ISO, not using MCT).

There is another workaround for really tough cases. I would disconnect the hard disk of the target computer and connect it in another computer running VMWare Player or Workstation. The connection may be either internal (eg SATA) or via appropriate USB adapter. Then connect the physical disk on the Virtual Machine and boot it to load Windows. This is called computer virtualization. You can then upgrade Windows 10 by mounting the ISO and running the setup (in-place upgrade). Of course it is safer to also avoid any driver updates during installation. Then I would put the hard disk back to the target system which should boot in Windows 10 without any issue. Manually update any drivers if necessary (not from Windows Update). To be extra-extra sure, I would use the Windows Update Show/Hide Tool to hide (block) any driver updates.