Can Windows 11 Run on a 2006-Era Pentium 4 Chip? (pcmag.com) 58
"Microsoft has been mainly telling consumers that Windows 11 is meant for newer PCs," reports PC Magazine.
"However, an internet user has uploaded a video that shows the OS can actually run on a 15-year-old Pentium 4 chip from Intel." Last week, Twitter user "Carlos S.M." posted screenshots of his Pentium 4-powered PC running Windows 11. He then followed that up with a video and benchmarks to verify that his machine was running the one-core Pentium chip with only 4GB of DDR2 RAM.
To install the OS onto the system, Carlos S.M. said he used a Windows 10 PE Installer, which can be used to deploy or repair Windows via a USB drive. "Windows 11 is installed in MBR (Master Boot Record)/Legacy Boot mode, no EFI emulation involved," he added.
Of course, the OS runs a bit slow on the Pentium 4 chip. Nevertheless, it shows Windows 11 can easily run on decade-old hardware... Officially, Microsoft has said a PC must possess a newer security feature called TPM 2.0 in order to run Windows 11. To underscore the point, the company released a list of eligible CPUs, and the processors only go as far back as late 2017. However, the company has also quietly acknowledged that older PCs without TPM 2.0 can run Windows 11 — so long as the user decides to manually install the OS onto their machine...
If you do install Windows 11 on an unsupported PC, Microsoft warns your machine may not be eligible to receive automatic updates. But apparently Carlos S.M. has had no problems receiving updates for his own Pentium-powered PC. "Windows update still works on this machine and even installed the Patch Tuesday," Carlos S.M. said in a follow-up tweet.
Thanks to tlhIngan (Slashdot reader #30,335) for the tip!
"However, an internet user has uploaded a video that shows the OS can actually run on a 15-year-old Pentium 4 chip from Intel." Last week, Twitter user "Carlos S.M." posted screenshots of his Pentium 4-powered PC running Windows 11. He then followed that up with a video and benchmarks to verify that his machine was running the one-core Pentium chip with only 4GB of DDR2 RAM.
To install the OS onto the system, Carlos S.M. said he used a Windows 10 PE Installer, which can be used to deploy or repair Windows via a USB drive. "Windows 11 is installed in MBR (Master Boot Record)/Legacy Boot mode, no EFI emulation involved," he added.
Of course, the OS runs a bit slow on the Pentium 4 chip. Nevertheless, it shows Windows 11 can easily run on decade-old hardware... Officially, Microsoft has said a PC must possess a newer security feature called TPM 2.0 in order to run Windows 11. To underscore the point, the company released a list of eligible CPUs, and the processors only go as far back as late 2017. However, the company has also quietly acknowledged that older PCs without TPM 2.0 can run Windows 11 — so long as the user decides to manually install the OS onto their machine...
If you do install Windows 11 on an unsupported PC, Microsoft warns your machine may not be eligible to receive automatic updates. But apparently Carlos S.M. has had no problems receiving updates for his own Pentium-powered PC. "Windows update still works on this machine and even installed the Patch Tuesday," Carlos S.M. said in a follow-up tweet.
Thanks to tlhIngan (Slashdot reader #30,335) for the tip!
Appropriate name (Score:4, Interesting)
Carlos S.M. posted screenshots of his Pentium 4-powered PC running Windows 11
Installing that piece of ever-expending bloatware on an old computer really does sound like self-inflicted torture for fun.
Thank goodness! This chip shortage SUCKS. (Score:1)
So glad to hear Windows 11 will run on an old dumpster fire like a Pentium 4. I was afraid I might have to install Linux or trade-in a kidney.
Re:Appropriate name (Score:4, Funny)
Is there some reason you have the hots for creimer?
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The Pentium 4's weren't great, but they weren't terrible either. The real clunkers from that era with the Netburst-based Celerons. Intel compensated for the P4's insanely long pipeline by cramming in (for the time) a relatively large L2 cache and coming up with Hyperthreading. Both of which the contemporary Celerons lacked.
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I highly doubt it was the Pentium 4 capacitors that were swelling and leaking. I don't know of any CPU with electrolytic capacitors.
It may have been the motherboard capacitors that exhibited that trend though.
