Best version of windows for older hardware (2008 era)

I have a couple of machines there that need a spring clean, a core2duo 3ghz and a athlon II at 2.8ghz (or thereabouts), both of em have 4gig of ram, only the core2duo has an additional 1g gfx card.

They were both running windows 7 when I got em, I wiped the core2duo and installed win10, which runs OK, but considering the machines are permanently offline and will only ever need to run office, some whiteboard software and VLC, are there some better options?

I know someone will say linux, but it needs to be used by women, so it has to be windars.

I just repaired a very old laptop for a friend, got it working, completely wiped it, fresh windows 7 install, ran like dog shit, no matter how much tweaking.

Put a Windows 7 version of Windows XP on it and he's made up with it lol.

Is a small SSD out of the question? 64/128Gb SSD's are pretty cheap these days and will totally transform an old system.

Not sure what you have available over there but as OC says you can get 120GB drives for £24.99 delivered here atm https://www.mymemory.co.uk/integral-...e-560mb-s.html

If they are offline machines and win 10 is running ok then I don't see why not to use that but you may find some drivers are tricky to find so maybe just stick to Windows 7, maybe even consider something like Win 7 Lite (I haven't tried this myself):

Spoiler:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baW80wImOIc

any upgrades would come out of my pocket...so no upgrades are gonna happen.

I can just stick with 10, I don't think 7 performs better although I am guessing the 7 that was on these machines wasn't the lite version.

I just downloaded a copy of windows 8.1, which I read is very efficient (I must have forgot this ever existed) and I'll go find a 7 lite, too, it's not a big deal to try em myself I guess.

Another option I remember from back in the day, use nLite to trim down a Windows XP installation. Only catch is if you get ruthless you might have a nice and fast system but find out you removed something that is actually needed.

Another similar idea is WinFLP. This was a version of XP that was officially trimmed by Microsoft and only ever given out to very large customers.

Windows FLP mentioned by Over carl, plus other older versions of Windows are available here in case you want to try them.

Windows fundamentals but it’s discontinued I think.

Offline or not i would try and spec up to run win x, it will run better than win 7 does on same hardware. Anything older or cut down/lite might be more ball ache.

What are the pcs used for? Linux might be a better option. (Eh Tombott;)


DJ OD

Vista ;)

Windows 7 then go into control panel and change the settings so that its set for est performance, it wll reduce the gfx down a bit but runs great on even older machines

cool, loads of options here.

I got a bunch of downloads last night, Win8.1, Win8.1 lite, Win7, win10 lite and something else I forgot. Theres a few ultralite versions too, but i couldn't find a working t0rrent

I've just finished trying the lite version of 10 since it was the first to download and speed wise it works reasonably well and boots into windows in about 50 seconds. But it has some weird issues when the start menu shortcuts don't work unless you open the menu a second time and the touch screen doesn't work unless the drawing app is loaded (which makes it useless in the classrooms), I'll keep trying.

My master plan is to take a PC home from work each week and give them a fresh install with just the basics on em, at the moment, some run 10, some run 7 and some run XP and they're all a fucking horrendous mess of old files and shitty chinese media players that come loaded with bloatware so I am aiming to find an OS that will work on the lowest spec so they're all pretty much the same from the users perspective.

There are a few specific lite versions of Windows XP and 7 here, the ones i've tried all seem to have seeds, i will try some of these on any older laptops i get in for repair.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Over Carl

Another option I remember from back in the day, use nLite to trim down a Windows XP installation.

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Wow that's a blast from the past! I used to love nLite for making custom XP installs.

Try windows xp black edition.... available from most popular file sites.

Had this on an older machine, very minimal install and very quick.

Not braving XP yet as it'll be impossible to explain to the gimps at work why I am using it, but I tried 8lite and found it no better than 10lite. I tried the same version of 10 lite on a different machine with totally different hardware and the same issues were there, so I'm gonna get a slightly older version of 10 lite and see if that resolves those issues. Although its not zippy fast, the simple interface is perfect for the projectors the machines will end up being used on.

How does the 10lite stack up against 10 performance wise?

Maybe have a go at stripping your own verison? https://www.ntlite.com/


DJ OD

I threw 10 lite v5 on the machine just before I took it back to work earlier and the bug with the menus in v6 wasn't there, when i tried it at work, the other bugs with the touch screen were also not happening so I am calling that a success. I really wanted to find the perfect version as even the lite version of 10 is paging the HDD quite a lot but my boss was happy enough when she saw it running.

Gonna let the teachers use it over the weekend and see if there's any complaints.

10 lite, to my untrained eye seemed a bit faster than the standard version, but the best thing about it was the lack of installed crap. The program menu scrolls for screens on a standard 10 install, on lite there's only about 12 entries and for a classroom, that's perfect.