T11 with 4GB RAM, windows 2004 and W2019

[rustyhill]

I've had a T11 with 4GB RAM for a few weeks or so now and am very happy with it. It shipped with W10 1903 which I upgraded with no issues to 1909. I then went for the May 2020 Windows 2004 build, which also worked fine.

To be safe, I used Macrium to image the entire PC before each upgrade, but had no problems.

Running various performance tests for a few days suggested that the T11 would work with Windows Server 2019, which is really what I bought it for to act as R/O Domain Controller in a small test Domain which existing DCs.

Of course, you can't upgrade W10 to Windows Server and I actually didn't want to, so I trashed it totally and tried a clean install of Server 2019 core edition (so no GUI) as this (i) uses less RAM (ii) is more secure as it offers a smaller attack surface.

And hit my first problem. I could not get Server 2019 core edition to install. After a few retries, I trashed the PC again and tried to install the GUI version of 2019, which worked fine!

So I again stress tested this for a few days and then added to the Domain as an additional DC. Which works fine.

Responsiveness is good, CPU never rises above 40%, RAM runs at about 45%-50%

It's worth noting that Server 2019 does *not* have all the device drivers for Wi-Fi and so on, (which Window 10 2004 does) but as these were exported for a Windows 10 2004 system they could be added if required - but I'm happy not to have a DC with Wi-Fi!!

So in summary, a brilliant little device, amazing value for money, with great performance.

Highly recommended.

[rustyhill]

Just to add to this....

I mentioned that as this is running as a server, I was not concerned that the drivers for Wi-Fi etc were not loading.. but... I was controlling the PC via command lines (Powershell) and also RDP. When I tried connecting a VGA cable or HDMI I got no output. Not a big deal for me but on looking further I could see the problem was the lack of drivers for the internal bus in the T11.

No problem I thought - I extracted all the drivers from the Windows 2004 build I had working earlier, I'll just reinstall those. But I couldn't - as Windows 2019 requires digitally signed rivers - which the ones extracted from a live system were not. OK, I can edit BCDEDIT to set the PC into Test mode and to accept unsigned drivers. No I can't as (I think) the UFEI BIOS is preventing this. Bah!

So, I then check out the hardware IDs for the missing device drivers in Device Manager, hunt them down from the suppliers, and install them. Took about an hour, dull but al the end I had them all installed apart from the Wi-Fi which I really don't need and, more usefully for debugging, I now have VGA and HDMI video back.

w2019-T11.png (34.14 KiB) Viewed 3226 times

Great little box, very easy to work with. If I may suggest to ACEPC they make the signed drivers for Windows 2004 available here that would be helpful.

[Gabe]

The problem with the WiFi is a missing text configuration script that goes in the Driver File Repository (where all of the other drivers are). It's titled "4345r6nvram.txt", without the quotes.

I'd send the file, but this forum doesn't support/allow that (not that you would, or really should, trust a file from a stranger anyway). I believe you can get the file by downloading the drivers from ACEPC, or even by searching for the file on the net, though the latter is a bit risky, of course. There's also an ACEPC video that explains how to install the downloaded drivers, and that file is a part of the instructions.

Hope this helps.