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Experiment: Installing Windows 10 On a 7-Year-Old Acer Aspire One
jones_supa writes: Windows 10 will launch in less than a week and it is supposed to work flawlessly on devices already powered by Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, as Microsoft struggled to keep system requirements unchanged to make sure that everything runs smoothly. Device drivers all the way back to Windows Vista platform (WDDM 1.0) are supported. Softpedia performed a practical test to see how Windows 10 can run on a 7-year-old Acer Aspire One netbook powered by Intel Atom N450 processor clocked at 1.66 GHz, 1 GB of RAM, and a 320 GB mechanical hard disk. The result is surprising to say the least, as installation not only went impressively fast, but the operating system itself also works fast.
I wonder how much Microsoft paid to Dice in order to get this article placed here?
Why is this a surprise? Computers haven't changed significantly in the last 7 years. In fact it seems that the modern PC has peaked.
I have about the same netbook, and I've never used the Windows 7 that came with it, but want to put it back specifically so I can put Windows 10 on it to play with it. I lost the Clonezilla image I made of it years ago and am on the verge of ordering the backup media from the Acer website - I've come up empty on a WIndows 7 Starter ISO. I've loved my little Acer, I've had three bike wrecks with it, one of which my entire body weight went up and down the thing twice as I rolled over my backpack, not a scratch. I double the RAM from 1 to 2 GB the day I bought it and put an SSD in later. The SSD was incredible when it came to increasing the battery life and performance. I've told people it's the laptop Fischer-Price made, and I say it in a bragging manner, I still love my little netbook.
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That's some boot time!
Now if only OS X would was allowed to work on my 3 year old system which is more than powerful enough for it based on hacked installs, and if only all the software wasn't updated so it won't work on the last OS. Thanks Apple!
Meanwhile I can install Windows 10 on a 10 year old system and play a 16 year old game just fine. Boo Microsoft for being horrible people that don't give away your amazing product for free and don't have a penguin or a fruit as a logo.
Could you at least *try* to keep the blatant ads out of here? This is crass.
Can it run Crysis now too?
so much for that!
One time I installed windows on an old computer.
I have the upgrade waiting for my Acer netbook (same age, same hdwr), but after reading W10 won't dual boot with W7, I may not install W10. W7 is just as good as XP, I upgraded to W7 because work pc's are 7, and it was getting confusing having two OS to deal with. Maybe that's why there called 'confusers'.
BTW, when MSoft stops supporting and OS, it means they finally fixed everything with it.
If you install Windows from scratch on a PC it will always run faster than the previous version (especially if it's being running for 7 years, as in this case). The reason is because the way Windows works. Certain system files (user profile, registery, etc, etc) continuously get bigger and bigger, so as you use it for several years the system gets slower and slower. Installing a fresh version of Windows (regardless of which version) starts everything from scratch and makes it run a whole lot faster.
"Windows 10 will launch in less than a week"
If it won't launch in less than a day, I would say scrap the whole idea.
Trolling is a art,
After all, according to the universal laws of Star Trek movies and Windows releases, this one is guaranteed to be good.
you must look funny walking around with your head up your ass all the time.
My notebook has more CPU power and 2GB of RAM. Windows 10 Preview does about 5 minutes of hard drive thrashing after start up. After this the system works fairly well.
I may follow the same path. I use my old netbook as an emergency backup laptop. Mostly to take notes. Since it has a real keyboard, even if small, it is handy to have around. Great to know it can run a modern OS.
As long as we are testing old hardware.
So do many variants of Linux...what's the story here, that t do NOT work with 10hey actually bothered to ship "10" with a bunch of backwards-compatible drivers?
How much you bet that stuff that did NOT work with 7 and 8 will not work with 10?
Windows 10 could somehow run on older PCs? There is no Point in trying because of UEFI SecureBoot requirement since Windows 8 it simply can't be used.
This was one of the wilder ones, but for what purports to be a tech/nerd site Slashdot is strangely full of uninformed FUD about SecureBoot.
You make a compelling argument, good sir. I shall now switch to Linux. Thank you for showing me the light!
There is no UEFI SecureBoot requirement in Windows 8 or 10. At least I have been able to install to any kinds of machines just fine.
I have it on a Compaq C306US with 1 GB of RAM and a 1.73 GHz Celeron. It seemed impressive at first, but the daily Defender signature update brings the machine to its knees. Seriously, the mouse pointer will not even move, and when I was actually able to bring up Perfmon, CPU and disk were both at 100%. That's unusable. I guess the answer is to install another security package, but that's a serious WTF. In 2015, it would be nice if Microsoft had heard of I/O throttling.
