Windows 7, although it is no longer supported or receiving updates, lives on. The old Microsoft operating system is not only present in a small group of computers, but is also used by some users to do some experiments.
Can you imagine Windows 7 running on a computer with a 5 MHz processor and 128 MB of RAM? If we take into account that the system requirements start from a 1 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM, this seems impossible. However, someone has succeeded.
The challenge of testing Windows
Today, our computers have multi-core processors that exceed 2 GHz speeds and are accompanied by several gigabytes of RAM. In the 1980s and 1990s, when the ‘Turbo’ button existed, processors of 4.77 MHz was common.
to the youtuber NTDEV has come up with put this operating system released in 2009 to the test. To do this, he has set up a virtual machine with the 86Box emulator with an Intel Pentium S processor with the speed reduced to only 5 MHz and, as we mentioned, 128 MB of RAM.
As we can see in the images, Windows 7 is noticeably slow. From the moment of power on, the desktop of the operating system takes about 30 minutes to appear. Although it is almost impossible to perform any task with that performance.
The operating system desktop takes about 30 minutes to appear.
The youtuber, however, showed that the OS has “multitasking” capabilities. Surprisingly, with a few tricks that we’ll cover below, he was able to run the WCPUID command prompt, Winver, and Notepad in the same session.
As NTDEV explains, the first thing he did was edit the 86Box code to slow the Pentium-S down from 50 MHz to 5 MHz. Then, he modified the BCD settings to force Windows 7 to boot in safe mode, which consumes less power. resources.
But to achieve his goal, he had to optimize the system as much as possible. In that sense disabled most processesWindows 7 drivers, services, and drivers. It also removed File Explorer and any transparency or interface effects from the equation.
The only way to launch the programs is through the command prompt. In other words, the price to pay to be able to run a “modern” OS on such limited hardware is not having a desktop, icons or start menu, something that reminds us of the first versions of Windows.
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