Windows 10: I have an old computer with 1GB being used by hardware

It's aimed at reducing memory in use, but I've never found that to be a problem. Memory management is a complex subject, and windows seems to do it quite well on its own. It doesn't matter if the memory usage looks high, Windows will use as much physical RAM as is available, but should release some as soon as a more demanding task comes along. I've not felt the need to try and mange the memory myself.

Disabling SuperFetch may (or may not) help. You'll have to experiment. Its design purpose is to speed up the PC, but sometimes it hinders more than it helps.

Enable or Disable SuperFetch in Windows

 

Beware Socket 939 and earlier AMD CPUs don't support all of the CPU features needed for 64 bit Windows 10. In this case you will need to use the 32 bit version which will limit you to 3GB usable RAM space for Windows. I just upgraded an old 2006 AMD PC to the latest version of Windows 10. I bought a really cheap SSD for the OS drive which drastically improved performance. See my recent thread Windows 10 on 2004 PC?

 

The issue of a 32 bit OS being unable to access all of 4GB RAM is an old one that comes up often. With a 32 bit client version of Windows, such as Windows 10, there is no solution. Because of the nature of the issue it seems doubtful there ever will be. The only real solution is a 64 bit OS and that isn't always an option.

A 32 bit client version of Windows has a 4 GB physical address space. But not all of this address space is available for RAM as it is shared with memory mapped hardware which must have priority. This feature makes possible fast communication between the CPU and the video system and other high performance devices. Very important. The address space lost to memory mapped devices is rarely less than .5 GB and is more typically about .75 GB and may be more. That leaves about 3.25 GB available for RAM. This will be further reduced if system RAM is used by the video system, a very common situation on low end computers. Having 3 GB available for RAM is not at all unusual and there is really nothing that will make a noticeable difference.

32 bit server versions of Windows did have a solution for this that made almost all of the 4 GB available. This involves remapping the otherwise inaccessible RAM to addresses above 4GB where they could be accessed by a PAE kernel. That assumes that this memory remapping is supported by the hardware and many older systems did not. But in a 32 bit client version of Windows it doesn't matter anyway. Prior to the release of XP SP2 Microsoft discovered that device drivers for some popular hardware behaved very badly in this environment. The adopted solution was to simply ignore all memory above the 4 GB mark.

I mention this because the PAE setting is often suggested as a solution to the limited RAM issue. It is not.

But in this case it seems likely that a shortage of RAM isn't the problem at all but is is actually due to a slow CPU. In such a case throwing more RAM at the problem won't help significantly.

A 64 bit OS may or may not make more RAM available. If memory remapping is not supported, and it often isn't on older systems, it will not. And the CPU in such older systems often do not support Windows 10. And if the problem is a slow CPU a 64 bit OS probably won't help but may in fact make it worse.

The only real solution to the performance problem is a newer computer.

 

Well appreciated your explained answer good sir ^^. By the way have you ever tried to use the same trick that I just mentioned to Bree previously?
How To Fix High Memory/RAM Usage In Windows 10 - YouTube
(Virtual memory)

Do you conclude the same opinion as Bree? or
Does that really makes any difference in either an old or newer system?

Would appreciate if you know anything about it.

 

Thanks Steve, I saw your other thread. And saw you had sometimes a problem it may be similar to the one my father computer have. Sometimes when either booting or restarting the system it gets into the Win10 logo loading and nothing more just happens. I do have to restart it and still doing so. When repeating it a couple of times then in Win10 logo says it's starting the "restoring tool". So once has been finished then it goes up to windows.

Is there some solution to this problem? I know this processor may not work 100% well with win10 because it's from windows XP ages so would appreciate if this have happened to you before with any old system. I was thinking it may be the bad power supply unit (because it's one of those generic around that times). The hard disk drive just have a couple of years , like 2 or 3 and it's 1 TeraByte space available.

Would appreciate a lot any info to solve this.

 

I've just updated two old AMD PCs to the latest version of Windows. My own PC has a socket 939 motherboard and the CPU does not support the requirements of Windows 10 64 bit. I've installed Windows 10 32 bit on that but bought a cheap SSD. The PC works fine for email, web browsing, word processing etc. The other AMD PC belongs to my father is a later Socket AM2 version. This does support 64 bit Windows 10 and installed it fine. I upgraded the memory to 3GB but it's actually slower than the other PC which is limited to 3GB but running on a SSD.

Both PCs had problems with the January update and hung on reboot after installing the update (which Windows Update shouldn't have installed). The AM2 based PC reverted following Automatic Repair. The older Socket 939 PC was unrecoverable but I installed a Reflect backup and all is now OK. I've blocked the offending upgrade until MS sort out their QA (what's new?). Both PCs are kept going in case our main PCs fail and partly to experiment how far Windows 10 can be pushed on old hardware.

 

Thanks Steve.
By the way I'm looking in this old PC again and tried to update Windows again and surprisingly I got hunged again in Win10 logo. It says couldn't install the update KB4056892 based on x86 systems, error 0x800f0845.

What could you recommend me at this case? Just disabling completely Windows updates in services or just blocking this particular update ? Through update historial says updated succesfully the 1709 version (I hope that's good for this old one).

Extra info:
Now remembering, this old computer had Windows 7 a couple of years ago and just remembered it hanged on a couple of times too in win7 logo.
Can't remember exactly if did exactly after windows updated just like this situation but it seems was like that. But was just a couple of times, maybe were like you said Steve, with a certain update which was trying to be installed on system or some of them, I can't remember that exactly).

 

I've blocked that update for now using the method in this tutorial Hide or Show Windows Updates in Windows 10