The audio also doesn't work unless you disable it, then re-enable it in device manager. I reported this bug with every previous build to no avail.
I wouldn't complain, but Microsoft claimed that every Vista-capable PC could run Windows 10, and that appears to be false.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The interesting thing is that if you would like to run Linux on that puppy, you would have to turn off all animations and run some simple desktop like Xfce to make it run acceptably. It's pretty amazing that Windows can run as smoothly as Xfce, even with all bells and whistles turned on. It makes Windows quite attractive choice for slower computers.
We'll leave you alone in your basements while the rest of us go to work. By the way, your mom says there are openings at Burger King.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Windows 10 slower than Vista.
The SecureBoot requirement is for Windows Logo certification - it's not an installation requirement.
Sorry but you can't co-opt the knee-jerk "anti-windows" space as being "nerds". It's a highly specific class of particularly tiresome nerds. Many nerds run Win7 (and their spouses run Win8) so we are interested in Win10 now. Some of us get invited to parties too, where we'll be asked things like "what do you think of Win10" and we want to make a better response than "yah boo sucks Linux r00lz" because, you know, maybe it's a cute girl asking.
While your sitting in the basement watching porn all day while your mom works, buys you're Cheetos, and Mt Dew, you might as well upgrade Ubuntu while you're you are contributing to the reversal of society.
No "at least" about it. Windows 8 and 10 support secure boot but don't require it.
Windows 8 specifically requires that secure boot be optional in the BIOS for Windows Logo Certification. The only change for Windows 10 is that this requirement is no longer there leaving it up to the vendor to decide if they want to lock your PC down. However for Windows Logo Certification on Windows 10 there is a requirement that OEMs support SecureBoot and have it enabled out of the box.
Windows does not require it.
Windows will run even if you disable it.
The result is surprising to say the least, as installation not only went impressively fast but Windows 10 also works fast as long as you’re not launching a very demanding app such as Photoshop.
My wife's very same netbook runs GIMP, LibreOffice, Firefox and video player concurrently and well under SuSE 13.1
Oh, and under Win7 it takes ages to boot (you do have an antivirus, right?), so I will take the story with a grain of salt or two.
I replaced my windows 7 with an insider preview windows 10 (lenovo y560, 4GB ram, i5). Did it because the windows 7 started to be painfully slow (despite me not installing anything new on it for over a year). I used chocolatey to reinstall almost software. After all this, windows is pretty snappy (and returns from sleep without hogging my whole computer, which is something windows 7 did for some reason). I don't know about the driver compatibility. I had issues with my Atheros wireless driver for windows 7. I found another one from HP which was for windows 8.1.
There is no UEFI SecureBoot requirement in Windows 8 or 10. At least I have been able to install to any kinds of machines just fine.
The requirement has been for the "Designed for Windows [Version]" program, if you want to ship with the sticker, be an OEM partner and get the best pricing it's compulsory but it's not an install requirement. That would be stupid of Microsoft, since most pre-2012 machines wouldn't be able to update. Also for Win8 OEMs are required to give you a way to turn it off, for Win10 they're merely permitted. I'm sure some of them will be encouraged by Microsoft to disable it completely, to see if that'll draw anti-trust lawsuits. So not yet, but I bet it's coming soon....
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
you might as well upgrade Ubuntu while you're you are contributing to the reversal of society.
You mean upgrading to Windows 10 contributes to progress in society? Thanks. I understand you are in some call center helping terrified people with their nightmarish Windows 10 upgrades, in the name of progress.
I'd rather downgrade myself to barbarism....
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Upcoming article:
"Do you have an old computer which no longer can run Linux? Just install Windows 10 and make that old XP computer run as fast as in the ol' times when it was new."
If you think I'm trolling, let me say I wish I was. :-(
Windows does not provide power - it causes the consumption of power.
Granted, it is a little beefier specs-wise, but I have the Win 10 Pro 64-bit Preview installed on a Dell Inspiron 530 from mid-'07 and it is running great. It is a Core 2 Quad 6600 (2.4 GHz), has 6 GB DDR2 RAM, a 120 GB Crucial SSD (hacked BIOS re-enables AHCI that Dell removed), 1 TB WD Blue HDD and a 1 GB Radeon 6450.
