Question Upgrading kiosk from XP to Win10 (USB boot issue)

[Aolish]

Hello all, I could use some help on a really old Windows XP Kiosk that will not boot into a USB stick containing a Win10 image that was created with the Media Creation tool. Since the machine is so old it is seeing it as a SLAVE drive rather than the MASTER. Some of you might remember back in the old days we use to always have to move a jumper to designate which drive was a slave and which drive was a master. Since SSDs do not incorporate jumpers I'm not sure how to let the bios know that I want to set this as the MASTER since there is no jumper on SSDs. I've checked the bios and there doesn't seem to be a way in changing it through the software. Every time I try and boot, the computer doesn't detect a USB drive inserted into one of its USB ports. I just get an error saying there is no bootable media. I've checked the bios and the settings and things seem to be set correctly, the USB HDD is set to boot as first priority (the only other USB priority left is an option called USB FDD). Is this a slave/master problem or perhaps the Win10 bootable usb is to modern for this kiosk? Or perhaps I need to adjust another settings in the bios that I don't know about. Thanks for any help you guys can give.

 

[lantis3]

Don't waste your time, just buy a new/used mini PC/laptop on Amazon/Walmart/eBay, etc.

8GB RAM 256GB storage should be the minimum

 

[TheELF]

If you create the installation media on a modern system it will create it for uefi that an old system can't handle.
You would have to select create for a different system and see if you can select 32bit and mbr.
Or use rufus to do it.

You should show pics from the bios so that people can look at the available settings for the sata ssd drive, although as long as it shows up I don't think it has to be master to be bootable, master/slave was just a method to have two devices on the same cable.

And yeah win 10 is going to have a really hard time running on such an old system.

 

[mikeymikec]

While I am usually a fan of re-using old tech and upgrading it, I think if you have a computer that is so old that it still boots from IDE rather than SATA, then in my opinion you're going to run into more issues if you try to run a SSD and Win10 on that system.

For example, a computer from that era (we're very likely talking pre 2005) could have a poorly designed motherboard chipset that chokes when for example you give it a SATA II or III drive without using a drive jumper to downgrade it to SATA I (which normally there's no need to do this, if the board can only handle say SATA I and you connect a SATA III drive to it, it should automatically work at SATA I speeds). Ideally to use a SSD, the board should be able to work at SATA III speeds and can utilise AHCI rather than the older IDE protocol. Neither are a requirement btw.

If you really want to upgrade this PC: You can get Win10 on a DVD too. As TheElf said, I'd go with the 32-bit version of Windows 10 if I were you, you want to have at least 2GB RAM, 3GB would be better. I have Win10 build 1803 in an ISO file small enough to go on a 4GB DVD, then have it update via Windows update to the latest build. If the board can handle more than 4GB RAM, then maybe the 64-bit version of Win10 would be a better choice.

 

[tcsenter]

I don't think this would have anything to do with master or slave. It's the boot record/partition of the USB flash drive that is for newer BIOS specifications. You'll need to create a USB flash drive using Rufus or some other utility like YUMI to experiment with using an alternative (i.e. very legacy) boot record/image for the boot sector or partition on the USB flash drive. e.g. DOS, FDD emulation, etc. No I don't have enough knowledge to guide you.

 

[Aolish]

It looks like using a 32-bit version of Win10 solved the issue, the system detects the USB stick now, but now I'm running into another snag where the computer will eventually blue screen into a irql_not_less_or_equal. Anyone can clear this up? Thanks.

 

[mikeymikec]

Has Win10 successfully been installed at this point? Have you installed any drivers yet? That BSOD is often but not exclusively caused by drivers. If Win10 is installed, Nirsoft's BlueScreenView might cite a particular driver.

I wouldn't expect to need to install any drivers for an old system with common hardware, and also it's not common to find drivers for Win10 for hardware from the XP era.

 

[BadThad]

You told us nothing about the hardware specs. There's no way Windows 10 is going to run if it's super ancient hardware. I agree with mikec here.

May I ask why you're even trying this?