What OS CAN the Aspire 5742 run / BIOS mods? *unofficial*

robman501a
robman501a Member Posts: 49 Enthusiast WiFi Icon

I was wondering if with some 3rd party software if this laptop can be converted to an “retro gaming” system.

What I want to do is run my old DOS / Windows 98 games.

Probably there's no way I can run Windows 95/98/ME/2000 due to the lack of drivers.

How about DOS or Windows 3.1 with VGA graphics? I doubt I would get any audio due to the lack of drivers.

I've noticed that this laptop was shipped with Windows 7, but can it run Windows XP? Windows 8 or 8.1? Windows 10? Linux?

As for the BIOS, is there anyway to switch the SATA controller to legacy / IDE mode?

Answers

  • robman501a
    robman501a Member Posts: 49 Enthusiast WiFi Icon
    edited March 2023

    I forgot to mention that its a Aspire 5742-6846. The only changes I did where swapping the 500 GB HDD with an 120 GB SSD and chaned the RAM from 6 GB to 8 GB.

    For the official drivers from Acer, where can I find them? I've found the original recovery disks that I made back when I first purchased the laptop. Acer eRecovery installed Windows 7. I think I need to update it to Windows 7 SP1.

    For my old games, I might just use Windows 7 but since it lacks SSD support, should I go for Windows 10?

    Lastly, I've tried upgrading to Windows 8.1 but it didn't accept my Windows 7 product key (sticker on laptop). On the other hand, Windows 10 activates no trouble at all. (Yeah, I ran Windows 10 for a test but brought it back to the factory defaults)

  • Puraw
    Puraw ACE, Member Posts: 13,182 Trailblazer

    i3 1st and 2nd generation CPUs are not compatible with Windows10, later generations are OK. Also not sure if your 13 year old SATA interface can support a Samsung 2.5" EVO V-NAND SSD or the like, Samsung claims it will run on “any” SATA interface😶

  • robman501a
    robman501a Member Posts: 49 Enthusiast WiFi Icon

    Well, it does have an Crucial 120GB SATA SSD on it. Works nice and fast. I did find an 600GB HDD so I put that in and restored the Acer recovery image. Now it's running Windows 7 SP1 with all the updates.

    I've installed SP1 manually, then I used the “wsus offline updater” and finally, Windows Updates.