[SOLVED] Will I have any windows 10 driver issues with Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P?

Sep 19, 2020
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Hi,

My family PC motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P running Windows 7 on a 1TB HDD. I have ordered a 240GB SSD to install Windows 10 onto it. Since the motherboard drivers are all for Windows 7/8.1 will this cause any issues if I move to Windows 10. I've read a few people say that Windows 10 has loads of drivers baked in so it shouldn't be an issue, is this correct. I really don't want to screw up my family PC since my plan is to wipe the 1TB HDD which will leave me without any operating system if something breaks down the line.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

My CPU is also an athlon ii x3 455, would windows 10 feel slow with this rig?
 
Solution
GA-78LMT-S2P
which revision of motherboard? there are 3?

I wouldn't try to install any drivers from Gigabyte site, win 10 should have those in it already by now. If its going to work, it will do it with what it has. The board is borderline, in that the only win 8 drivers are sound/lan and that is mainly because Realtek keep supporting their old hardware. It is a similar position to one of my previous boards.

You won't be able to install old Win 7 drivers on win 10 now. Not unless they were supplied to Microsoft for digital signatures, as WIn 10 only lets drivers run that are approved to run on it. Provided you use a new installer for win 10 anyway, and that is recommended to avoid unnecessary updates.

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
It will "probably" work.
Many people have installed Win 10 on systems of that vintage.
 
Sep 19, 2020
11
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It will "probably" work.
Many people have installed Win 10 on systems of that vintage.
Should I do it? What should I do to ensure it all works well before I wipe my old hdd which stores my old windows 7. Can I install windows 7/8.1 drivers on windows 10. My worry is that I get a BSOD due to some driver errors after I've wiped the working hdd.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Should I do it? What should I do to ensure it all works well before I wipe my old hdd which stores my old windows 7. Can I install windows 7/8.1 drivers on windows 10. My worry is that I get a BSOD due to some driver errors after I've wiped the working hdd.
Since you are getting a whole new drive, try it.
Have only this new SSD connected, and install. See what happens.
If it fails, you still have the old drive to fall back to, and we can reevaluate and move on from there.

 
Sep 19, 2020
11
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Since you are getting a whole new drive, try it.
Have only this new SSD connected, and install. See what happens.
If it fails, you still have the old drive to fall back to, and we can reevaluate and move on from there.

Yep okay, that was my plan. At what point do I wipe the old drive, how long should I wait and what should I be testing.

Will I even be able to connect to the internet for windows updates initially if there is no ethernet driver.
 

Turtle Rig

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Jun 23, 2020
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Hi,

My family PC motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P running Windows 7 on a 1TB HDD. I have ordered a 240GB SSD to install Windows 10 onto it. Since the motherboard drivers are all for Windows 7/8.1 will this cause any issues if I move to Windows 10. I've read a few people say that Windows 10 has loads of drivers baked in so it shouldn't be an issue, is this correct. I really don't want to screw up my family PC since my plan is to wipe the 1TB HDD which will leave me without any operating system if something breaks down the line.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

My CPU is also an athlon ii x3 455, would windows 10 feel slow with this rig?
It is going to be slow as a turtle no phun. However if you have more then 8GB RAM and a SSD then it won't be as bad.😲🤷‍♀️☮🍩🚓
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Yep okay, that was my plan. At what point do I wipe the old drive, how long should I wait and what should I be testing.

Will I even be able to connect to the internet for windows updates initially if there is no ethernet driver.
Win 10 should install enough things to get you up and running, incl the LAN driver.
WIn 10 on my ancient Toshiba laptop did this automatically.

But, it is recommended to find that driver first, and save it on a USB flash drive. Just in case Windows does not connect properly.
 
Sep 19, 2020
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It is going to be slow as a turtle no phun. However if you have more then 8GB RAM and a SSD then it won't be as bad.😲🤷‍♀️☮🍩🚓
Yeah I'll be installing it on a new SSD, and using a HDD as the main storage for files and photos. I have 8GB RAM, do you think it will be slow, should I bother, I'd rather get off windows 7 since it isn't supported anymore. The PC will only be used for office related thing and browsing/youtube.
 

