Upgrade HP Compaq Dc7900 Ultra-Slim Desktop PC

[DEATH-DFC]

Oh.... looking a little more it seems that the southbridge of the dc7900, Intel ICH10, is PCIe 1.1....

[NonSequitur777]

@DEATH-DFC,

Yes, the WLAN motherboard slot I used for the graphics card link is x1 speed only.  The graphics card still functions quite good, though.

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[DEATH-DFC]

And I made another mistake... The SSD I bought is NVMe, which of course is not supported by this old PC. It works under Windows, but it is not bootable. The upgrade of this PC is definitely starting to be a big failure.
The problem is that mini PCIe SSDs are extremely rare, or even non-existent these days. At best you must therefore go through an mPCIe to M2 or mSATA adapter and in both cases you end up with either an M2 SSD in NVMe which will not be bootable, or an mSATA SSD which will not bring any performance gain compared to the SATA port...

[DEATH-DFC]

It's not the number of PCIe lines that bothers me, I knew it was a mini PCIe x1 (I believe that mPCIe exists up to x4). But it's the PCIe version, I thought it was v2.0 but it's v1.1 which is twice as slow.
And then there's the problem of NVMe not being supported...

[DEATH-DFC]

Well actually for the boot NVMe problem I will simply use the boot manager method on the current SATA SSD. It's an "old" 80GB Intel SSD which doesn't have much performance anyway, I probably wouldn't use it anymore.

[DEATH-DFC]

I have not yet received the new RAM sticks but just for information, I managed to install and launch Windows 10 on the NVME SSD using a USB key with CLOVER. I used the instructions from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh-rGQih8m8&ab_channel=NPE
Everything is included in the archive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RJjCpAmUaN5L77XwL-cjLEbGRnh6LwvJ/view?fbclid=IwAR3PxHEDWnPJEVI4TE5L...
Although there are instructions, in fact the ISO provided in the archive seems already fully configured.
I tried with the latest version of CLOVER but it doesn't work. It seems that it no longer works after version 5132 (at least not following the instructions in the video) and in any case with version 4162 the boot is much faster.
It was just a test and I'm honestly satisfied. I only did an offline installation, without being connected to the Internet (so no updates etc.) but... it still seems more responsive than with the 80GB Intel SSD.
As I said anyway I'm considering using the Intel SSD to install CLOVER on it to speed up startup and free up the USB port.

[NonSequitur777]

@DEATH-DFC,

That is really helpful information/documentation -thank you for your time submitting it!

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[DEATH-DFC]

@NonSequitur777 : Today I received the 2*4GB Samsung sticks and they work perfectly. So finally this upgrade seems to be ending well. I just have to install CLOVER on the Sata SSD and it will be good. Ah and then an upgrade to Windows 11 with MediaCreationTool.bat

[DEATH-DFC]

Installing CLOVER on the SATA SSD was very easy (now that I know how to install CLOVER). It doesn't save much in boot speed, but it frees up a USB port and then the old SSD is useful for something...
On the other hand, I have a lot of trouble installing Windows 11. I use MediaCreationToos.bat, I have never had a problem until now but obviously there is something that does not work, whatever the method I use. Certainly MediaCreationTool.bat does not always work the first time, but you just have to restart it a second time. But there, nothing to do. Whether in AutoUpdate mode or using Skip_TPM_Check mode. Or I very quickly get an error (message like "we don't know what happened but something wrong happen....bla bla bla"), either during the 2nd reboot the installation roll back and an error is indicated when restarting under Windows 10. This may be due to the installation of Windows 10 initialy which I did in dual Boot with the Windows which was on the SATA SSD and then I switched to CLOVER, there was an error when restarting the first time (blue screen). It may also be due to the drivers for the serial and SOL interface that I added later and which are planned for Windows 7. Or it may also be because of a BUG in progress on one of the Windows updates 10 and 11 related to Bitlocker and the Windows RE partition (Bug I had in Windows 10 but which I fixed before trying to upgrade to Windows 11)

[NonSequitur777]

@DEATH-DFC,

You shouldn't have the slightest issue installing any W11 version (including 23H2) on your HP Compaq dc7900 USDT, as I did as well.  My ancient Q9550S Yorkfield processor performs superbly, no crashes or issues of any kind.

If interested, this link will show you how to install W11: Windows 11 Upgrade (23H2) on Unsupported Hardware: Special ISO Downloads and More | Dong Knows Tech.

Also, our Senior HP Community Expert, @Paul_Tikkanen, provided very user-friendly how-to instructions: Re: Issues upgrading to windows 11 - HP Support Community - 8517912.

Hope this was helpful.

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777