A Windows 10 and older hardware experience

[Ron Shurtz]

Warning!
The following is a verbose account of a dead Windows 10 system I experienced.
Read at your own risk of boredom. (:|

On March 18, 2018, my oldest computer died and would not boot.
It was an Intel DG35EC (LGA775) MB with a Xeon X3360 @ 2.83GHz CPU running Windows 10 Pro 64 bit.

Booting the computer would lock up almost immediately.
I thought maybe I had fried my poor CPU running it 24/7 at 100%.
Popping the case and inspecting the innards, I could see that two capacitors had bulging tops and one of them had some brown leakage from the top.
The fans and peripherals all appeared to be powering up and running but blown Caps are never a good sign.

OK, so the MB is wonky
I went shopping for a replacement MB.
I found an exact replacement for $51.44 including shipping.
It came with a Core2 Duo CPU, heatsink and fan, and 2 - 2GB sticks of DDR2 RAM.
Time for the swap.

I replaced the Core2 Duo with my X3360, hooked everything back up and hit the power switch. [-O<
The computer made it to the first black screen and locked up.
AARRGG!!! x-(
I swapped out power supplies.
I swapped out RAM sticks.
I unplugged all peripherals except the keyboard, mouse and SSD.
No change in behavior.

Then during one of the boot attempts, the black screen displayed the message "Error Loading Operating System".
It didn't say a bootable device was not found, just that it could not load the OS.

OK, so Windows 10 is corrupted.
It wouldn't go far enough for the Auto Repair to kick in, so a web search said to download the latest Media Creation Tool and make a bootable Windows 10 setup disk and repair the drive from it.

I did so and created a bootable DVD, and a bootable USB drive.
Neither would boot on the machine with the replacement MB.
Other USBs and DVDs would boot but not the Windows 10 images I created.
They would hang immediately upon displaying the blue Windows logo after the first few seconds.

OK, so my downloaded ISO files may have been corrupted during the trip over the net.
I tried several more fresh attempts at creating a bootable image before I realized I should test them on a different machine.
I did and they all booted fine and started up the installation and/or repair process.

I removed the SSD drive and added it to another PC as a secondary drive.
I ran offline chkdsk, SFC, DISM on the drive and they all said everything is fine.
I could browse the drive and see all of the files.

While testing the boot ability of the machine with the replaced MB, I had thrown in a Windows 7 DVD, it had booted fine. So I gave up getting my Windows 10 install back up and running and decided to make it a Win 7 machine.
I kept the Windows 10 SSD and threw in another SSD. I installed and updated Windows 7 on it.
Now that I had an OS, just for the heck of it, I put the Windows 10 media in the drive and saw that I could read it so I fired up the Setup.exe file.
The Windows 10 update/installation started and I got through several screens before it stopped saying that Windows 10 is not compatible with my CPU because it did not support the "CompareExchange128" instruction.

Strange, I had updated from Win 7 64bit to Win 10 64bit on that machine in January of 2016 during the initial free update period. It has been running on that processor fine for over 2 years going through the major Anniversary and Creators updates.

All I can guess is that an update to the machine's OS, and the newly downloaded image installations now require an instruction my MB/BIOS combination does not support.
Apparently, the bootable media encountered this issue but locked up at the initial blue Windows logo before it could say so. :-?

Back to the web.
I checked for and found an update for the MB BIOS.
I downloaded it and installed it.
I put the Win 10 SSD back in and booted it up.
The Windows Automatic Repair started to run.
It ran for an hour and 45 minutes and then rebooted back to the blue Windows logo and after awhile started the rotating dots.
After 35 minutes of rotating dots, "Getting Devices", and "Getting Ready", it came up to the Windows 10 initial screen with the date and time on it.
I was able to log in, but it is running V E R Y S L O W L Y.
(Another 30 minutes to get the icons on the screen. It's still starting background apps.)
Maybe it will be better after a restart once it finally comes up
Unless I figure something out, it looks like it's going to have to be a Win 7 machine.
(That's what several of you have said all along is a better way to go.)

