• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Oldest Windows version possible to run on Pentium D + 512mb RAM?

N

nyronium

New Member
Joined
Feb 4, 2023
Messages
5
Location
moon
I found a Pentium D and 512mb of ram at my local tech dumpster. Anyone know what is the oldest windows version i could run on these?
 
It depends how your hdd is currently formatted ... anything prior to Windows 95 OSR2 needs FAT16, Windows 95 OSR2 to XP can run on FAT32 and Windows NT, 2000, 7 and on run on NTFS (at least if I remember this correctly). I would guess if you have a Pentium D it will be either FAT32 or NTFS currently, but if you want to try an older version of Windows you will have to reformat to FAT16. With only 512MB of RAM you would struggle to run anything newer than XP anyway!
 
Last edited:
Depends on what you call "run". Windows 98 will certainly work, though you may not find all drivers for the hardware (same maybe with NT 4.0). Windows 95 will most likely fail to start, as it had issues with very fast CPUs. Windows 3.1 will again run fine, as it does not care much about the underlying hardware. Of course, you need a FAT16 partition for that.
 
It was a thing in the early 2000’s that some very large companies, especially financial institutions, clung obnoxiously hard to Windows NT 4.0, and because of that it’s *possible* to install it on some remarkably new hardware if you’re willing to go through a lot of agony slipstreaming drivers into custom installer scripts, etc. Because of this it may well be doable to get NT 4.0 running on a Pentium D in some capacity, especially if its board chipset is closely related to something used in servers. This would be the oldest Windows that’s likely to have any chance of running on it that can actually use both CPU cores. But it won’t be fun, either the process or the end result.

But really, it’s pretty pointless to install anything less than XP. Windows 2000 was a pretty short lived product and will actually have somewhat worse compatibility with older Win9x-era software, so even if you can cobble together the drivers it’s not worth the effort.
 
You could probably go pretty old--Windows 3.1 might well run with some tweaks. It all depends on the peripheral support required.

After all, your system should be able to boot DOS, right?
 
Sure, but it’s a Pentium D dual core CPU. Non-SMP OSes only get half points.

I’m sure any DOS based version of Windows could be convinced to run, at least at plain VGA screen resolutions. But if you want better graphics and sound, yeah, drivers are going to be an issue. It probably doesn’t have any ISA slots so the number of sound cards likely to work well with DOS can probably be enumerated on one hand, and likewise it’d be fun finding a video card with native drivers.

(I think there is a VESA driver for Win 3.x that might kinda work on newer cards? I’d warn that performance might suck compared to a native driver, but at 3ghz that’s probably not a worry, is it.)
 
Just taking the OP at his words: "Anyone know what is the oldest windows version i could run on these?"
Maybe you could even get Windows 1.0 to run on the thing.
 
In general, PCIe Socket 775 boards are hit-or-miss with pre-Windows 2000/XP. The last platform to truely support Windows 9x and weird things like DOS SoundBlaster emulation over PCI is the Intel 865 AGPSet.

I've installed Windows NT 4.0 on a Core2Duo E6700 with the SMP HAL. Board originally came with a Pentium D 820 and uses the Intel 965 chipset. For drivers, I used the UniATA driver for SATA support and the generic VBE drivers for video. The sound card I had installed already had native NT 4.0 drivers. I got USB working with a driver pack as well.

That same machine could run Windows 98SE with rloew's memory patch and AHCI SATA drivers. Both sound and video cards in the machine had native drivers. Windows 3.11 would work too with the generic VBE drivers. There is actually a Windows 3.1x HD Audio driver that works with some newer onboard soundcards, although I had no success with it (the author posts here). There are some PCI soundcards with native 3.1x drivers too.
 
krebizfan said:
Do you have access to the Visi-On patch for the AT? If it won't run on a 286, it won't run on much faster systems.
Click to expand...

Clearly unacceptable! ;)

Honestly I think a more ”interesting”, if ultimately depressing challenge, might be trying to figure out what the *newest* OS you can get running, however badly, on a Pentium D. It is the first (consumer) x86-64 dual core cpu from Intel and one of the few 64 bit Netburst-based CPUs. It kind of defines the trailing edge, outside some similarly ancient AMD CPUs, of what remotely qualifies as “Modern” today.
 
I routinely work on a "ancient" AMD CPU system (Socket AM3+, Phenom II X4). I'm debating about an FX CPU, but don't see any real advantage for what I do. (Don't do video editing, nor play games).

But then, I'm ancient. :) My work systems range all over the place.
 
Chuck(G) said:
I routinely work on a "ancient" AMD CPU system (Socket AM3+, Phenom II X4).
Click to expand...

That’s still about four years newer than the first Pentium D’s. Digging around it looks like Intel beat the Athlon 64 X2 to market by a couple weeks, so I guess it is officially the oldest consumer-grade dual-core X86-64. (Depending on which actual Pentium D revision it is.)

Anyway, from that digging it seems that the minimal chipset Intel recommended for these things was the 945-975 family, so if that comment about the 865 being the last chipset that worked well with DOS/Windows 9x is true then a Pentium D probably isn’t the optimal choice for some kind of retro-90’s gaming build.
 
ASRock made some boards with the Intel 865 chipset AND Socket 775 with BIOS support for things up to 65nm Core2Duo chips. They can easily run a Pentium D. The newer Core stuff works, but needs fast DDR memory, otherwise it is a bit bottlenecked. VIA one-upped that and sold a Socket 775 chipset that did both AGP and PCIe along with having both DDR and DDR2 memory slots.
 
njroadfan said:
ASRock made some boards with the Intel 865 chipset AND Socket 775 with BIOS support for things up to 65nm Core2Duo chips. They can easily run a Pentium D.
Click to expand...

Sure, these things exist, but if someone snatches a random Pentium D machine out of a dumpster it probably has a 900 series chipset, at least if it has a brand name on the box. Intel only guaranteed it would work with the newer chipsets.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
Sure, but it’s a Pentium D dual core CPU. Non-SMP OSes only get half points.

I’m sure any DOS based version of Windows could be convinced to run, at least at plain VGA screen resolutions. But if you want better graphics and sound, yeah, drivers are going to be an issue. It probably doesn’t have any ISA slots so the number of sound cards likely to work well with DOS can probably be enumerated on one hand, and likewise it’d be fun finding a video card with native drivers.

(I think there is a VESA driver for Win 3.x that might kinda work on newer cards? I’d warn that performance might suck compared to a native driver, but at 3ghz that’s probably not a worry, is it.)
Click to expand...

Windows 98SE/ME will run on a Pentium D, depending on the chipset used. SiS and VIA chipsets tend to have weird issues. As for video, entirely depends on what video card was used. "Intel Extreme Graphics" didn't support 9x for very long, so "there be dragons" if trying to get an Intel IGP to work.

Nvidia supported 9x up to the Geforce 6 series. The Geforce 6200 is probably the best and easiest card to get running, but there were some weird 6600 and 6800 AGP cards.

ATI only went up to the Radeon 9000 series on 9x, with beta drivers for the x300-x800 series cards.

As for VESA support, be warned that VESA modes get very broken on cards released after 2000. YMMV on the UniVBE driver. But no matter the CPU speed, it will always be slow, and things that rely on OpenGL and DirectX won't work right, or run at all.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top