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Upgraded this machine to W10 for my Son over the weekend. The specs on this machine are a P4 531/3GHZ processor with the ATI Radeon Express 200 onboard graphics. This machine originally had Windows XP Media Center Edition installed and has progressed up to W10.
While the upgrade went smoothly with the 32bit Media Creation Tool, there was one bottleneck. While the onboard graphics was good enough for XP, it just wasn't working well with W10. So, I installed an Nvidia GeForce GT620 that has been collecting dust and this alone changed the machine into a very usable machine.
While some of these machines can be upgraded one may have to install other hardware to make the W10 upgrade work well. Yes, I know some of these machines will not even have a graphics card slot and in that case I would seriously question if an upgrade to W10 is feasible.
Before I call it a night I would like to do an update on this eMachine's progress. I know I will probably get a "I told you so" but anyway one lives and learns.
This machine had a very slow startup time of over 4 minutes with W10 so I rolled back to W8.1 and it had a even slower startup time of over 5 minutes. After doing a few posts with DCT members and trying and blaming different things, I finally did something right.
This machine had an old 250GB Pata/Eide drive installed. I finally was able to put my hands on a 500GB Sata drive and I cloned W8.1 to this drive and use it for the boot drive. Bingo, startup time now is 48 seconds. Will try to reinstall W10 tomorrow.
This machine ran on the hardware that was already installed, being the onboard graphics and the Pata/Idie HDD and the 300W PSU, but to truly benefit from the W10 upgrade, other hardware needs to be installed, etc. Graphics Card, Sata HDD, Ram if it is below 1Gig and PSU if it is below 300W.
In our throw away society I doubt if many will attempt this upgrade but I am not the throw away type and will try to make it work.
Their are some very knowledgeable people hear at DCT that would be very willing to help someone if you do decide to upgrade an older PC. Daniel.
I find that on older machines adding a GPU makes a big difference, even if it's only a 256 or 512Mb card because you're not having to share the memory.
Upgrading and squeezing every last drop out of older machines is what I do for a living, although the machines I'm putting together nowadays are usually nothing less than a dual core/ddr 2 configuration.
Argentina may be a basket case economically, but its people know from bitter experience to never throw stuff away and more to the point, repair stuff.
It seems it's rubbed off on me, which is no bad thing of course.
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dandl
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