From what I can tell, the original MB was still working despite the failing capacitors.
(Of course, I was very close to needing a MB replacement anyway.)
I believe it was Windows requiring newer hardware out of the blue that was the issue. :-??

If so, "Thanks Microsoft" for the lack of warning and all the time I spent messing with this. ~X(

Moral: My fault for expecting newer software technology to run properly on older hardware.

[Al]

Wow! Quite a day for you huh? I hate days like that. In all honesty, I think you'll be happier with the Win 7. I have Win 10 on 2 laptops, one because that's what it came installed with and the other because I made the mistake of taking advantage of the free upgrade. I tried to reverse it on the 2nd laptop because I didn't like it and found that after the reversal process I could no longer access any of my media files. To get my media back I had to reinstall Win 10.

You also might want to consider Linux Mint. It's a lot like windows, but is much faster on older systems because it doesn't suffer from the Windows bloat. You can run it off of a thumb drive to try it out before committing to an install. Just an idea.

[Ron Shurtz]

You also might want to consider Linus Mint. It's a lot like windows, but is much faster on older systems because it doesn't suffer from the Windows bloat. You can run it off of a thumb drive to try it out before committing to an install. Just an idea.

At this point I'm ready to try anything that works.
I might give it a try in a day or two after I recover my patience from working with this mess. :D

[purplecfh]

I once had an old setup that no matter what windows version you used it would not install from the thumb drive, a CD worked fine, linux did like the thumb drive though. Sometimes hardware is a fickle mistress 😂

[zombie67]

Linux seems to have better support for old hardware, in general. And it's a much lighter OS, so it doesn't bog down the slower CPUs as much, or use as much RAM.

[Ron Shurtz]

I think I found out what is slowing down the processing.
Heat! DUH!
The Intel MB uses a stock heatsink that is attached by spreading a split post through a hole in the MB by sliding another post down the center of it to expand it.
These plastic post catches yield over time and heat and no longer hold the heatsink tight to the CPU.
It's like trying to level a four legged stool. One leg will not stay on the floor. Three of the legs define a plane that the other doesn't want to live in.
One of the four posts is always being pulled slightly out of the MB by the other three and therefore I'm not getting full contact of the heatsink plate on the CPU.

My idle temps are now around 68°C to 71°C.
Full 100% CPU utilization is 83°C to 92°C depending on the app running.
At those temps, the computer occasionally locks up.

I don't want to spend very much on cooling this old dog and I'm going to try a screw down option that fits the existing LGA775 MB holes.

I'm looking at this one.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAE3064J8041

Hopefully, 26 dB is not too noisy.

It can't be noisier than the cheep one that came with the replacement MB:
Runs 5000 RPM @ 100% duty cycle
Moves only 15 CFM @ 100% duty cycle
With a noise level of 50 dBA

It sounds like a jet plane taking off with no let up.

[zombie67]

I hate those attach methods. :mad: I refuse to use them, and will always replace them with one that uses another method.

[Ron Shurtz]

The replacement MB and LGA775 screw down CPU cooler are working great.
Full 100% CPU utilization temps are running about 65°C to 68°C with a quiet fan.
The machine is very happy with Windows 7 and very responsive.
It's an old dog but running like a pup now.

I haven't found a processor it will run that is rated Windows 10 compatible nor have I figured out why Win 10 suddenly stopped being compatible with it.
It's now a Win 7 machine.
I did download Mint and played with it a little from the DVD.
I'm not messing with this box anymore before the Pentathlon.
(If it's not broke, don't fix it.)

[Al]

The replacement MB and LGA775 screw down CPU cooler are working great.
Full 100% CPU utilization temps are running about 65°C to 68°C with a quiet fan.
The machine is very happy with Windows 7 and very responsive.
It's an old dog but running like a pup now.

I haven't found a processor it will run that is rated Windows 10 compatible nor have I figured out why Win 10 suddenly stopped being compatible with it.
It's now a Win 7 machine.
I did download Mint and played with it a little from the DVD.
I'm not messing with this box anymore before the Pentathlon.
(If it's not broke, don't fix it.)
Probably a good idea. Discretion is the better....yada yada. Glad you're up and running again.