I done it again!

[TechnoMage]

I had a spare 120 GB SSD that I wanted to put someplace where it could make an improvement.
So I took a deep breath, and went to work, extracting the old Toshiba 160 GB spinner out of my Acer Aspire ONE, Netbook.
The HD is down inside, mounted to the bottom of the motherboard, and not easy to get to.
An hour later, I had the SSD installed inside the Netbook, and fired it up, and it even ran. Voila! And I only had three screws left over.
Then I gave it a fresh install of Windows 8.1/Pro/x86 and it's running a lot faster today than it did with its original 160 GB spinner.

So now, what to do with a 160 GB Toshiba spinner (HD) with Windows 8.1/Pro/x86 already installed on it?
I unplugged the SSD in my Main desktop PC and plugged in the little spinner. I hit the GO switch and watched for sparks and smoke.
Well, that didn't happen. But it did humm a little, then I got a message on the screen that Windows 8.1/Pro/32 was setting itself up.
It was the same series of messages that one gets during a normal 8.1 install. (I've never had any OS that would do that, before.)
I didn't have to go fishing for my driver disks either. 8.1 installed all the drivers I needed for all my hardware, even my Epson printer,
and my NVIDEA video card.
That little Toshiba spinner performed a lot better in my Mini Mainframe (Mid-Tower Case, Desktop) Computer, than it did in that little Netbook with only 1.5 GB of RAM. My Desktop PC has 8 GB of RAM, and a 6-Core, AMD CPU. After mounting that little spinner in an adapter frame, and sticking it into a drive bay, I noticed that now I've got seven drives in my desktop PC (Pac-Man, Mid-Tower, Case).
All that happened between supper and bedtime! Just another day in the life of a retired computer tech.

Happy Thanksgiving!
TM

 

[Teeotsa]

Now, if someone could come up with a way to run Windows 11 on a 32 bit cpu, they could make a fortune.

Sorry, not gonna happen 32bit machines useless anyways, no?

 

[TechnoMage]

How could they be useless, when they ran the world for decades, and are still in use every day, in business and industry.
I currently have 12 computers, and half of them are 32 bit machines.
Those all run Windows 8.1/Pro/32. And run it very well, thank you.

 

[TechnoMage]

I can't believe how little action this forum is getting these days. Where have all the 8.1 users gone?

My latest escapade is to transplant an OS from another almost identical PC to this one, when this one started having problems.
I could no longer do a System Restore. And I did not have a Backup Image file old enough to correct the problem.
So, I made an image off of my other (twin) PC and restored it to this one.
My Data was never in jeopardy, since I don't store it on my C: drive.

There were only a few little things that I to change, like my printer drivers and email program.

So today I'm running on the OS that only a few days ago was running on a different PC.

Which OS, you may well ask? Well, it happens to be Windows 11/Pro/64. And, I did not get it from MS.

Cheers mates,
TM

 

[spapakons]

As far as I know 32-bit only CPUs are either Intel Pentium 4 socket 478 (or earlier) or Intel Atom netbooks/tablets. The former lack the required NX/PAE feature to run Windows 8/8.1 or 10 32-bit, but you can hack the kernel to run Windows 8/8.1 32-bit. Only problem is that each major update that replaces the patched system files will render the system unbootable, unless you patch the files again. Atom 32-bit can run 8/8.1 or 10 32-bit, I have a tablet HP Stream7 which originally run Windows 8 32-bit and I have now installed Windows 10 32-bit 22H2. The only drawback is the slow speed due to only 1GB RAM. I have disabled almost all visual effects to make it faster, but it still need some patience to use it.

 

[TechnoMage]

In the last post, I see only Intel cpu's being mentioned. What happened to AMD? I've bought nothing but AMD Cpu's since the 286 days. I do have several PC's with various Intel chips in them, but they were Given to me, as junk, and I certainly did not pay for them.

