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Anyone have experience with XP "performance editions"

EightySix Four

EightySix Four

Diamond Member
I have a legitimate copy of XP pro on a laptop with relatively low end specs, Pentium M (Dothan?) at 1.6ghz with 504mb ram (blasted integrated graphics). It's an alright laptop that I use for school and for my iPhone (yes that eliminates linux).

I could feasibly install Os X on it but that would be a waste, so I'm kind of stuck with Windows. Considering it's low specs I'm looking for something lightweight and compatible, and my only real alternative is XP. I don't want to use the restore disk that came with the laptop because it's LOADED with bloat and I'm looking for a clean start.

Has anyone used the XP "performance" custom builds that are around the net? Are they worth it over a standard xp installation? Should I just go back to windows 2000?
 
I wouldn't go playing with unauthorized stuff like that. You might get more than you bargain for :evil: Do your restoration, remove the bloatware that you don't want, and you're rolling with a clean system that doesn't have a keystroke logger built into it.
 
Originally posted by: mechBgon
I wouldn't go playing with unauthorized stuff like that. You might get more than you bargain for :evil: Do your restoration, remove the bloatware that you don't want, and you're rolling with a clean system that doesn't have a keystroke logger built into it.
Click to expand...

I start uninstalling stuff, and eventually it BSOD's. I swear acer has it integrated into the OS. Plus it's install image is 2x fat32 partitions, both equally sized, with no reason for the second one. It makes no sense to me.
 
I'd try to find a stock oem disc and use that to reinstall with. XP is plenty fast enough, and there isn't really much you can do to speed it up to any noticeable degree.
 
Those specs should be more than sufficient for XP. Buy more RAM if you truly want to improve performance.

And I hear you on the partitions. One of our clients bought a cheapo Acer laptop the other day and my coworker was setting it up...same thing, 2 identically sized partitions. I thought maybe there was some hidden recovery data or something, but no, just a totally empty partition eating up half the drive. Stupid.
 
I read about that TinyXP one day so I decided to make my own. I used nlite to create the CD. The actual install was only like 200MB and XP used 80MB of RAM on a clean install. Worked great and got rid of all the uneeded crap.
 
My laptop is a Celeron M 1.5GHz, with XP installed. I put 1 GB of RAM in it, but only because I do a lot of Virtual PC, which needs memory for each separate running OS. It seems plenty fast to me for normal office and online stuff.

I've never seen a problem un-installing manufacturer's add-on stuff. But, who knows? Maybe you need to restore the system and then try the removals, as mechBgon suggests.

Sony has long done that same dumb partition thing. It sucks. I get clients all the time who have no disk space because they don't know how to take advantage of the second partition.
 
I second TinyXP...

Plus, let's be honest, some of these modified XP distributions have been around for a good while... someone WOULD HAVE posted a warning if something was amiss with any of them...

Yes, ACER is crazy about FAT32 and partitioning... had to do some serious reformatting on the laptop I bough for my father.
 
Originally posted by: CalvinHobbes
I read about that TinyXP one day so I decided to make my own. I used nlite to create the CD. The actual install was only like 200MB and XP used 80MB of RAM on a clean install. Worked great and got rid of all the uneeded crap.
Click to expand...

I do that too. I used to make a "developer" edition for my desktop with a bunch of runtimes and audio/video stuff installed by default, but then got tired of outdated DLLs and codecs , so I just use my "lite" edition that takes about 350MB hdd space and 50MB RAM. 🙂

Works great on my old laptop and makes my desktop lightning fast. My N800 runs modified Debian so no need to change anything there 😉
 
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