Windows 10 windows 10 and older pc

Peterr

Fantastic Member
Hello
My lap and desk top are almost alike yet the lap accepted the upgrade from 7 to 10 well; the desktop hangs randomly and has mouse issues. I even did a clean installation. I changed mice and all the remedial steps.
I have done all the diagnostics I can even running the Dell dx program -clean.
It seems the desktop does not have "guts" or drivers for 10. Dell does not support 10 drivers for this XPS 8300.

Question, if I reinstalled Win 7 that the desktop came with and then updated all the BIOS etc. because Dell recognizes it as 7 not 10, then upgraded or imaged to 10 would that help or is that not advisable.
Would it provide more support for 10 if 7 was beefed up?

I hate to regress. All was well with 7,8, and 8.1.
 
if it won't take 10 now then its not going to take it later... I would put it back to 7 and leave it there.
 
I won't be redundant; I just thought by changing the A3 to A11 and updating drivers would make the guts of the machine more capable then I could move to 10. I do have current image. I guess i am driver short.
Thank you for saving me a lot of time and hassle. 7 is so slow and defenseless compared to 10 which I love. I'll stick with 10 till I get another machine. Actually the mouse sticks only occasionally and the system hangs once in a while. But, no enough to leave 10.
Again,
Thank you
 
Hi,
I looked up your system, and my experience so far has been that the Dell XPS systems I've attempted to upgrade to W10 have all worked so far. That's not to say that they are not without issues once the upgrade has been completed; especially if you are attempting to update to the latest Anniversary Update (AU v1607 Sep. 2016; there are 3 of them). As far as your hardware goes, your machine can have either an i5 or i7 processor probably 3rd gen or later. Your machine service manual is dated Dec. 2010; which means your system is 5 years old coming up on 6 years old. According to Microsoft W10 will work on any computer hardware manufactured in 2009 or after which they consider to be a "modern-era computer". All of my personal home computers are 2008 or older except one about the same age as yours; which all took the W10 upgrades (I have 5 machines so far). I've done a couple newer than 2010 and those as you would expect also all worked. I noticed too that your Chipset is an Intel H67, which I haven't done a W10 upgrade on specifically. Based on your CPU chip though I'm not aware of any issues related to your Chipset or CPU chip.

There are 2 issues facing you here. The first is whether or not to attempt the BIOS upgrade to "beef up" your Mobo hardware so to speak. This is always a good idea, unless you've never done that before. WARNING: FLASHING YOUR BIOS IS AN EXTREMELY HIGH RISK PROCEDURE AND SHOULD ONLY DONE BY TRAINED PROFESSIONAL TECHNICIANS!! ATTEMPTING TO DO THIS IF YOU'VE NEVER DONE IT BEFORE CAN BORK YOUR MOTHERBOARD, AND THAT'S A $175-$1500 REPAIR!!
If you don't care about this computer, as it's a secondary machine to your other computer which you use regularly, then you might attempt it, though that's against our advice.:noway: If you've never done it before, take it to a licensed professional computer technician in a reputable computer repair shop or large computer chain repair center such as Best Buy Geek Squad and pay him to do it for you. Reinstall your W10 and retest. Even though Dell doesn't have OFFICIAL W10 driver support as mentioned by Norway, it could work.:worry: I have several machines here running W10 that don't have official W10 driver support from the manufacturer--yet I have them working.:up:

The 2nd issue you have is that whether your do the BIOS update yourself or you pay someone to do it; there is no Guarantee it will work for you!:ohno: As both Norway and kemical mentioned, the safe thing to do is to stick on W7 until 2020 when Microsoft end-of-life's W7. Using it beyond that date is like using an XP computer now after 2 years of Microsoft non-support; it has become a major target for hackers, cyber-thieves, and cyber-identify-theft criminals, so you could just junk that computer at that point or recycle it or unplug it from the Internet and use it to play stand-alone games such as Solitaire or Tetris.

What I'm saying is that if you have an obsession to get this nearly 6 year old computer to run W10, you'll have to take some risks (such as flashing the BIOS) or spending some money and paying someone to do it for you.:tribal: And there is still a pretty good chance it will never take W10, and there are no guarantees anywhere for you. :noway: However, if you wish to use this computer to experiment with W10 upgrades as many of us do here, great! Give it a go.:) We just don't want you to waste time on something that maybe only has a 20% chance or less of working even if you know what you are doing. It's your computer; so just trying to give you some more insight on the overall process. I've been playing around with upgrading old PCs to W10 for 2 years now; and I've attempted to put W10 on computers as old as 2002. Just for the heak of it. With this understanding you may still wish to proceed.

