Running Vista Ultimate on my 570e...

[GnatGoSplat]

... and it's SLOOOOOW!!! There's no good reason to do it. I just got so curious as to whether it's possible that I just had to try it. Well, it's definitely possible. I used vLite to remove any extra resource-consuming Vista features that XP Pro didn't have like Media Center, Aero, Sidebar, etc. I also had to remove the 512MB installer memory check since my 570e is just a 192MB machine. I managed to shrink the install image to about 880MB and it "only" uses about 3GB on the hard drive. Vista trackpoint and IBM PM drivers for newer machines work perfectly for the 570e. Sound drivers aren't installed, but I pulled the Crystal Audio drivers off my Win2003 machine and the sound works perfectly on the 570e.

Cold boot time from POST beep to usable desktop is 4min 5sec.
Shutdown time is 1min 1sec.

It's very slow and draggy. However, browsing the web with IE7 actually feels fine. Web pages pop up reasonably quickly. I have to wonder if I were to upgrade it to 320MB and trimmed more fat off Vista if it could be as fast as XP was? Well, I plan to sell the machine anyway so it doesn't matter. This was mainly just an experiment for my own amusement.

A couple screen shots:
Machine info
Windows Experience Index
The old 570e, really running Vista with just 500MHz and 192MB

[ryengineer]

WoW!!! I have not heard or seen anyone successfully run Vista on such an outdated machine.

Very nice, 2 thumbs up.

[GnatGoSplat]

Haha, yeah, do I hold the record for getting Vista to run on the most outdated machine?

I may get bored enough later this week to see if I can really torture my old 570 with Vista! It's also 192MB, but only 366MHz. That ought to be good for >6-minute boot times. Fun stuff!

[WarMachine]

Hello,

Those are experiments I like !

I also had to remove the 512MB installer memory check

How do you disable the memory check ?

Could you make a list of the tweaks and improvements you made ?

Do you have the possibility to use ReadyBoost w/ an USB key ? Boot time could reduce a little with that.

W.

[GnatGoSplat]

vLite has an option to change the 512MB Installer check to 256MB, but really it eliminated the check completely because I don't even have 256MB!

I forgot to save my settings so I can't remember for sure what I removed, but I eliminated the following for sure:
- Microsoft Speech
- Media Center
- Sidebar
- Aero (wouldn't work anyway)
- Extra Languages
- Movie Maker
- Windows Defender
- Windows Indexing
- System Restore

I know I eliminated more than that, but those are the ones I remember. Basically if it was a feature I didn't think was necessary and XP didn't have that feature, I eliminated it.

ReadyBoost probably won't work because the 570E only supports USB 1.1. Maybe with 320MB (570E's max), a slimmed down Vista, and a USB 2.0 card w/fast USB key and ReadyBoost, it might actually be tolerable. It's hard to say. I do know that while using IE7 it didn't seem that bad at all. Oh, I didn't shut off any services or startup items either. I bet it would help to go back and tweak some of those.

[pianowizard]

I also had to remove the 512MB installer memory check

So, it doesn't check for a 800MHz or faster CPU?

Okay, I am looking at one of the Vista screenshots. A score of 1.7 for the 500MHz processor??? That's seems too high!

[GnatGoSplat]

So, it doesn't check for a 800MHz or faster CPU?

Okay, I am looking at one of the Vista screenshots. A score of 1.7 for the 500MHz processor??? That's seems too high!

No, it doesn't care about the CPU speed.
Yeah, I was surprised to see the CPU was 1.7! I thought since 800MHz is Microsoft's stated minimum that anything lower would be 1.0.

Most of the time the hard drive is being accessed so I think the RAM is probably more important than CPU speed.

[dsigma6]

My T23 gets a 1 on the index due to the RAM speed, but the other numbers are acceptable (minus the video memory, of course).

[pianowizard]

My T23 gets a 1 on the index due to the RAM speed, but the other numbers are acceptable (minus the video memory, of course).

What's the CPU score?

[dsigma6]

I can't remember off the top of my head, but I'll look during lunch if you want to know.

[WarMachine]

I've tried to install Vista on my T23. But it was the 1st time, and it was just a try. I was quite dissapointed. I prefer XP on this machine. It should run almost nicely, with enough memory, and a good HDD, though.



W.

[GnatGoSplat]

I played with my Vista 570e again today. This time, I changed the settings of the services to what the guide at http://www.speedyvista.com/ says is "Safe". I also realized the 570e could not go into Sleep mode since it was using generic SVGA drivers. I installed the Windows 2000 video drivers from the Lenovo site and they worked just fine and enabled sleep mode. In fact, it seems to have speeded up the feel of the machine considerably.

With both the service tweaks and Win2k video drivers, I am now getting boot times between 2min 38sec and 3min 5sec. On average, over a minute shaved off the boot times! I'm not sure why sometimes the booting takes longer.

Now that sleep mode works, it takes 4-seconds to go to sleep and about 15-seconds to completely wake up to a usable desktop.

I haven't really tried any other programs, but opening and closing explorer windows is pretty decently fast. They open almost instantly and close instantly. IE7 loads up fairly quickly and serves pages just as fast as XP did.

Overall, not that bad! My wife's cousin brought by her old laptop, a Dell Latitude P-II 300MHz w/128MB running XP SP2 and my Vista-equipped 570E can run circles around it.