Turtle Rig

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Yeah I'll be installing it on a new SSD, and using a HDD as the main storage for files and photos. I have 8GB RAM, do you think it will be slow, should I bother, I'd rather get off windows 7 since it isn't supported anymore. The PC will only be used for office related thing and browsing/youtube.
Thanks for your info which helps me help you better. So basically its a desktop machine. Surfing watching videos using office apps burning a DVD or using basic apps or Windows 10 apps. Yes good job with the SSD because if your going to put it on hard drive even if you had a 2600k sandy bridge I would say don't install WIndows 10. But the problem is no other OS is supported and WIndows 7 has vulnerabilities which MS is not fixing anymore. Everyone must use Windows 10. However 16GB of RAM is the minimum. Can your motherboard go to 16GB of RAM? Do you have free slots? Even on a SSD the 8GB of RAM will be a bottleneck. If you can't upgrade the RAM then 8GB of RAM coupled with that old processor it won't be blazing fast but it will be usable for your needs you explained. TLDR

If your CPU is overclocked then that will help things a lot. If it is not overclocked I would look into doing so as you leap to Windows 10. Then somehow see if you can put in 16GB of RAM. Also the SSD is a must so good going with that one. So that OCed CPU the 16GB of RAM and SSD will be a very usable WIndows 10 machine for basic stuff, surfing, videos, pictures, office apps and WIndows 10 apps like I said before.☮🤷‍♀️😲🖐💯
 
Sep 19, 2020
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Thanks for your info which helps me help you better. So basically its a desktop machine. Surfing watching videos using office apps burning a DVD or using basic apps or Windows 10 apps. Yes good job with the SSD because if your going to put it on hard drive even if you had a 2600k sandy bridge I would say don't install WIndows 10. But the problem is no other OS is supported and WIndows 7 has vulnerabilities which MS is not fixing anymore. Everyone must use Windows 10. However 16GB of RAM is the minimum. Can your motherboard go to 16GB of RAM? Do you have free slots? Even on a SSD the 8GB of RAM will be a bottleneck. If you can't upgrade the RAM then 8GB of RAM coupled with that old processor it won't be blazing fast but it will be usable for your needs you explained. TLDR

If your CPU is overclocked then that will help things a lot. If it is not overclocked I would look into doing so as you leap to Windows 10. Then somehow see if you can put in 16GB of RAM. Also the SSD is a must so good going with that one. So that OCed CPU the 16GB of RAM and SSD will be a very usable WIndows 10 machine for basic stuff, surfing, videos, pictures, office apps and WIndows 10 apps like I said before.☮🤷‍♀️😲🖐💯
Thanks for the reply, the ssd is coming tomorrow so I'll report back if I have any issues. I can probably get 16gb of ram but I'm not too worried about performance since it feels sluggish even with windows 7 compared to the gaming rig I just built.

I'll see how it feels with my current RAM (assuming there are no driver issues first) then I could consider using my gaming rig as my home/family pc and turn this older PC into a Linux lubuntu box for programming so I don't have to keep using annoying VMs. Thanks for your help so far
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Yep, the windows 10

Yep, the windows 10 official minimum requirements are 2gb ram for 64bit (probably god awful, hopefully 8gb is enough for what I do)
Well, 2GB IS too small for actual use.
I wouldn't go less than 8. But don't worry about upgrading to 16, until you see how it performs with a new clean install of Win 10.

But I do have Win 10 systems running on 2GB.
 

Turtle Rig

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16GB is not "required" or minimum.
If you're not running over the existing 8GB, 16GB does not add any performance.
Im sorry mod guru, I didn't mean it that way. I think the minimum for WIndows 10 is 8GB RAM or I think you can even use 4GB of RAM. I just want the bottleneck to be the CPU. If he doesn't game or use high end apps then yes 8GB of RAM is great. However with the experience I have with Windows 10 on different machines I can say 16GB of RAM along with a SSD is simply a must unless you don't mind low cache and apps launching slow etc.🤷‍♀️
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Im sorry mod guru, I didn't mean it that way. I think the minimum for WIndows 10 is 8GB RAM or I think you can even use 4GB of RAM. I just want the bottleneck to be the CPU. If he doesn't game or use high end apps then yes 8GB of RAM is great. However with the experience I have with Windows 10 on different machines I can say 16GB of RAM along with a SSD is simply a must unless you don't mind low cache and apps launching slow etc.🤷‍♀️
That ancient system will be slow even if you were able to put 64GB in it.
It is old and slow, period.
 

