Locked Win 10 on hdd in 2022? Yes, unfortunately.....and I need help.

[AresXxX]

Hi guys, I was asked by a friend to save a 2015 laptop with 2 core (low voltage) 4gb ram ddr3 and an horrible 500gb hdd (5400rpm).
I read a lot treads on the forum and I downloaded too....to test some lite OS releases as you can see.
Anyway most of them even of light, where too heavy to the hard drive.
So I'm looking for a compromise between usability (on 2,5 hdd ) and a not too old release.
I know.....if it had an ssd the problem would be solved....but that'it

If you ever tested a particular release that works well on a laptop hdd or you have some advice ( apart from changing a friend). it's well appreciated.

PS: I asked here not for laziness, since I actually testing various release, .....but because I'm simply lost in front of this amount of choice.

Thank you in advance^^

 

[fantom]

Unfortunately, I can´t help, because, I can´t remember when I was last time instal OS on ordinary HDD!
Is that really so big problem to replace it with SSD? Zillion problems shall be solved if You do that!

BTW.... Good friend is hard to find, so ....

 

[pleiadians]

Last week I installed Windows LTSC 2019 32 bit on three old Dell Vostro 1520 with ordinary hdd with 4gb ram and dual core (Vista licence!) After using defender remover 4.1 (available here) and installing webroot antivirus (also here) they are working ok for office and browsing. For whatever reasons, the 32 bit version is a lot lighter than the 64 bit. I give away these old laptops to old people that can't afford a new laptop and only need light use and they are working ok. There are some useful speed tweaks on the net but mostly tweaking the services and startup is enough. Good luck with your experiments and you are a good friend, not everyone can afford new things.

 

[DGrigorescu]

Hi. I have an old Lenovo laptop. His hdd died (not ssd) and I installed windows 10 ltsc 2021 with wintousb on an external usb hdd (sata, not ssd too), 4 gb ram. Despite the long boot time (+/- 1 minute) works fine for Office, Firefox, qBitTorrent, IDM, VLC (not BluRay). I don't care about the boot time because usually it's always on on ac power (and very stable). I also installed LTSC 1809 and 2021 on othe old machines with great success and performance. Don't forget to remove Defender and set a large pagefile, it's very important. Don't install in a partition less than 50 gb for optimal performance. Good luck!

 

[AresXxX]

Last week I installed Windows LTSC 2019 32 bit on three old Dell Vostro 1520 with ordinary hdd with 4gb ram and dual core (Vista licence!) After using defender remover 4.1 (available here) and installing webroot antivirus (also here) they are working ok for office and browsing. For whatever reasons, the 32 bit version is a lot lighter than the 64 bit. I give away these old laptops to old people that can't afford a new laptop and only need light use and they are working ok. There are some useful speed tweaks on the net but mostly tweaking the services and startup is enough. Good luck with your experiments and you are a good friend, not everyone can afford new things.

Thank you guys for the replies. Well he doesn't want to invest on that laptop, since he got more expenses this year (but this is another story) and in the worst case scenario i'm going to buy and ssd for him. Anyway I usually give away old laptops to old people too. Usually old core2 duo/ i3 1st gen and I have never had problem with ghostspectre 20h2 32bit, which is pretty responsive with hdd laptops. and 3-4 gb of ram.
In this particular case the laptop is an Asus f402s with low specs. The 4gb of ram is solded on the motherboard and as collateral effect if I install a 32bit OS, it sees only 2 of the 4gb of ram.
Pretty absurd, but that's it. So unfortunately I have to stay on a 64bit OS........well let's see what I can find here

 

[Mr. Spacely]

@AresXxX We don't recommend OS. It's up to you to do the homework here and find what suits your needs. Good luck.