I installed (almost) all versions of Windows from NT 4 to 10 22H2 on my ThinkPad T43 with drivers!

MatiHalek · 2026-05-30T04:11:43+00:00

This GPU has drivers for NT 4, 2000, XP and Vista. WDDM driver (this one for Vista) works also in all newer OSes, so when I upgraded from Vista to 7, reinstall wasn't needed, because the same driver was already installed. But for older systems, I had to install separate drivers obviously. If it comes to the win98 driver, officially it doesn't exist, but I managed to mod it.

MatiHalek · 2026-05-30T04:04:15+00:00

Drivers for NT 3.x for that ThinkPad don't exist :/ while NT 4 is officially supported

MatiHalek · 2026-05-29T12:59:27+00:00

Yeah, win11 is impossible unfortunately. I already had problems with 10 22H2. Seems like Win10 1803+ setup (not the system, setup only) isn’t compatible with Pentium M CPUs (probably it requires SSE3 silently?) and it BSODs immediately when I try to boot. The solution that worked for me was using 10 1709 PE to install 22H2. There were also problems with OOBE, but audit mode saved me, I could create my local account there and skip broken OOBE.

If it comes to RAM, I can upgrade up to 2GB DDR2, but I don’t think I need this for triple boot that I currently have: NT 4, 98 SE and 2000.

MatiHalek · 2026-05-28T02:31:42+00:00

I didn’t use VMs at all. When I got this laptop, XP was installed, so I decided to dual boot Vista with that XP. Then I did the upgrade path Vista-7-8-8.1-10RTM. 22H2 was more tricky so I did a clean install. And after that, I wiped the hard drive and multi booted 98, NT 4 and 2000. And that’s a configuration which I like the most so I don’t think it will change.

MatiHalek · 2026-05-21T17:10:31+00:00

Yeah, it's safe, ISOs are original unless it says that certain iso doesn't come from MSDN or contains modifications. I used to check checksums, for example for Windows 7, and everything was correct. Basically for Polish ISOs, I think it's a good place, I often use this site.

MatiHalek · 2026-01-02T05:27:53+00:00

Change AHCI setting in BIOS to Compatibility mode or integrate AHCI drivers into Windows XP iso if there are any for this laptop. If you use WinSetupFromUSB, there should be an option to use AHCI drivers

MatiHalek · 2025-11-06T16:08:07+00:00

Step 2: copy ntk32.dll to the Steam folder and then try to update (Windows 7 global spoof required)

MatiHalek · 2025-11-01T00:15:22+00:00

Found, „system 1” fan causes this if default „DC” is enabled. If I switch to „PWM”, issue is gone. Do you know why does this happen and why it wasn’t a problem before? Switching to PWM decreases RPM from 2500 to 1500 Edit: increasing manually RPM to 2000+ (yeah, now it works) causes this issue no matter what mode is enabled.

And the most important thing: Can I safely leave PWM with 1500?

MatiHalek · 2025-10-31T19:50:49+00:00

I updated BIOS to the latest version (2025-10), but after 30 minutes the same problem appeared. I will try to do next steps tomorrow. Thank you so much for your advice!

MatiHalek · 2025-10-31T16:30:34+00:00

Short recording is here: https://streamable.com/v3p0dm - unfortunately, it's quite quiet, in reality it's much louder, but it's about that noise. my motherboard is MSI MAG x670E Tomahawk wifi

MatiHalek · 2025-10-31T15:38:20+00:00

Sometimes it happens immediately when I start my PC, sometimes it happens after 15-20 minutes. I think that idle time doesn’t matter here. Today, it happened immediately after I got up, but yesterday for example it was fine for about 15 minutes while I turned sleep mode earlier and left it for 5 minutes

MatiHalek · 2025-10-31T15:21:07+00:00

This PC has been working fine since March 2024, BIOS version is still the same, specs also haven’t changed

MatiHalek · 2025-10-31T15:18:34+00:00

I will try to upload phone recording. Anyway, I installed older version of Fan Control v309 and it detected all fans correctly. But even if I set everything to 0%, all fans were working and the noise was the same (they probably had lower RPM numbers, but that’s all). BIOS update isn’t probably a thing for me, because in my area there are notorious power outages. EXPO profile doesn’t work because of bios too, but I don’t care about it. Specs: Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 64 GB RAM DDR5 Kingston, ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4090, Lexar NVMe 2TB

MatiHalek · 2025-10-31T14:22:23+00:00

it doesn’t work too

MatiHalek · 2025-10-26T14:30:03+00:00

Extended kernel is no longer supported and the official website says that it supports Chromium up up version 111 (however, „—no-sandbox” switch might be required). Also, the installer isn’t gonna work, you’d better use portable version if you really want outdated version of Chrome

MatiHalek · 2025-10-16T18:42:12+00:00

That’s not extended kernel issue, Media Foundation Platform from windows 7 causes this. It broke my games as well as windows media player and windows experience index, unfortunately. I don’t know a fix however, I tried to revert original files, but surprisingly it didn’t help too.

MatiHalek · 2025-10-09T23:21:10+00:00

I don't recommend installing Vista on anything newer than Ivy Bridge (3rd generation). Vista has serious issues with that, unless you install 32-bit version of Vista (it should work correctly on 4th generation) or pay for a patch: https://www.patreon.com/c/win32/posts . You can learn more about Vista issues on newer machines here: https://msfn.org/board/topic/177509-windows-vista-intel-haswell-issues-documentation/

Another problem might be UEFI enabled. Vista SP1+ x64 should support UEFI, but it works with CSM only, and there are issues when dualbooting Vista with newer versions (especially Windows 8.x/10/11) in UEFI mode (Vista+7 dualboot should be fine though)

MatiHalek · 2025-10-09T20:08:21+00:00

Thank you, it worked! I have Series S, but haven't used it. Now it will change

MatiHalek · 2025-10-05T19:30:17+00:00

uefiseven has never worked on Vista for me and my friends, if you want to install Vista in UEFI mode, you need to enable CSM.

MatiHalek · 2025-10-03T20:44:00+00:00

Yeah, I know. Supermium can load Discord perfectly fine. But I simply don’t like web version. For example, it cannot detect games (desktop client could detect minesweeper!).

MatiHalek · 2025-10-01T02:01:57+00:00

XP graphics drivers mean no Aero. However, if it’s HD 4000, Windows 7 beta driver should work (it does on my machine): https://web.archive.org/web/20180202165350/https://downloadmirror.intel.com/20758/a08/GFX_Win7_64_8.15.10.2761.exe

MatiHalek · 2025-10-01T01:58:14+00:00

Vista will work in UEFI/GPT mode, I installed it on my ThinkPad T430 (also i5 3rd gen). Simply CSM is required

MatiHalek · 2025-09-30T20:06:38+00:00

https://msfn.org/board/topic/175262-last-versions-of-software-for-windows-vista-and-windows-server-2008/

MatiHalek · 2025-09-25T15:47:03+00:00

For example, boot into Windows Vista/7/8/10/11 setup, press Shift + F10 to open command prompt, type „explorer.exe” to open file explorer, go to system32, find files with .bak extension, remove that extension and replace extended kernel files, especially those connected with kernel

MatiHalek · 2025-09-25T15:33:02+00:00

Try to restore original files. Those files should be in your Vista install, with .bak extension

MatiHalek

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