A 20-year-old IBM ThinkPad T43 has pulled off a very 2026 kind of stunt: one owner says he installed nearly every major version of Windows on the same laptop, from NT 4 to Windows 10 22H2, and did it all natively, without virtual machines. The machine is a single-core Pentium M relic from 2005, which makes the result less a normal upgrade path and more a test of how far stubbornness and old hardware can be pushed.
The experiment surfaced on Reddit, where the Polish user MatiHalek posted photos showing different Windows installs on the old ThinkPad. He says the process started with XP already on the machine, then moved through Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, and 10 RTM, before ending with a clean install of Windows 10 22H2. After that, he wiped the drive and set up a multiboot system with Windows 98, NT 4, and Windows 2000 – apparently the lineup he likes best.
What the ThinkPad T43 is running
- Windows NT 4
- Windows 98
- Windows 2000
- Windows XP
- Windows Vista
- Windows 7
- Windows 8
- Windows 8.1
- Windows 10 RTM
- Windows 10 22H2
There is a bit of method to the madness. The T43 was the last notebook released under IBM branding before Lenovo took over the ThinkPad line, which gives it a sort of hardware-era final boss energy. It also helps that ThinkPads from this period earned a reputation for durable chassis, excellent keyboards, and the kind of survivability that modern ultrabooks can only dream about.
ThinkPad T43 hardware specs
- Processor: Intel Pentium M, single core
- Graphics: ATI Mobility Radeon X300/X300SE
- Display: 14.1-inch panel, 1400 x 1050 pixels
- Memory support: up to 2 GB DDR2
- User configuration: 1 GB
- Weight: about 2.3 kg
What makes the story more interesting than a nostalgia trip is that it lands at the intersection of retro computing and modern software support. Windows 10 22H2 is the surprising endpoint here, but the real achievement is that the laptop can still be coerced into running software from multiple eras on bare metal, not hidden behind virtualization.
The result is a reminder that old business machines were built for a different kind of lifetime. The T43 may be heavy by current standards, but it still has the sort of mechanical honesty and upgrade flexibility that keeps retro enthusiasts collecting them, modding them, and apparently trying to turn them into a one-machine Windows museum.