Pentium 4's and Windows 10

Just wanted to do an Windows 10 upgrade on a Intel D915GUX system.  System was Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.  Failed because the PreFetchW instruction is missing from the Pentium 4 660  processor.  In fact that instruction is missing from all the Pentium 4's that are not the series 9xx dual core.   Of course the Intel 915 and 925 chipsets do not support dual core processors.    Only option for Windows 10 support would be 32 bit, which isn't all that bad just not the best choice.

For a power user, 32 bit mode would be a downgrade for sure.   I can understand why some people are saying 32 bit mode is fine if you have 4gb or less of system memory.  Didn't say I agree with them, just that I understand their reasoning.    For the record, stick with 64bit.

If you are using older hardware (talking 10 year old hardware or even older) time to upgrade that mainboard and processor!  Seriously, you'll save more buying new than you would trying to upgrade the hardware.  New hardware is cheap, course some of the systems are cheaply made as well.  Use caution.   You would be amazed at the performance increases you will see with modern hardware.

Replaced the mainboard and processor with Intel D945GTP mainboard and Intel Pentium D 945 processor we had lying around.  Used the same case, disk drive, DVD drive and system memory.  However did add more memory, I know Intel says mainboard only supports 4gb of DDR2 memory but I think that is wrong since the chipset supports 8gb.  Memory is setup as one 2gb, two 1gb's and a single 512mb.  (I know 512mb but we still have a bunch lying around and even more useless 256mb's!)   Figured every little bit of memory is good and might as well test a theory at the same time...  It worked :)