It works fine, plays 1080p video with no issues but is loud and puts out a lot of heat (105 watt processor). I am looking forward to replacing it with an Intel NUC later this year when the Skylake models are released. About an 80% reduction in power consumption with better performance.
Wouldn't it imply that it tried hard and (at least partially) failed?
"Microsoft struggled to keep system requirements unchanged to make sure that everything runs smoothly"
vs
"Microsoft fought hard to keep system requirements unchanged to make sure that everything runs smoothly"
I read the tag 'portable' as potato. Very fitting for a seven year old netbook
...but can it run Windows XP?
Is it just me that feels that this isn't a win for Windows 10, but actually a degradation of Windows Vista/7 and - to some extent - 8 in terms of performance losses at those points?
I know that XP -> Vista and XP->7 felt like backward steps at times in terms of performance, and were accompanied by a similar ramp-up in terms of realistic minimum specs. It just seems that in 8 (which is as fast as 7, if not faster, as far as I can tell) and 10 are actually coming back to what they should always have been?
Just junk like Superfetch services and Windows Search - I feel if you were to optimise those more efficiently that they'd easily show a performance improvement. I know that disabling them certainly does (fun fact: Disabling Windows Search on Windows 8 stops you installing new keyboard languages!).
Windows 8 has been my last two mass deployments and, with a few third-party-cured interface problems, is just as good to the users as 7 was, but actually boots, resumes, etc. much faster. And the amount of sheer built-in hardware drivers is phenomenal. I no longer need several images to image dozens of types and models of computer, laptop, all-in-one, etc. just one image will do with maybe a tweak if something requires the very latest graphics drivers.
Windows 10 appears to be continuing this trend of a RETURN to performance, rather than performing miracles. Hardware hasn't got much faster since the Windows 7 days - maybe a core or two more, maybe a graphics card upgrade, but the base CPU/RAM/disk are pretty much in the same area.
I mean, it's good either way. But it shouldn't be shocking. Optimised versions of 7 were sold with netbooks for years, and their hardware was severely limited for a long time. It was just a matter of turning junk off.
My min spec of "Dual or-more-core anything with 4Gb RAM" has held for several years in a row now for business systems, and can be satisfied for a virtual pittance. Only very recently have I contemplated enhancing that to 8Gb of RAM and maybe an SSD as a luxury, but the rest is pretty static.
You are all cows. Cows say moo. MOOOOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOOOO! Moo cows MOOOOOOOO! Moo say the cows. YOU COWS!!
If they created a "Windows ready" desktop that is modular (looking at you Mac Pro)
The Mac Pro is plenty modular. Just plug in Thunderbolt modules.
If the Mac Pro didn't have it's flaw, was equipped with "Windows Ready" driver and costed 20%-30% less than the same PC with equivalent specs I would have took one hands down.
Then take one. A December 2013 story breaks down what it'd cost to build an equivalent Windows PC. Add the price of labor and support, and it might actually be 30 percent more than a comparable Mac Pro.
Was Windows Vista really that bad after Service Pack 1 "Mojave"?
daily Defender signature update brings the machine to its knees [...] Microsoft claimed that every Vista-capable PC could run Windows 10, and that appears to be false.
Does the daily Microsoft Security Essentials signature update on Windows Vista likewise monopolize I/O?
I don't see how big, ugly, flat colored boxes look good to anyone who is using a large monitor.
Then why did Microsoft add them to the Xbox 360 dashboard in the Metro update (December 2011)? Xbox 360 monitors are usually even bigger than PC monitors.
since the Starter Edition OA ISO is hard to find.
The confirmation email they sent me when I setup my account emailed my password back to me in plain text. Acer good-feelings: Gone.
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Get your driver models straight, WDM (win98/2000+) is the driver model for generic devices, U/K WDF sits on top of this. WDDM is only for display devices (new in Vista) and you also have NDIS for network and various other storport/miniport layers. A laptop that supports WDDM 1.0 only conveys information about the graphics hardware...
Strange, I've deployed two entire Windows 8 networks and not once had an UEFI boot option enabled.
In fact, in one case, I had to get the BIOS manufacturer to issue a new BIOS for two models of laptop that - when using non-UEFI boot on Windows 8 on encrypted disks refused to boot at all. It wasn't Windows 8 related, the boot process hung if a certain disk offset (corresponding to an empty flag on a whole-disk NTFS partition) wasn't zero. Kinda cocked up all encrypted disks, and any non-Windows install but was a BIOS problem (not even UEFI!) and was quickly patched when the prospect of returning an awful lot of hardware as "not fit for purpose" came up in discussions.