Turtle Rig

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That ancient system will be slow even if you were able to put 64GB in it.
It is old and slow, period.
You are correct my friend I learned that the hard way when I had to go from a 4930k to a Sandy Bridge 2600k @ 4.4Ghz lol. It had 16GB RAM and SSD but it was so freakin slow. So my bad, it is not worth spending money on RAM on a very ancient CPU like you said. Windows 10 is not that clunky but it does require a CPU from 2012 and beyond. It ran amazing on my old 4930k but Sandy Bridge was a different story. A quad core tech CPU will suffer. However since its on SSD it will boot up pretty fast but just simple thing like right clicking etc will be slowish and what not.🙈🤷‍♀️
 
Aug 12, 2020
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Go for it NO problem.
Most probably when you install Windows 10 on your computer, there is a 95% chance to get the motherboard's and other drivers will be installed automatically through Windows Update. If this doesn't happen, then you can still install Windows 7, 8 drivers on your Windows 10 using compatibility mode or do it manually as well.
If in case you'll need steps for that, you may ask me.

One of the steps you will need to prepare before switching to Windows 10 is to download Windows 7, 8 driver on your computer and save them to a D or E drive so that you can install them later when you have installed windows 10 on your computer. That's it.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
GA-78LMT-S2P
which revision of motherboard? there are 3?

I wouldn't try to install any drivers from Gigabyte site, win 10 should have those in it already by now. If its going to work, it will do it with what it has. The board is borderline, in that the only win 8 drivers are sound/lan and that is mainly because Realtek keep supporting their old hardware. It is a similar position to one of my previous boards.

You won't be able to install old Win 7 drivers on win 10 now. Not unless they were supplied to Microsoft for digital signatures, as WIn 10 only lets drivers run that are approved to run on it. Provided you use a new installer for win 10 anyway, and that is recommended to avoid unnecessary updates.
 
Solution
Sep 19, 2020
11
0
10
Go for it NO problem.
Most probably when you install Windows 10 on your computer, there is a 95% chance to get the motherboard's and other drivers will be installed automatically through Windows Update. If this doesn't happen, then you can still install Windows 7, 8 drivers on your Windows 10 using compatibility mode or do it manually as well.
If in case you'll need steps for that, you may ask me.

One of the steps you will need to prepare before switching to Windows 10 is to download Windows 7, 8 driver on your computer and save them to a D or E drive so that you can install them later when you have installed windows 10 on your computer. That's it.
Okay thanks, do you mean I should extract my driver's from my windows 7 installation? I followed a tutorial and have backed up 3 driver folders. Or do you mean get the driver's from gigabytes website.
 
Sep 19, 2020
11
0
10
which revision of motherboard? there are 3?

I wouldn't try to install any drivers from Gigabyte site, win 10 should have those in it already by now. If its going to work, it will do it with what it has. The board is borderline, in that the only win 8 drivers are sound/lan and that is mainly because Realtek keep supporting their old hardware. It is a similar position to one of my previous boards.

You won't be able to install old Win 7 drivers on win 10 now. Not unless they were supplied to Microsoft for digital signatures, as WIn 10 only lets drivers run that are approved to run on it. Provided you use a new installer for win 10 anyway, and that is recommended to avoid unnecessary updates.
Okay I'll avoid manually installing drivers and see if windows can pick up the hardware. I'll update soon when the ssd comes 👍
 
Aug 12, 2020
82
10
45
Sep 19, 2020
11
0
10
which revision of motherboard? there are 3?

I wouldn't try to install any drivers from Gigabyte site, win 10 should have those in it already by now. If its going to work, it will do it with what it has. The board is borderline, in that the only win 8 drivers are sound/lan and that is mainly because Realtek keep supporting their old hardware. It is a similar position to one of my previous boards.

You won't be able to install old Win 7 drivers on win 10 now. Not unless they were supplied to Microsoft for digital signatures, as WIn 10 only lets drivers run that are approved to run on it. Provided you use a new installer for win 10 anyway, and that is recommended to avoid unnecessary updates.
I just checked, it's revision 5.1 motherboard, why do you ask?
Can I install windows 10 on the ssd and keep windows 7 on my HDD then for a month or so keep testing the windows 10 OS until I'm confident I won't get BSOD. I just have to change the boot priority to do this right?
 
Sep 19, 2020
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Update
I just installed windows 10 pro on the ssd and let it do the initial updates. I haven't installed any motherboard drivers, the internet works.

Upon monitoring the cpu usage it seems to be going up and down a lot hitting 100% highs and 1% lows. Is this because it's an old cpu? I haven't really paid attention to this in windows 7, should I investigate the behaviour in windows 7.

When I'm browsing on chrome it randomly hits 100% .

Update 2
Just checked the cpu usage on my windows 7 install and the cpu usage seems to be similar. I'll continue testing the windows 10 install over the next month before I make the switch.

For some reason why I booted the windows 7 hdd while the windows 10 ssd was also plugged in it kept booting with a chkdsk script. Any reason why this happened?
 
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