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Win11 IoT seems to be running ok on T410; just fine-tuning to do before installing it in the kitchen.
The Gods of Acquisition have smiled upon me once again, and only the day after offering them a prayer: an old HP Pavilion 255 G5 with a pretty basic set of ingredients. Honestly, it is a cheap POS, being entirely made of not just plastic, but cheap plastic. It feels like a fake. Very strange.
On the plus side, it's very lightweight, especially after removing the (utterly dead) battery and pointless optical drive. Could be a very good comic book reader, as I'm sure it uses less power than the T60. On that, additionally, as it'll be Win11 IoT very soon, it'll be secure to use online, unlike the Win7 T60.
Furthermore, for the first time upon being bestowed an old laptop, it already has an SSD installed; sure, it's only 128GB, but it is M.2 so pretty modern by my standards!
With IoT on there, it should be fairly responsive, even with only 4GB of RAM. It'll also be quite a useful exercise in becoming used to Win11 and doing the tweaks ‘needed’ to make it better.
I'm slightly ashamed that I was baffled when I couldn't boot from USB, especially as the procedure (enable USB boot; disable secure boot; put in HP’s special code after making these changes) is exactly the same as that I've literally just done on that HP Stream…
Interestingly, the install isn't going that well so far: after the initial percentage-done count, it restarted and then got stuck at the point where one could press a key to boot from USB. I removed the USB, then it claims no boot devices. Tried reënabling Secure Boot, but still no boot devices. Trying to install from USB. Again.
Failed again. Very weird. Trying to Install Win10 IoT instead. Went better (and made me nostalgic for Win10 which I didn't think I'd ever feel; maybe I'll feel that way about Win11 one day too…)
In Windows, the USB drive kept popping in & out of existence: possibly dodgy port causing install fail? Shall I try AGAIN?
(I wonder how many times I've installed Windows in my life…)
Currently making a new boot USB in Rufus for Win11. I've previously been using a microSD card in a USB adaptor and it hasn't always been great, so let's see if this helps.
Tried the SD card in another USB adaptor and in another USB port: same result.
Trying the newly-created Win11 USB install disk; this time I've got Rufus to make it UEFI so Secure Boot is ON in BIOS. Will this make a difference…?
Ooh, progress! It's survived a restart and the installation is continuing. Seems to be working, but the lack of RAM is hurting. Oh well, it should be fine when all the setup is done.
I think the problem was the microSD card adaptor; it had previously been a bit dodgy, but had now completely fallen apart.
