Pentium 4 and Windows 8 compatibility

By mikee286
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mikee286

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I am trying to get windows 8 release preview installed on an old rig which is a p4 2.66 ghz 1gb ram 200gb hdd and geforce fx5500 video. however windows 8 setup (small program you download from ms) says the processor is not compatible with windows 8. Did they jack up the requirements further than whats on their site or what is happening here?

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mikee286

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it was the upgrade assistant that told me it wasn't compatible. I would try installing it with a flash drive and see what happens but the computer doesn't support booting from usb I dont think and I don't have any blank dvds

(edit)

32bit says cpu not compatible

c'mon MS you jacked up the requirements too much I heard it doesnt even have aero anymore and they go and make the requirement too high I mean tablets haven't even broke the 2ghz mark yet so I don't see how there will be any win 8 tablets

sorry just a rant but this is such a fail on microsofts part

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theyarecomingforyou

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While your computer should technically support Windows 8 it has to be said that your system is woefully underpowered and simply won't give you a good computing experience, regardless of the performance improvements made since Windows 7. Even as a secondary system it's not worth it.

I wish you luck in trying to fix your issue but it's probably best you don't bother.

Grand Master

theyarecomingforyou

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c'mon MS you jacked up the requirements too much I heard it doesnt even have aero anymore and they go and make the requirement too high I mean tablets haven't even broke the 2ghz mark yet so I don't see how there will be any win 8 tablets

Microsoft has stated the system requirements will be the same as Windows 7, which means a minimum CPU speed of 1GHz. Regardless, you fail to take into account that most tablets will be using dual or quad core processors - many with hyper-threading - and their architectures perform a lot more actions per cycle than your dated Pentium 4. A modern tablet will easily outperform your system, at a fraction of the power and size. Further, it's immature and unhelpful to refer to Microsoft as 'M$', which was pass? over a decade ago.

Is it possible that the warning about your processor relates to the adviser itself and not to Windows 8's minimum requirements?

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rfirth

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^^ i didnt even get to that part the adviser before setup even began said processor not compatible. It has to be a glitch or this is the most bloated version of windows to date

It has nothing to do with processor speed. There are additional processor technologies that your processor does not support.

Your processor doesn't support:

Physical Address Extension (PAE), No Execute Bit (NX), Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 (SSE2)...

Windows 8 isn't bloated. Your processor is simply really really old.

http://ark.intel.com/products/27444/Intel-Pentium-4-Processor-2_66-GHz-512K-Cache-533-MHz-FSB

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theyarecomingforyou

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fx5500 - you mean NVIDIA FX 5500? Like that really old thing that is older than history itself? Is that thing even supported on Windows 7?

According to the nVidia website, no. Even so it was one of the first DX9 cards and didn't even fully support the specification. However, that won't stop Windows 7 or Windows 8 from running - it simply means they won't be able to run Aero / hardware accelerated rendering. I have installed Windows 8 on a laptop that doesn't meet the minimum graphics requirements and for the most part - aside from being a bit sluggish - you don't even notice; however, you can't run the new Solitaire (lol). As I said, although it may technically run it's certainly not recommended.

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subcld

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^^ i didnt even get to that part the adviser before setup even began said processor not compatible. It has to be a glitch or this is the most bloated version of windows to date

ignore the adviser as i said burn iso to dvd and install it if you want

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+InsaneNutter MVC

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It's a 10 year old CPU (released in August 2002) and you're surprised it won't work with a modern operating system? A 10 year old machine should not even be attempting to run today's software.

To be fair it could probably handle most daily tasks fine, Office 2010 would run perfectly on it. A P4 2.66 is not amazing compared to what we have today, however for a general Office / Internet PC i dont see anything wrong with it. Heck add a new ish cheap-o graphics card it could play blu-ray's fine.

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+Frank B. Subscriber²

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There's a whitepaper from MS explaining the CPU support requirements in Windows 8: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/hh975398.aspx

Simply put, forget installing Win8 on a P4 system without support for the NX bit.

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Phemo

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I agree, it probably is still moderately capable of many tasks, but I certainly wouldn't expect it to cope with much more than basics and I don't see why there's any surprise that a modern OS appears to be incompatible with it. There comes a time when support for old hardware must end in order to progress.

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Mike Frett

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He's looking for help and all you guys do is come in here and tell him to upgrade, or bash him for no other reason other than to satisfy your own supremacy. None of you ever give thought to maybe he has low income. I would tell him to just use XP, for Windows. But then you guys would come in and bash about a great and not even unsupported (yet) OS.

So he is dammed if he does and dammed if he doesn't. Here is your advice OP: Roll Linux on that rig, Lubuntu to be exact, It's going to do everything you need for that particular machine and it's Modern. You will not have to feel forced to upgrade every time Microsoft tells you to upgrade. For others: Don't bother posting if all you have to contribute is to make the OP feel low and satisfy your need to be a Troll, and I'm not coming back to read abusive comments projected at me, if you got something bad to say about me, meet me somewhere.

Hope you get that system running to your expectations OP.

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Quillz

Posted
Posted

it was the upgrade assistant that told me it wasn't compatible. I would try installing it with a flash drive and see what happens but the computer doesn't support booting from usb I dont think and I don't have any blank dvds

(edit)

32bit says cpu not compatible

c'mon MS you jacked up the requirements too much I heard it doesnt even have aero anymore and they go and make the requirement too high I mean tablets haven't even broke the 2ghz mark yet so I don't see how there will be any win 8 tablets

sorry just a rant but this is such a fail on microsofts part

The old "Aero Glass" theme is no longer being made default, or it might not be included entirely anymore, I'm not sure. But all the hardware acceleration is still there in Win8. That hasn't changed since Vista.

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ArialBlue

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To be fair it could probably handle most daily tasks fine, Office 2010 would run perfectly on it. A P4 2.66 is not amazing compared to what we have today, however for a general Office / Internet PC i dont see anything wrong with it. Heck add a new ish cheap-o graphics card it could play blu-ray's fine.

Yep.

OP's problem is not as much perceivable performance of the CPU, but what CPU can do. Old Atom netbooks for example are single core and slower if used by old applications for example, but they support WAY past SSE2 and they support HyperThreading and thus can outperform his CPU in applications which utilize SSE2+ and are properly multithreaded.

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grayscale

Posted
Posted

Leave your PC at the curb for some crack head bums to play around with the parts. You can get a modern PC for like $100.

He's looking for help and all you guys do is come in here and tell him to upgrade, or bash him for no other reason other than to satisfy your own supremacy. None of you ever give thought to maybe he has low income. I would tell him to just use XP, for Windows. But then you guys would come in and bash about a great and not even unsupported (yet) OS.

So he is dammed if he does and dammed if he doesn't. Here is your advice OP: Roll Linux on that rig, Lubuntu to be exact, It's going to do everything you need for that particular machine and it's Modern. You will not have to feel forced to upgrade every time Microsoft tells you to upgrade. For others: Don't bother posting if all you have to contribute is to make the OP feel low and satisfy your need to be a Troll, and I'm not coming back to read abusive comments projected at me, if you got something bad to say about me, meet me somewhere.

Hope you get that system running to your expectations OP.

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