In post #18 above, I mentioned the 8GB of DDR3 ram. Initially it ran OK, but just recently that PC stated acting really weird.
So, I ran old reliable Memtest86+, and lo and behold one of those ram stick tested BAD. What was Not surprising to me, is that the name on that ram was "Kingston". I never go out of my way to use Kingston ram, because I've had a lot of problems with it in the past. SO, now, all that Kingston ram is GONE, and that ram has been replaced with ram that I've used in the past and know to be GOOD. It's not a matched pair, (two 4GB sticks) but it's the same speed and seems to work OK together.
And it's on a PC that I never push hard, so it should last me.

 

[TechnoMage]

Back at it again!
I used to do weekly dumster diving, behind a computer shop, and I wound up with several old Dell laptops, deemed too old to repair.
One is a Dell Latitude D820, and it has a 64 bit capable motherboard and CPU. It's been running Windows 8.1/Pro/32 for several years.
Just out of curiosity, I wanted to see if it would run Windows 11/Pro/64.
So I cloned my main PC's SSD to a spare SSD that I had on hand, and put that SSD in the old Dell. On boot, it gave me several Please Wait messages, etc. etc. etc, and finally rebooted and came up running Windows 11, like it had always been there. VOILA!

Who would of ever thunk it? The Bios on the old Dell laptop has a mfg date of 2008. Originally it came out with Windows XP installed.
Besides installing a new 120GB SSD in the Dell, I also doubled the ram, from just one GB to Two GB.
With all the crap removed from Win-11, it runs very well on that really OLD PC. It's at least 15 years old.

 

[TechnoMage]

And again!
I found in my collection, another pretty old Dell Latitude 131L, Laptop, that definitely will not run any 64 bit OS, even though when I run "System", it says the laptop has a "x64 -based processor". They lied! That cpu is an AMD Sempron 3500+, or so it seems. If the cpu is 64 bit compatible, the BIOS is not!
So, I'm in the process of locating an ISO for Windows 10/Pro/x86. And I'm in hopes that the old Dell will run that OS.

 

[spapakons]

Back at it again!
I used to do weekly dumster diving, behind a computer shop, and I wound up with several old Dell laptops, deemed too old to repair.
One is a Dell Latitude D820, and it has a 64 bit capable motherboard and CPU. It's been running Windows 8.1/Pro/32 for several years.
Just out of curiosity, I wanted to see if it would run Windows 11/Pro/64.
So I cloned my main PC's SSD to a spare SSD that I had on hand, and put that SSD in the old Dell. On boot, it gave me several Please Wait messages, etc. etc. etc, and finally rebooted and came up running Windows 11, like it had always been there. VOILA!

Who would of ever thunk it? The Bios on the old Dell laptop has a mfg date of 2008. Originally it came out with Windows XP installed.
Besides installing a new 120GB SSD in the Dell, I also doubled the ram, from just one GB to Two GB.
With all the crap removed from Win-11, it runs very well on that really OLD PC. It's at least 15 years old.

Yes, I have seen many users dumping an old computer because they think it is useless. Just add an SSD, install a Windows 10 or 11, make it lighter and you have a good computer. My test laptop is a 2006 era Acer Extensa with mobile Intel dual core CPU, 4GB RAM, SSD 250GB, Intel 945G graphics and I have tested all Windows versions from XP to 11. Because 11 can see more RAM than Windows 10 32-bit, it is actually faster with 11!

 

[spapakons]

And again!
I found in my collection, another pretty old Dell Latitude 131L, Laptop, that definitely will not run any 64 bit OS, even though when I run "System", it says the laptop has a "x64 -based processor". They lied! That cpu is an AMD Sempron 3500+, or so it seems. If the cpu is 64 bit compatible, the BIOS is not!
So, I'm in the process of locating an ISO for Windows 10/Pro/x86. And I'm in hopes that the old Dell will run that OS.

I had once a Compaq laptop with a first generation AMD 64 CPU. This could take Windows XP x64, Windows Vista and 7 64-bit, but not Windows 8 64-bit or higher due to lack of the required instructions in the CPU. The most modern you could install on it was Windows 10 32-bit. It worked with Windows Vista 32-bit drivers, not even Windows 7 drivers were available, that old! I am not sure if your Sempron lacks the same instructions to run Windows 8+ 64-bit. In that case go for Windows 10 32-bit. You won't regret it.