In fact, every machine I have that has UEFI - server or client - gets it disabled or, at absolutely minimum, pushed to the bottom of the boot options underneath "Legacy BIOS" or however they want to refer to it.
I can't see Windows 10 being any different but I could be wrong but... actually... that's not even OUT yet, so it's kind of a moot question at this point.
Windows 10 minimum requirements are basically a 1GHz processor and 1GB of RAM.
I have about a dozen D6XX machines that I was kind of hoping to throw Windows 10 on. But their video drivers are pre-WDDM so I guess I'm out of luck. Even getting 7 on the things was a minor nightmare.
....and this is why some people don't get laid. IJS.
Really, the knee-jerk reactions have gotten tired. Yeah, everybody makes jokes about other systems - Linux guys tell jokes about Windows and Mac, etc. But y'know what? They all have their place, and sometimes the cute girl actually, you know, is using Windows to run spreadsheets or databases to do legitimate, difficult work. Yeah, sometimes it'd be easier on Linux - or easier, anyhow, for anyone who's been doing LAMP for years and has some background - but if she can do her work on Windows (or Mac, or whatever), don't deride her choices, be glad that she's using computing resources to do something complex....we need every brain we can get working at full capacity these days. :-)
"Truth is what works" -- William James "It works!!" -- o-dark-AM comment
There is nothing more than "I installed Windows 10 on an old machine, it ran." written and called an "article."
It installed in about 15 minutes and it boots in less than 1 minute. Ok cool, but how did it feel to use? How was browsing and rendering video? Using a browser and email client at the same time? Playing browser games? How was it to actually use other than "Windows 10 also works fast as long as you’re not launching a very demanding app such as Photoshop."?
There is little information given, just that one line and a video..showing it booting up and nothing more.
I have an Acer Aspire 1551 which still works great but I ran into what may be a show stopper. In preparation for 10 I decided to wipe the drive which had 7 Pro on it and I haven't the code for. I had an extra copy of 8 Pro so i decided to load it up then migrate to 10 when it's released. Lo and behold I am no longer able to download drivers from Acer! F me. No, F Acer instead. No touch pad, no ethernet and no wifi either. In the forums Acer is treating this like a glitch, and perhaps it is, but the fact is drivers for many models have been unavailable for 2-3 weeks.
If Acer comes back with having to purchase a driver disk I see no other option than to make a vid of using the Aspire for 1000m target practice then post it to Youtube with an explanation of why this happened and how Acer is a bad company to hamstring customers.
I totally agree. Piss off with your Windows10 stories.
But even "locked down" is a misnomer, since several Linux flavors have their own codes for UEFI.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
work flawlessly on devices already powered by Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, as Microsoft struggled to keep system requirements unchanged to make sure that everything runs smoothly.
It amazes me that Windows 10 installs perfectly fine on older inexpensive PC's and laptops; however, it will not install "flawlessly" on 2 to 3 year old Alienware machines. To install, the user has to babysit the machine and perform hard restarts of the computer before Windows can soft boot during install.
To say the least, I am extremely disappointed in MS and Dell/Alienware. From what I have read, Dell/Alienware could release a simple BIOS update to combat the issue, but they refuse to do so.
I am running Windows 10, but I wonder how much better it would run if Microsoft and Dell would fix these boot issues.
I think "several Linux flavors " boils down to just Ubuntu and it's derivatives. That really constrains your boot options.
The laptop may go supernova or become a black hole because it's asked to provide much more power than it can handle
I think because Windows 10 is especially focused on many devices some with limited hardware, memory and storage. It should be no surprise that it works
well on older hardware as well. I have even noticed that with my HP Stream 11 a fairly new notebook/netbook with low end hardware. I bought it with Windows 8.1
and was tempted to install Ubuntu on it thinking it would be faster. Actually while I like that Ubuntu takes less storage space. But performance wise I think Windows 8.1 is better. Then I tried the Windows 10 preview as felt like I had installed a great low impact OS. Like a Puppy Linux or something.
I'm going to try Ubuntu 15.04 to see if things improve. But for me I can see how many PC's will benefit from Windows 10.
While old netbooks, P4's and C2d's can handle it just fine, some I5's can't go beyond 8.0 due to a kernel driver issue, Ms spent a while on the problem and then gave up.
