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Question Windows 10 on a 14+ year old system

Turbonium

Turbonium

Platinum Member
So I'm strongly considering a fresh install of Windows 10 Pro on a Dell Vostro 1400, as an upgrade from Vista.

The system will be virtually maxed out in terms of hardware (Core 2 Duo T9500, 4 GB RAM), so I'm not too worried about performance. What I am worried about, however, is possible compatibility/driver issues.

Where specific drivers aren't available, will default Windows 10 drivers give me basic functionality (video, sound, etc.)? And will the integrated graphics (Intel X3100) be a problem in general?

Keep in mind I'm planning on using the system for fairly basic stuff.
 
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Long time, no see.

Anyways, I've never installed Win10 on anything quite THAT old, though I have installed it on a couple of Core2Quad Q9300 rigs. I think that the OS itself proper should run OK, with 4GB of RAM and a 64-bit capable CPU.

As for drives, for my Q9300 rigs, they were desktops with P35 chipsets, so they needed a discrete GPU regardless. Your situation, if you have Intel X3100 graphics, I don't think that Windows 10 specifically supports that, even Sandy Bridge iGPUs are barely supported, so that goes back even further in the stack. However, even if unsupported, it should show up as "MS Basic VGA Display Adapter", and at least, allow you to use Windows on it. It may not perform that well, and things like Skype may not work well with it, as well as full-screen YouTube playback, as all display updating and scaling would be done in software on the drivers, rather than on the hardware, and with a CPU that old (compared to modern rigs), there may not be that much CPU to go around.

Given that, and the minimal amount of RAM (4GB is minimal these days, on craptops, although probably maxed-up on your motherboard), I would try to limit my multi-tasking usage, and limit the number of tabs on your browser to 10-12 or so. Maybe use Firefox rather than Chrome. (Or vice-versa, haven't tested it.)

Hopefully you have an SSD for the OS drive, as that will make things more bearable, especially if you bump up against the physical RAM limit and have to spill over to the pagefile.

Edit: You could try manually force-installing the Win7 64-bit video driver in Win10, some people have success doing something like that for "unsupported" video chipsets in Win10.

Edit: But yeah, anything is basically better than Vista. Be aware that you won't be able to do an in-place upgrade between Vista and Win10, you'll need to make a system backup, and then do a fresh format + fresh install of Win10, and then re-install your programs, and then restore / re-copy your data files back.
 
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Also be aware of the 4GB RAM == no audio in 64-bit Windows with Conexant audio chipset drives issue. You'll have to use MSConfig to limit boot base RAM to 3GB, in order to have working audio in the OS. But then you'll lose 1GB of usable RAM. Tradeoffs...
 
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VirtualLarry said:
Hopefully you have an SSD for the OS drive, as that will make things more bearable, especially if you bump up against the physical RAM limit and have to spill over to the pagefile.
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I do not. WD Scorpio Black instead.

VirtualLarry said:
Edit: But yeah, anything is basically better than Vista.
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Why?

The main reason I'm "upgrading" is because Vista isn't supported by MS anymore (I can't even update Vista over Windows Update at this point). I find the OS itself is fine, though (apparent vulnerabilities and unsupported software aside).

VirtualLarry said:
Also be aware of the 4GB RAM == no audio in 64-bit Windows with Conexant audio chipset drives issue. You'll have to use MSConfig to limit boot base RAM to 3GB, in order to have working audio in the OS. But then you'll lose 1GB of usable RAM. Tradeoffs...
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The system has a SigmaTel audio chip, though I figure that's the same thing as Conexant.
 
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Posting this from a fresh install of Windows 10 Pro 64-bit on a Vostro 1400 (currently with only 2 GB of RAM). Everything (including graphics and sound) seem to be running smoothly thus far. 😀

Sure, the performance isn't the greatest, but I wasn't expecting it to be (and it can only get better once I upgrade the RAM to 4 GB).

Insert_Nickname said:
Is there a particular reason for this? I don't think a system that old is worth the licence key you'll need.
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Because I wanted to.
 
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Turbonium said:
Probably a wise decision.

Truth be told, I'm stuck using this system for the time being. And I wasn't about to keep using Vista on a system I use the Internet with.

But yeah, I also just wanted to.
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Just FYI, Linux is usually always an option as well, if you need up-to-date code running on older hardware to access the general internet. Linux Mint is a very full-featured desktop-oriented distro too.
 
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VirtualLarry said:
Just FYI, Linux is usually always an option as well, if you need up-to-date code running on older hardware to access the general internet. Linux Mint is a very full-featured desktop-oriented distro too.
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I know about Linux (and have some experience with it); I just felt like going the Windows route this time around, however.
 
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Oof. Windows 10 on a HDD sucks enough, I'd be trying something like puppy linux on that hardware. I imaged 3 ivy bridge desktops with HDDs today and it took several hours just to run the last two months' windows and office updates.
 
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CropDuster said:
Oof. Windows 10 on a HDD sucks enough, I'd be trying something like puppy linux on that hardware. I imaged 3 ivy bridge desktops with HDDs today and it took several hours just to run the last two months' windows and office updates.
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I was speaking with a friend earlier tonight, his relative has a laptop with a HDD in it, he wanted to do a Windows Upgrade ("Feature Update"), to 20H2. I told him, be aware that it may take 2-3 or 4 hours.

Didn't help that the PC only had 4GB of RAM in it, and he was already at 4.2GB committed VM just doing WU.

WU and VM/pagefile thrashing? No thanks!

This is one reason why I spec out most of the PCs that I build (desktops) with 16GB of RAM and SSDs. Windows Update can be brutal on lesser PCs.
 
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My mother is still running my old Q6600 system and I updated it to Windows 10. It had 2x2GB memory but I was able to find 2 more identical sticks of RAM for $24 on ebay for a total of 8GB RAM. I really need to upgrade the HDD to one of my old SSDs.
 
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VirtualLarry said:
Also be aware of the 4GB RAM == no audio in 64-bit Windows with Conexant audio chipset drives issue. You'll have to use MSConfig to limit boot base RAM to 3GB, in order to have working audio in the OS. But then you'll lose 1GB of usable RAM. Tradeoffs...
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Can you provide more info, or a link, to this? And what about if I'm running 2 GB of RAM?

(I've found that audio has been working through the 3.5 mm jacks, but not through the speakers.)
 
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I agree, a light Linux distro would be more suited for this older system. Still, upgrading it with a good SSD and more RAM is a good move.
 
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