Windows 10: Let's run Win10 on really really old hardware

Glad to see my thread is still alive. Keep up the fun work.

 

Hello! In fact I had some applications I didn't like to reinstall, so I upgraded from Vista to 7 and then used the Windows 10 ISO to go straight to Windows 10 without having to do the upgrade to Windows 7 SP1 and all the other updates. You can download the ISO from Microsoft Tech Bench. It goes from plain Windows 7 (no SP1) or from Windows 8 directly to Windows 10 without having to do all the Windows updates. To make sure the old DVD-ROM won't fail and screw the process, I copied all Windows 10 ISO files in a folder C:\W10SETUP and run setup from there. When asked I chose upgrade. Yes it took hours, but I didn't mind since that is my test laptop, not my regular laptop. Most drivers are Vista 32-bit and installed manually from Device Manager (I avoid running the setup as it might not work and lose time).

 

Hello, I coming here to ask if the bypass of NX is updated for windows 10?
I have an old Celeron III 700MHz and 512mb of sdram.
I have also an Sempron 2600+ (Thoroughbred) with 1GB of DDR.
The both computer doesn't support SSE2 and NX but I want to try to install it Windows 10 on whatever build, I eared that some first realese of windows 10 entreprise technical preview can be runned on CPU without SSE2 and NX.
And if it's really impossible to install windows 10 on these computer I will try to install the lowest demanding linux and emulate W10.
Thanks for reply

 

Hello!

I haven't checked recently if there is any updated version of the tools for Windows 10. I tried to use the tools for Windows 8 and didn't have much success. There is a step that you patch winload.exe so it disables the signature checking, but I got an error when trying to patch it and could not complete all the steps. Nevertheless, it worked, I was able to boot into Windows 10 desktop and use it like it was Windows 7. The only problem is that in EVERY computer restart I get an error message that winload.exe has invalid digital signature (or similar) and I can only boot in the Advanced Startup Options screen where I can select to Disable driver signature enforcement and finally see the desktop in Test Mode (with the relevant watermark at bottom right). I tried many things to make Windows 10 automatically boot in test mode without success. Every single time I had to choose the Advanced Startup Options and then the Disable drivers signature enforcement to boot into Windows and this is not convenient.

However, if you wish to try read all the details at the following link. You have to register to access all content:

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/thr...l=1#post771750

I followed the instructions at post #114. Needless to say that if you find newer versions of the patch tools that work with Windows 10, please share it here!

If you succeed let us know, but of course patching the kernel doesn't count as installing Windows 10 to an old computer. *Wink

WARNING: Most likely Windows Update will restore the original system files and undo the patch. To be able to boot into Windows 10 again, have the Windows 7 DVD-ROM handy and the patching tool so you can redo the patch (for details see the above link). I had the patching tool copied to the root of my hard disk for easy access. To re-patch all I had to do was to boot into Windows 7 DVD-ROM and access to the command line prompt to run the patch tool from.

 

That command doesn't work to force disable drivers snignature enforcement?

bcdedit -set loadoptions DISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS Press ENTER
bcdedit -set TESTSIGNING ON

If I remember well the patch of winload cannot be realized because all of TP before 2015 doesn't have winload.exe, and if I remember well again only TP of W10 entreprise/business before 2015 can work without SSE2 or it doesn't create problem? , I'm all right?
But I can't tell you if it's true because old iso were not available.

 

If I remember correctly I did the test with the first RTM version, build 10240, and no I tried these commands and other stuff to force Windows 10 to always boot in test mode without asking, but never succeeded. If I could succeed then there is a utility which removes the watermark and that's it. But alas, I could not make Windows 10 load in test mode automatically no matter what I did. I had to boot in Advanced Startup Options and select 7 (disable driver signature enforcement) at every restart, which was not convenient and I would not certainly make my father do that every time.

 

Win10 will never work on your Intel Celeron 3 CPU no matter what you do because it does NOT meet the CPU speed requirement for Win10; you need to upgrade/replace that 700Mhz Celeron CPU with at least a 1.0Ghz (1000Mhz) CPU or higher. Upgrade your hardware, not Windows 10.

Only the "Dothan" series of Intel Pentium Ms (like the 780 which was also used on my relative's Dell Laititude D410 laptop) had SSE2, PAE & NX support. The CPUs were 32bit/x86 only so only a 32bit edition of Win10 could be used on there.

 

Well, this thread isn't supposed to be about utility, its supposed to be a challenge. For utility, there are plenty of other lighter OSs.

 

With a Celeron or Pentium III under 1GHz, forget Windows 8/8.1 or 10. You can only install Windows 7 but it will be very slow and unusable. I had installed once Windows 7 32-bit on such system with 384MB RAM because I wanted to find out what is the truly minimum hardware to install Windows 7 (see my 1st April post in this thread) but it is very slow and can't be used. Things can be better if you have at least an AGP graphics card with DirectX 9 support so you can install Windows XP drivers (XPDM) and have some little acceleration. If you have anything less or you install the Standard VGA graphics adapter (software rendering only) it's too slow you would consider doing a hara-kiri!

My advise: in such old system stick with Windows XP as long as it can be usable, before becoming totally obsolete as Windows 95 and 98. Then buy a new computer! Install Windows 7 on anything with at least 1GHz CPU and 512MB or more RAM, and let Windows 8/8.1 and 10 for computers that satisfy the minimum requirements without having to hack the kernel. Also before installing Windows 8/8.1 and 10 make sure you have at least Vista drivers for the graphics card (WDDM), otherwise you are stuck with Microsoft Basic Display Adapter (software rendering only) and this will cut at least 30% of the speed of your computer! In Windows 7 32-bit you can at least install Windows XP drivers (XPDM) and have some hardware acceleration. XPDM drivers are not supported in Windows 8/8.1 and 10.

Unless you want to be disappointed and eventually format or smash your PC, please follow my advice!

PS: Installing Linux and then Windows 10 in virtual machine will NOT work because Windows 10 will check the CPU and find out it is not compliant. Even if you fake the CPU specs (not sure if you can do that in virtualization) it will be even slower than installing Windows 10 directly, so much more useless! I would install Windows XP or 7 and then find and install a Windows 10 skin, if you want 10 too badly.

 

Would this count?

Optiplex 745 Tower





System Specs

 

This is not exactly old, yet. It is a socket 775 quad core Intel Processor. Still very fast and usable. So I'm afraid is not a surprise to run Windows 10 in that and doesn't qualify as an "old" hardware (yet). In fact in the Computer Store I work at, we sell Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad PCs as REF (Refurbished) at much reasonable price as buying current technology (socket 1150 or 1151). Any PC with an Intel socket 775 dual core CPU or AMD equivalent supports Windows 8 and 10 without any problem. So it is not worthwhile mentioning at this thread. Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

A for effort but doesn't really count. Like spapakons said, a Core2 Quad isn't really old and is a very capable CPU even today.

Old would be something that's 32bit only or first gen 64bit AMD.