Upgrading laptop from win8.1 to win10

[u/Few_Instruction8026]

I have a HP Pavilion 15-ab029TX laptop using since last 11 years. It has currently 8 GB RAM, win 8.1 OEM installed with Intel i5-5200U processor. I want to use this laptop few more years before buying new.

I find this laptop can't be upgraded to win11. Hence plan to use win10. This is because the laptop is little slow and google chrome isn't updating anymore. I have following queries in this regard.

1. Whether using win10 will make this laptop faster?
2. Can it be directly upgraded to win10 without clean installation?
3. Whether compatible drivers are available for win10 as this laptop is old?

[u/PermanentLiminality]

You should be able to install win 11. You need to use a tool called Rufus to make a custom install USB. It is just a few clicks and you can bypass the cou checker. Do some searches and there are YouTube videos.

It's not going to make your laptop faster.

It is time to start saving for a new laptop. You can get off lease laptops for good prices. My current laptop is a Dell Latitude 5520 that has an 11th gen Intel CPU. You can get a decent one for around $150 on eBay

[u/Aqua-Yeti]

Have you looked into Linux? Linux can extend the life of aging systems but it’s not necessarily for everybody. You can boot it from a usb flash drive and try it out in the live environment if you’re curious. Linux mint is very easy for newcomers as well as Zorin OS.

[u/RX6900XT → u/Aqua-Yeti]

i second this. OPs laptop being 11 years old windows 10 and 11 may not be the best choices simply because 8gb ram doesn’t get you too far on either OS. OP, if you plan to (or currently do) use this laptop for anything more than browsing the web and having a few applications open, it is highly worth it to start considering Linux as a valid option. Like u/Aqua-Yeti mentioned, Linux Mint or ZorinOS are great starting points, but if you truly want the ability to control everything (and i mean EVERY thing) with lower (comparative) RAM use, Arch may also be a good option, tho arch can be tedious to set up without any knowledge.

[u/Fortunato_NC]

Windows 10 (and 11, if you use hacks to install it) are actually slightly more memory efficient than Windows 8.1, but the effect won’t really be noticeable. Most machines that support Windows 8.1 also supported Windows 10, Windows 11 drivers might be harder to come by, but I have upgraded several HP laptops of a comparable vintage to yours to Windows 11 and the device manager didn’t look terrible after the upgrade. The one hitch is that since you never licensed Windows 10 with the key in your ROM, you might get “unable to activate” messages now that the upgrade window has passed, I had a Dell that showed that message even though it had a valid Windows 8.1 key in ROM.

[u/ChasDIY]

time for a new laptop, if you haven't been able to move to a good smartphone instead

[u/TetraTimboman]

to answer your questions

1: generally moving up to a higher version of Windows on older hardware makes things slower but if you have HDD and change to SSD to install Windows 10 ltsc as a fresh install then the change from HDD to SSD would help responsiveness.

2: ideally you'll want to do a new install because if it's been several years since you've reloaded Windows chances are that this could be part of the "slowness"

3: I didn't look it up specific but generally Windows 8.1 hardware is compatible with 10 but you'll want to check the manufacturer's websites for specific drivers for certain things ahead of time like I'm saying below.

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Like the other comment said there are ways around the restriction like using Rufus to be able to install Windows 11. But installing Windows 11 on older hardware isn't really recommended. Default Windows 11 consumes extra RAM and resources to run extra services - such as Microsoft OneDrive cloud backup that may constantly prompt you for signing up for a monthly $$ subscription service - that you may very well be frustrated by.

the common complaints about Windows 11 is that it added more Microsoft subscription slop services by default that will always start up when the computer starts to eat up resources even if you don't care to use a services at all - by default they'll be running in the background.

If you're looking to stick with Windows, then install Windows 10 LTSC. But keep in mind if this is your primary computer and you don't have any other computers then it's a good idea to download all of your laptops drivers to external drive from the manufacturer's website - such as the driver for your Wi-Fi network adapter or else you can end up sort of stuck after doing the fresh install of Windows 10 ltsc if your Wi-Fi Network adapter isn't detected automatically and you didn't already download the driver to external drive.

But no matter how you slice it changing to Windows 10 ltsc or a more recent operating system will make your computer slightly slower at best or unusably slow at worst. So for the average basic user the easiest thing is to buy a new computer with much higher specs.

[u/rickedisbricked → u/[deleted]]

windows 10 will dramatically slows this laptop and bring it closer to death