Running 2000/XP and Vista, 7, and 8 on a 486!

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WinPC

Running 2000/XP and Vista, 7, and 8 on a 486!

Post by WinPC »

Hello everyone, here.

As ridiculous as it sounds ( :P ), the purpose of this topic is to provide my results for testing versions of Windows from the RTM release of Windows 2000 to the present on a 486! Seems like a far-fetched concept, right? Well, perhaps not quite...

Some people have successfully installed Windows 2000 on old 486 systems, but not so the very similar Windows XP! Apparently, from what they can tell, Windows XP will not even install, because of an error in Setup relating to two factors, one relating to CPUID. However, as far as I know, one of the .INF files can be edited to allow for installation on a 486, either that, or the text mode installation can be replaced with the last one to allow for installation on a 486, although I am NOT guarenteeing that it will work, and that there aren't other factors that could prevent Windows XP from booting.

However, I am going to do it a bit differently from other people here, and that is that I am going to gradually move up to the RTM releases of versions of Windows from Windows XP to present from the earlier pre-release builds (in other words, testing pre-release builds first, until finally arriving at the RTM build).

As for Windows Vista and Windows 7, I may have to use emulators to achieve this (if they will even support those operating systems), just to provide emulation for Pentium II processors, because I have heard that neither version of Windows will run on anything below the 686 generation (in other words, if it will even work, I will try to install them in an emulator running on a 486 system).

Finally, remember that this is experimental. I am not guarenteeing that any of this will necessarily work. On the one hand, it could be a complete success, on the other hand, it could be a complete flop. Who knows, perhaps one thing will work but one thing won't work.

Until I finally get around to attempting this, I'll be providing links to information, videos, and screenshots of other people and their similar projects and achievements.

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Re: Running 2000/XP and Vista, 7, and 8 on a 486!

Post by Blackvista »

Good and interesting idea. I hope you succeed.
blackvista

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Re: Running 2000/XP and Vista, 7, and 8 on a 486!

Post by ViennaXP »

For those who are interested in this, you should check this out: http://winhistory.de/more/386/winq.htm
On this website various members (well i am also there) are trying to install Windows on a very low System. Obivously this site is in German, but you don't need any german to check it out.
For a quick translation for those who want to check this out:
Schöpfer = Who did it
CPU and RAM should be clear
einfache Installation? = easy installation?
Startzeit = Time to boot it up

I think the best thing they done was Windows XP on 8 MHz, i watched it via livestream ... that was a load
Tower PC: Windows 8 x64 with Media Center, I forgot the specs
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Re: Running 2000/XP and Vista, 7, and 8 on a 486!

Post by ViennaXP »

compgeke wrote:Here, this might help you:
http://www.winhistory.de/more/386/winq.htm
I already posted this...look one post above you :P
Tower PC: Windows 8 x64 with Media Center, I forgot the specs
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Re: Running 2000/XP and Vista, 7, and 8 on a 486!

Post by compgeke »

eek! I wasn't paying attention, I'll go remove it.

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Re: Running 2000/XP and Vista, 7, and 8 on a 486!

Post by Rob Jansen »

Windows 8 will certainly fail, since it requires ACPI 2.0, which isn't found on an 486.

BTW, are certainly completing this? Since we are still waiting on your Windows 8 review and some other project.

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Re: Running 2000/XP and Vista, 7, and 8 on a 486!

Post by Jens »

WinPC, interesting experiments you're planning. But expect them to be very time-consuming. Back in the OSBA days I installed Whistler #2202 on my 486DX50 laptop with 12 MB RAM. Took about 20 minutes to start up, if I remember correctly.

WinPC

Re: Running 2000/XP and Vista, 7, and 8 on a 486!

Post by WinPC »

Windows Whistler (NT 5.01.2211):

External link: http://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewto ... =6&t=26472
Brand and model: QEMU emulated setup
CPU: 486
RAM: 64 MB
Video card: VGA ISA card
Sound card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16
Floppy disk drive: N/A
Hard drive: 1.5 GB (FAT)
CD-ROM: N/A

Result: Successful

Image
Last edited by WinPC on Wed Nov 07, 2012 9:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Running 2000/XP and Vista, 7, and 8 on a 486!