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Guess you missed the point.
It won't run. (Score:1)
Crawl, maybe. But not run.
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Indeed. I managed to install Windows 95 on a 486 with 4MB of RAM. A hogtied sloth in a vat of molasses partially sunk in quicksand ran quicker.
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Indeed. I managed to install Windows 95 on a 486 with 4MB of RAM. A hogtied sloth in a vat of molasses partially sunk in quicksand ran quicker.
Liar. That would be a powerful PC when Windows 95 was around.
Similar experience (Score:2)
Yes... and no. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, he coarced the core of Win11 to (barely) run on that machine, but most of the included software, and a growing number of 3rd party software will not run...
You see, Windows 8.x and 10 require support in the microprocessor for PAE, NX and SSE2, and
x86-64 CPUs must also support CMPXCHG16B, PrefetchW and LAHF/SAHF
Meanwhile, windows 11 requires all of the above, and also SSE 4.1, Second Level Address Translation (SLAT), either Intel VT-X2 with Extended Page Tables (EPT), or AMD-v with Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI), All I/O devices capable of DMA must be behind an IOMMU or SMMU. SSM Security Mitigations Tables, MemoryOverwriteRequestControlLock, all chipset drivers must be of the "windows driver" class (as opposed to the "Windows desktop driver" type) and a host of other requirement, beyond the dumbed down anouncements (after all, this is a "news for nerds" site Right?)
Win11 conveniently gives a toggle to ignore most of the checks, but that does not mean that an Application or SO utility coded for, say, SSE2 only will not fail on that machine.
As windows 7 (the last windows not to require SSE2) becomes a distant memory in 2023 when it really goes out of support, both MS and 3rd party developers will focus on developing for Win 8.x and up with no fallbacks for 7-64, Vista-64 or Xp-64.
Also, as some of the "excepted" Win11 machines (like some models of the surface studio) that lack "some" of those requirements go out of support (a-la apple), microsoft will be more confident in coding without exceptions, and force enable certain features and checks.
So, nice afternoon experiment, but it really "boots, but not runs", and the more time pases, the more broken it will become.
JM2C
YMMV
Re:Yes... and no. (Score:5, Funny)
[...] the more time pases, the more broken it will become.
In other words, it will provide the usual Windows experience.
Re: Yes... and no. (Score:3)
Yeah saying that version 1.0.0.1 runs fine and installed update 1.0.0.2 is completely absurd.
Windows 11 is still very very similar to Windows 10. The code based have only just barely begun to diverge. Microsoft is warning people who install Windows 11 that backward compatibility will not be a consideration for new features going forward. Maybe they'll want to run Xbox games in 13 months in a nested VM that requires more modern virtualization capabilities.
This is the same reason applications drop OS backwar
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The code might not change much from 1.0.0.1 to 1.0.0.2 but the compiler could change too.
The compiler will be set to generate code for the minimum officially supported cpu, so it's free to make use of the features present in that type of cpu. Wether the compiler actually uses newer instructions only supported by that cpu type or uses more generic instructions that older cpus also support depends on the compiler version as well as the source code being compiled.
You can try the same on Linux with a source bas
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And yet there are processors that support all the above (e.g. everything since Broadwell) but are not supported by Windows 11. At the same time, Windows 11 supports some Atom processors that do not support all of the above.
Just a happy coincidence that Intel no longer cares about the Atom market segment anyway.
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Microsoft + Intel + AMD + the mobo manufacturers (ASUS, Gigabyte, et al) decided for which boards + processors + chipsets they wanted to develop windows drivers (as opposed to windows desktop drivers) that could be used for win11.
Also, remember that my list, while more detailed than the dumbed down one, is in no way shape or form complete, or even exahustive, so, there may be even more requirements at play.
In particular, I think I've read, but could not re-find the doc, that Spectre and meltdown microcode p
No automatic updates? Nice! (Score:3)
If you do install Windows 11 on an unsupported PC, Microsoft warns your machine may not be eligible to receive automatic updates.
Sweet! How do we get this on modern hardware?
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If you have Pro or Enterprise version you can use group policy editor to clamp down the auto updates further so that none of the updates apply automatically.
