Windows 7 GeekTieGuy Running Windows 7 RTM on REA

How previous? How about a laptop shipped in 2000, a Dell CPx H450GT:

Obviously this really is from prior to I commenced my latest job… One of the benefits of my present career is having the ability to verify soon after RTM that the Windows seven bits it is possible to acquire “out there” have not been messed with. Anyway, let’s see how it appears:

There’s no show driver for this system’s ancient ATI Rage Mobility M1, so it runs in normal 800*600. As a result the black frame inside the physical bezel. On to the desktop:

No sound driver, either. I think it is an ESS Maestro two or some thing. I haven’t actually spent a lot of time looking for drivers. This technique utilized a Xircom RBEM56G-100 multifunction Ethernet/Modem CardBus card for network connectivity, and while you can see there is also no driver for that (“x” more than the network icon inside the notification location.)
Okay. On to some technique specs:

A 450 Mhz Pentium III. 256 MB RAM. Effortlessly, Windows 7 wouldn’t generally install on one thing as low end as this, but you will find approaches all around that. They entail creating a bootable USB drive, copying the Windows 7 install files onto it and then messing just a little using a hex editor and winsetup.dll.
Now the most interesting part: true functionality from the system:

Not as well shabby. Only 28 processes and it is able to operate with 256 MB with 87 MB Obtainable. The processor curve seems to be rather regular as well. Brain you, this thing possibly will not be capable of run considerably else than a browser, but since I did not glimpse for network drivers I don’t have Internet accessibility from this program anyway.
Well,Windows 7, there you've got it. A very old laptop computer, operating Windows seven. Quite great. Fantastic job, Microsoft!
I was likely to attempt this on two other methods I've lying around (collecting dust) at the same time, but certainly one of them failed with the ACPI Cease error 0x000000A5 (0x0001000B, 0×50434146,…) which, after some digging, turned out to mean the BIOS on this technique didn’t follow the ACPI specs of the FACP table. More digging into the BIOS showed the length entry within the table (and the table length itself) is supposed to be longer than it is, although it actually is as long as the table entry says. The other technique is so old that it doesn’t have the ability to boot from USB, and the CD drive is unable to read CD-R discs, so it’s more trouble than it is worth. It’s only got a PII 400 MHz and 192 MB RAM, too. That would be genuinely intriguing to see running Windows seven.
So, maybe Windows seven actually can breathe new life into old hardware. This may be just a little extreme, but anything from within the last five years should probably do just fine. If it follows the ACPI specs and can boot from USB or CD/DVD, that is.
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Categories: Experiment, Hardware, Software, Windows seven
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