Laptop upgrade

[eastof111]

I bought a Compaq Presario laptop many, many years ago (8 to 10?)and it's always been a faithful travel companion. But since I ran XP on it, Firefox and Java stopped support for the old Windows version.

So, I migrated Win10 from my desktop to the laptop using a newly installed Samsung Evo SSD. Everything worked fine except the wifi which would not turn on due to a driver conflict. Airplane mode could not be shut off. Googling "turn off airplane mode in Win10" did not solve my problem, including changing registry items.

Then I installed a different version of Win10 to the laptop, but still a no go. Using the desktop I searched for drivers going back to 2008 and still no go. Finally after trying two more versions of Win10 I hit the jackpot. This particular Win10 installed the correct driver for wifi to operate. This driver was dated 2006, which really surprised me. I was not expecting such old drivers to be available with Win10. I now learned that different versions of Win10 maintain explicit drivers.

Now the laptop is functioning correctly, is as fast as my desktop and hopefully I'll get another three to five years of service. Glad I made the move.

 

[eastof111]

Another interesting benefit of upgrading the OS....... I thought I would stay with the 64 bit WIN 10 version since it was running so well on the laptop. But I had a load of old DOS programs on another drive which I hadn't played with since XP. Even with XP I could hardly get any of the programs to load. Using the compatibility mode made no difference. So, since I discovered that each WIN 10 version has an independent personality, I decided to experiment.

Installed the 32bit version of the same WIN 10 version and then hooked up the drive with the old DOS programs. Opened the same program that failed to load in old XP and the prior WIN 10 and voila, it came to life. Seems that this 32bit version loads a special driver (it will ask you first) that allows old DOS programs to load. No need to play with compatibility or run as admin settings. Just pick an old DOS program and it will load. A really nice feature.

I also updated the bios and found out that with the upgrade, I can install a faster cpu available on ebay for about $30 shipped. These chips way back when, sold for $200+. If I find the time, I might just do that just for fun. Sure would be great to be able to upgrade fta receivers in the same manner.