Runs on EVERYTHING! (Score:2)
This is nothing. DOOM can run on more platforms than that.
Isn't the challenge to see who can get W11 (Score:2)
installed and working on the oldest PC?
Can you get the 3C503 card working?
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ISA slots are getting MIGHTY hard to find. Boy! 3C503 is going WAAY back...
Make up your mind already (Score:2)
Either it's easy or it's a bit slow.
In any case, at this point in time the problem is not usually the OS, it's the damn websites loaded with megabytes of scripts all spying on your activities and shoving ads in your face wether you want it or not.
old CPU = no forced updates? (Score:2)
does this trick work on windows 10? asking for a friend.
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If you're connecting via wifi, you can tell Windows 10 it's a "metered connection" so it wont automatically download updates. But if you connect via RJ45 or connect to another network it will resume downloading...
Can we talk about how Windows 10 was "The Last" (Score:2)
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Can we talk about how Windows 10 was "The Last" According to M$?
Yes we can. During the life of Win10, MS tried to change the requisites. As a matter of fact they did change them.
During the Life of Win10-32, minimum RAM changed from 1GB to 2GB (double), without the Win10 name changing.*
That led to mayhem in the Microsoft support channel (phone, chat, forums, you name it).
Microsoft learned from that experience and, with such a disruptive change in minimum requirements as we are witnessing, they opted to name it Win11 to make it evident for joe six pack and jane the plumbe
Doesn't matter (Score:1)
W11 is just spyware wrapped up in M$'s latest attempt at a user interface. I'm not installing it. It's crap, but, that won't matter because it'll sell like crazy.
What I want to see :) (Score:1)
I want to see it running on an emulated modern computer that is in turn running on something that pre-dates Windows 1.0.
Wait, did I say "run" I mean crawl.
OK, if that can't happen, how about this for a Rube Goldberg Science Project:
Emulate a slightly-modified version of a 1970s PC or sub-$50,000-in-1970s-dollars workstation or minicomputer on modern hardware. It doesn't have to be a PC, mainframe-class or high-performance-scientific-computing-class hardware is fine.
Then emulate a post-2017 PC on it.
As a co
An unintended benefit (Score:1)
Given Microsoft's history of delivering antifeatures as forced updates, this could be considered a feature, not a bug.
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Except the screenshots show that Windows 11 believes the Pentium 4 is a perfectly supported CPU and thus, updates work.
Updates (Score:2)
CU Updates most likely install okay, but feature updates (Aka W11 "22H2" that's due out next year) most likely will not, as it probably some the same checks the W10 >> W11 update process uses.
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should (Score:2)
If you are thinking of money, your time has value. Take all the cumulative hours you will wait for things to load and cost opportunity of not say managing your finances better instead.
If you are thinking of environment, modern hardware is much more power efficient, certainly if you get a compact laptop which is still vastly faster than P4 that you take to a reputable e-waste recycling center.
Of course fun or liking retro aesthetics are perfectly valid reasons for such things. I have a 17 inch MacBook Pro wi
Cool hack (Score:2)
But in practice, why?
Running Windows at all is irresponsible.
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irresponsible: a poor response to the (changing) attributes of one's environment
oblig. xkcd (Score:2)
You can run any software on any hardware, given enough time. [xkcd.com]
The real news here... (Score:2)
The real news here is that someone chooses to still have an operational Pentium 4 based system. Seriously, a Raspberry Pi probably has more computing power available, and runs on ~5W of power.
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When I took over the network here, I inherited a P4 system. It runs Linux and generates backups from key systems. Has been doing that for years. The generated backups test fine and are produced in a timely fashion. Even has it's own web-interface for easy inspections.
For some reason that machine simply refuses to die and as it does what it does reliably, there is not much need to replace it. Although that will have to happen in a year or so, because the 32-bit Linux server software it currently runs will be
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Any reason that thing can't be imaged and restored to a VM where it can share tenancy with other VMs? Save yourself some energy and hardware expense and just virtualize fully software functionality like taking backups - even if it's talking to a tape library or something, that can be made available to the VM in any hypervisor worth using.
At this point the energy being used by those thirsty Pentium 4s outspends the cost of running the exact same workload in a VM on modern hardware that is also doing other s