Post by Wheatley »

I'm pretty sure that Windows 8 will not be able to work unless you get into some serious kernel-level hacking. It requires nx-bit support from the cpu. Heck, I can't even run 8 on my pentium 4 1,8 Ghz, no matter what I tried.
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Re: Running 2000/XP and Vista, 7, and 8 on a 486!

Post by 3155ffGd »

Vista needs an ACPI system, which is a problem. This is why the lowest that has been managed so far is an AMD K5.

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Re: Running 2000/XP and Vista, 7, and 8 on a 486!

Post by WinPC »

Well, as I said, I am not guaranteeing that it will necessarily work, I'm just doing this as an experiment. Just saying that even if I couldn't install it on the actual hardware, I could still try installing it from within an emulator running on a 486 system, just to see if that will work (although it would basically turn a 486 into a very slow 686-class system, but still).

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Re: Running 2000/XP and Vista, 7, and 8 on a 486!

Post by CaveJohnson »

Very neat concept! Let me know how it goes ( if it goes ) on Vista.
Image

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Re: Running 2000/XP and Vista, 7, and 8 on a 486!

Post by Wheatley »

Offtopic Comment
Well... There is a other cave johnson here. :o Let's hope that I don't get banned because of that. Last thing I wanted to do is to have a similar name to another user.
Windows Defender for great justice! Bugs are an international trading company. I need to defeat the anti-debugging and obfuscation methods. It wasn't for Intel's absurd ability to load in ie6. Why even waste time with people in an envelope?

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Re: Running 2000/XP and Vista, 7, and 8 on a 486!

Post by zhoushiyi213 »

WinPC wrote:Well, as I said, I am not guaranteeing that it will necessarily work, I'm just doing this as an experiment. Just saying that even if I couldn't install it on the actual hardware, I could still try installing it from within an emulator running on a 486 system, just to see if that will work (although it would basically turn a 486 into a very slow 686-class system, but still).
Well, Windows Vista requres at least 512MB memory (which is also the requirement of the PE 3.0 installation), and after it's installed it will use at least 7 GB harddisk space. Windows 7 & 8 requires no less. I'm wondering how it can be possible to install it inside an emulator on 486 system; computers with 486 processor definitely don't have that much memory or harddisk capacity.
Maybe you need a modified verison of windows 6.x, like things that nlite makes. Is there such a tool for Windows Vista or 7?

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Re: Running 2000/XP and Vista, 7, and 8 on a 486!

Post by maxtorix »

WinPC you can use winsetup.dll hacked file to bypass ram checking and creating of system reserved partition of Vista/7/8
For WinPE 3 scenario you can use WINPE 2 or maybe WinPE 1 with imagex build 7600 copied in boot.wim\windows\system32 and directly deployment method.
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WinPC

Re: Running 2000/XP and Vista, 7, and 8 on a 486!

Post by WinPC »

Even if I had to use an emulator, I might still be able to emulate the extra RAM, but I'm not sure at the moment. Anyway, first things first, I'm going to start out with Windows 2000 and XP before moving on to anything more recent than that.

Even though Windows 8 normally requires support for the NX bit, a workaround would be to use the Developer Preview or Consumer Preview rather than the Release Preview or RTM to run it on a system that otherwise wouldn't be capable of running Windows 8 itself, since those earlier releases don't require support for PAE/NX.

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Re: Running 2000/XP and Vista, 7, and 8 on a 486!

Post by pl0ppy »

From Vista onwards is where you'll start to have problems. But, if you find a fix for XP RTM to work on a 486, try starting from the early Longhorn builds, but many people will say it is not really Vista unless it is post Omega-13 reset. That is where it will be hard. The same workaround in XP/Longhorn-pre4093 probably won't work in Vista builds.

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Re: Running 2000/XP and Vista, 7, and 8 on a 486!

Post by ian_hawdon »

I would love to see how this turns out. I remember having no end of grief trying to install Windows XP on a Pentium II 500MHz about 7 or 8 years ago. To this day, I have no idea why it wouldn't install, but in the end I settled on Windows 98 SE (Though, now I think of it, Windows 2000 would have been a better choice).

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