Best of luck,:encouragement:
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>
 
Hello
I would prefer the word desire to obsession but I do appreciate all of your information - really.
I think I am interested in getting 10 to work b/c my Dell N5010 is so similar and yes I know so different. It accepted 10 beautifully.
Any way, I am glad you told me about the idea of going to 7 and " beefing up" the machine to more readily accept 10.
May I ask, if the BIOS failed and I have a Windows recovery disc and a Macrium one too, could I get the machine to at least boot up to recover an image. I do not plan on doing this but was curious.
I do have good news; because I have a VSS image to fall back on, I did break a rule and used other than the manufacturer's driver update. Dell would not recognize the PC due to the OS change.
I used IObit's driver updater and have since tried everything on this PC. It all works perfectly. I suspected a driver issue somewhere but know the risks of not using the Dell site for a rogue one. I felt I had nothing to lose so it updated 11 drivers and the machine has never run as good as it does.
I know I was lucky but circumstances are diffeent for each of us. I hope to recive such excelent advice from your forum in the future.
Gratefully
Peter
 
if the BIOS failed and I have a Windows recovery disc and a Macrium one too, could I get the machine to at least boot up to recover an image. I do not plan on doing this but was curious.
It depends on what failed. If the board is truly borked then nothing really will save it. Some motherboards have a bios chip which can be replaced but this is a feature usually found on older boards.

If the flash goes bad then you can try flashing again and it will sometimes work.

Basically when flashing a bios it's best done outside of the windows environment.

Also most bios flashes go wrong because the machine was turned off mid flash.
 
Yes, I watched videos and remember flashing my BIOS on a Dell years ago.
I want to thank you for you time and patience.
I am all set with my curruent set up thanks to folks like you.
Peter
 
You are a good detective and thanks for locating the thread.
A lot has happened since then.
Win 10 runs perfectly.
I experimented with RollbackRX and VM's.
I settled upon Sandboxie.
I had forgotten how to" beefup"" 7 if I wanted to and now I remember.
I'd like to spend some time digesting
the material.
Happy Holiday
 
I won't be redundant; I just thought by changing the A3 to A11 and updating drivers would make the guts of the machine more capable then I could move to 10. I do have current image. I guess i am driver short.
Thank you for saving me a lot of time and hassle. 7 is so slow and defenseless compared to 10 which I love. I'll stick with 10 till I get another machine. Actually the mouse sticks only occasionally and the system hangs once in a while. But, no enough to leave 10.
Again,
Thank you
If you are going to keep windows 10 no matter what, then try the Driver Booster from Iobit it will save a lot of hassle hunting for obscure drivers and having the correct drivers will help. But if it can't find them then they probably not around, Run it on your Laptop too you'll be surprised the amount of drivers that are out of date. It has No spyware or Malware and is easy to uninstall.

Have Fun
 
I don't recommend the usage of driver finders or installers. They've always been more trouble than anything. Googling the device id and vendor id works well better.
 
The manufacturer does not recognize my device due to moving from Windows to 10.
I have no alternative.
However, I am glad I was sandboxed as the site gave me trouble and one must pay for good use of the program.
 
Give us a list of hardware you need drivers for and we can see what can be found for windows 10.
 
When I am imaging with Macrium, it asks me to update my network driver if I wish to image to a cloud which I would like to do.
Please see my print-screen.
 

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Depending on the size of your Macrium backup image, it may not save to your Cloud account due to maximum upload file limit size. :eek: On Macrium image files >20GB, I was not able to save to MS OneDrive, Dropbox, or Amazon Photos. I also have CrashPlan, and that's a private fee-based Cloud (similar to Carbonite), and that won't take larger Image files either.:headache: I've tried this with Acronis images too, but not EASE Todo images yet, but I suspect it's based on the size of the file, not the Image backup program file type that created the Image backup file.

So, if Macrium is asking you to update your network adapter driver, it's more likely it's due to a too-large Image file and not really a driver update issue.:andwhat:

<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>
 
My images are about 23 GB so your logic about the size is likely why Macrium balked.
Thanks again
 
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