I mostly know of the Asus models, the old Bamboo line can't do it. You can upgrade to Win8, but 8.1 will fail every time within seconds of pressing power. You get a bluescreen with a driver exception fault related to ACPI and the kernel and then it reboots and does it again. The silly part, you can get OSX to run on them.
My ASUS 1025C Netbook is three years old. I swapped the HD for a 256GB SSD; it cold boots Win7SE in 20 seconds, and shuts down in 5. There's a 2GB memory stick waiting on a shelf for it, but it runs MSWord, LibreOffice, VLC, and even SeaMonkey, just fine in 1GB (in no hurry to take it all apart again). Just not all at the same time, and don't open too many windows in SeaMonkey. It still does 12 honest hours on the battery. My desktop replacement also runs Win7 (and remove one screw to change memory or HD, unlike the Netbook).
Much of the non-open source software I use is deep in middle-age, as I reach back in that direction. As the computers and software run out the clock, I'm anticipating a natural transition to Apple and Linux, long before I'll invest in MS/Adobe again (30-years of MS is enough for me). Apple IOS 8.4 is beautiful now, and LinuxMint isn't far behind.
I'm just running out the MS/Adobe clock. I'm sure I'm not alone.
Insert free advert for MICROS~1
1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher drive
If the PSU fails, you have Apple replace it. If the logic board fails, you have Apple replace it.
I think Eloking's point is that Apple would charge substantially more for this replacement after the warranty expires than a retailer would charge for a PC motherboard or PSU that the end user installs.
So where can I buy these mythical Thunderbolt RAM modules then?
It'd be possible to make a Thunderbolt enclosure for DIMMs. For example, you could put a PCI-e RAM drive in a Thunderbolt card cage or a SATA RAM drive in a Thunderbolt SATA cage and then swap to it. In practice, no, I don't know who still makes these.
I installed it on 2 old machines and got no video on both.
My understanding is W10 is essentially tablet software and I'm not at all surprised that it performs well on lower end devices.
Would anyone agree?
I'd like to see a version of Windows that's NOT backward compatible, but instead written with clean code for current and future hardware/software. windows just keeps getting bigger and more bloated with every incarnation. perhaps it's time to stop trying to serve everyone and move forward. Those who choose to use older stuff can stick with and older OS.
It's after it starts installing updates (security fixes) is where things slow down.
The CPU is similar to a fast Pentium III but with two logical cores ; 1GB RAM is considered a good amount on smartphones/tablets in 2015 (but it's silly not to bump it to 2GB, and using browser tabs will fill it up) ; and the HDD is not very slow - a 320GB one is at least a 5400 rpm with mildly high density, not your father's laptop HDD.
This thing would have perhaps been a $5000 desktop back in about the year 2000 or 2001, with an SCSI HDD and all the latest hardware.
So, it's a good thing that a PC powerful enough to run some Photoshop, Quake 3, 3D graphics software or even some video editing can now run a damn OS and its GUI.
Windows 10 will launch in less than a week
I thought MS was supposed to be fixing those slow boot times.
been using the xp version for YEARs. so slow xp woulnt run well and even linux was slow. you wantme to believe that 10 is gonna work??
or at the least, download firefox using ftp.exe
I thought Mozilla removed releases from ftp.mozilla.org and disabled the FTP protocol on releases.mozilla.org. From messages that I get while logging in to ftp.mozilla.org anonymously:
"Attempts to download high traffic release files from this server will get a '550 Permission denied.' response." Yet you managed to download the ESR.
You hid a lot of the log with "(...)", including the part where you navigated within the pub directory. Did this "(...)" contain any "550 Permission denied." responses?
Perhaps downloading the ESR worked because apparently Mozilla doesn't consider ESRs to be "high traffic release files". So I guess you have to download the ESR (47 megs) and then use that to download the current version (another 47 megs or so).
Registry hack or Group Policy: it's up to you.
It's one of the minor annoyances, just like how UAC was for Windows Vista.
Can we also take a moment to mourn the demise of MS Hearts in Windows 10?
Damn you Microsoft and your Halo, Minecraft and Candy Crush. What happened to simple, addictive fun?
I hope someone takes the classic bundled Windows games (Hearts, Solitaire, Freecell, Minesweeper), and modify them only slightly so they can adjust to bigger resolution monitors, and make them run perfect on Windows 10, 32-bit or 64-bit. Make them available for download on an independent website, avoid the Microsoft app store.