Having recently received my old Mac mini 2006 (firmware upgraded to 2,1, 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo and 4GB RAM), I wanted to see how far I could max it out. The first thing I knew I needed to do was some house keeping. It has spent the last six years over at my father's home. All the dust accumulation was removed. It was in good physical condition otherwise.
The next thing was to install was an SSD. I went with a modestly sized spare I had lying around. No problems here. Even with the 1.5Gbps SATA bus speed, an SSD still performs better than the rotational drive it replaced. This alone makes the experience on this old Mac more pleasant. I even finally figured out what I needed to do to get Lion installed and updated. I have no Mac OS X ambition beyond that but I know going beyond Lion is possible albeit with a graphics limitation.
Next on the list was installing a Bootcamp partition and a fresh Windows 7 32bit system. No problems here either. The latest version of Bootcamp drivers that were downloaded using the Assistant is 4.x There is a very specific 4.x.x.x. version compatible with this mini I have come to find out. Doesn't look like upgrading these drivers is possible. More on that later.
So getting to the subject of this thread, I was inspired to try out the latest Windows 10 available as a free download from Microsoft. My understanding is as long as you have an activated Windows currently installed, Windows 10 will be activated also. This is why I did not attempt a fresh Windows 10 install first.
Sorry to report that my experience with Windows 10 on this mini has not been favorable. The graphics performance does not feel optimized to me. Moving windows around the screen is noticeably sluggish compared to Win 7. The GMA Windows 10 driver does appear to be rather generic. I found nothing better available. The next undesirable thing I was running into was a delay in reaching web sites. Didn't matter what browser I chose. I made sure I had no Proxy or automatic settings configured. Still, there was this delay with getting to websites. They also did not load as fast compared to Win 7.
Everything else seemed to be fine, but these two problems were enough for me to revert back to Windows 7. I do, of course, realize Win 7 is not officially supported any longer. Funny thing about that is I am still able to perform a lot of Windows updates, save for a few that refuse to install.
I am confused by what I am reading here, though. Windows 10
64 bit is able to be installed? My understanding is that even with the firmware update and a Core 2 Duo present, the OS is still stuck at 32 bits. Is this only true for the Mac OS X side? I vaguely recall that I attempted a Windows 7 64 bit install on this mini long ago and it failed. I would be intrigued to know how a 64 bit Windows can be made to work.
Perhaps the key to this is the minor detail that this thread is about a 2007 Mac mini and not a 2006 Mac mini with firmware update. 
Regarding the Bootcamp drivers: none are officially available for Windows 10 on this Mac mini. This is also why installing Windows 10 on top of the existing Windows 7 made sense. I do not think Windows 10 would detect all of the hardware on its own and I did not want to trying hunting down drivers.
On a related note, my fully compatible Windows 7 install does have a Bootcamp drivers problem still. The Apple Software Update crashes every single time I try to run it. Not sure what is going on here because it worked fine in the past. I have not attempted to reinstall the driver package but I doubt that would help. Seems like something is happening with the updater when it tries to contact Apple's servers.
[automerge]1591373253[/automerge]
