Windows XP on an AMD k6-2 300mghz,96 mb...Should I even bother?

[Chipster]

It's for a friend that wants to update his OS. I know he's on the borderline of the minimum requirements for XP but do you think his computer will run better or worst with XP installed.I think I have a 128mb stick laying around that I could give to him to help in the memory department but I'm just concerned about his PC bogging down.

He's got onboard video and a 3.2GB hardrive,it's an old HP.

Any advice?

 

[stevewm]

Don't bother with XP. Its just too bloated for 96, even 128MB of RAM (Believe me when I say this, all our machines here are at work are P4 1.6Ghz, and 128MB RAM on XP, they use the page file alot! while the identical machine running Win2k doesn't even use it at all!) Not to mention a base install of XP will take up nearly half of his 3.2GB hardrive.

If you can get ahold of Win2k I would install it. Much faster than XP on that slow of a machine, plus you'll still have the stability of a NT5 based OS. And format as FAT32, all the overhead involved in NTFS makes it noticably slower than FAT32 on old machines. If you can't get 2k, stick with 98SE and stay away from Win Me.

 

[acidvoodoo]

i run windows xp pro on a 450@500 and 128mb. runs quite well. i did the 'change for best performance' option which makes it run quite well. i gamed on it too ok.i'd stick in the extra 128 and give it a try

 

[Wiz]

It really depends on what he wants to do with the system.
For instance, he's not going to play Doom 3 on it.
However if he just wants to web browse and email and maybe do a little solitaire no problem.
I have it running smoothly on a Pentium 133 with 64 megs EDO ram.
My main reason for using it over Win 98 is the security. I can set up 5 kids accounts with their own profile. They can't install a lot of stuff and I can apply different management to each profile. Plus they can each have their own settings that no one else will mess with.
It web browses, emails and plays solitaire just fine. It can even do word processing!

 

[wjsulliv]

You can install it, but I wouldn't run never games on it. As a workstation it should be fine.

I've got it installed on a word processing, scanning, internet surfing, printer station which runs a PII-233 and 96 MB EDO memory.

 

[spyordie007]

I have it setup on my girlfriends laptop:
P2 @ 300
192 MB RAM

it runs fine for all her school work, web browsing (on the wireless network and all). Sure I wouldnt use it for gaming or anything, but it runs fine.

If you did an upgrade of the RAM, and he didnt have any high expectations of it, he might just thank you for it.

-Spy

 

[Woodchuck2000]

I have it running smoothly on a Pentium 133 with 64 megs EDO ram.

Windows 2000 won't run smootly on a P133, 64, let alone WinXP. Sorry, but I find that very hard to believe.

I would recommend installing 2K on anything below a PII450 w/ 128Mb ram.

 

[acidvoodoo]

well, i ran 3dmark on mine (450mhz, 128mb, voodoo3) and even with the crappy ass voodoo 3 drivers ( i know, i'm lucky there is any, but 3dfx would do way better ones, can't even get glide workin lol) any, i get the same 3dmark as ahem, windows 95. so even with XP usin the xtra memory, i get around the same (crappy) 3d performance.

 

[Chipster]

Well thank you for the responses. This system will basically be for surfing,email and maybe listening to some mp3's. I guess I'll let him make the call based on some of these posts. He could always use it for a future PC anyway. Thanks

 

[aswedc]

Originally posted by: Woodchuck2000

I have it running smoothly on a Pentium 133 with 64 megs EDO ram.

Windows 2000 won't run smootly on a P133, 64, let alone WinXP. Sorry, but I find that very hard to believe.

I would recommend installing 2K on anything below a PII450 w/ 128Mb ram.

You'd be very surprised. I've run Windows XP on a Pentium 100 with 128MB of RAM, and I swear its faster at browsing the web than any of the 64MB OS9 IE 5 iMacs in school.

 

[DonaldC]

I ran XP Pro on a K6-2 350 for 2-3 months as a learning experience until I got all the parts to build an AMD XP system. It ran fine after you turn off the power hungry items. I don't game and used it mostly to surf and email.

I like XP well enough but a well tuned 98SE is good too.

 

[robisc]

I just recently set it up on a system for a friend running a Celery 500 and I added RAM to make the total 384mb. It is not a game machine but it is much much slower now than with 98se on it, I also turned most of the fancy stuff off too, so I would say this K6-2 probably would be so slow as to be almost unusable IMO.

 

[Sunner]

"Smoothly" is an extremely subjective term.

I thought Win95 ran fine on a bunch of 486 boxes with 8 MB(I think) in school back in the day.
Then I got a P90 with 32 MB of RAM, and I discovered that this box could actually output the stuff I typed in a command line faster than I could type them, imagine that eh?

Point being, you'll think it runs fine until you get a new box that runs it better, and once you do, you'll wonder how you could possibly think it ran fine on the old box.

As for the original question, I wouldn't bother.

 

[SUOrangeman]

I ran WinXP Pro on a Dell P166MMX with 72MB RAM for three months as an MP3+streaming+printer+scanner server. It wasn't the best, but it did work. I've moved up to a Celeron@550 with 160MB PC100 now.

-SUO

 

[python134r]

You can run it with more ram, like the others posted Ive installed it on machines well under the min. requirements and it ran ok with some tweaking and at least 128 mb ram, better if more but win 2k (any flavor) will run better cause thier is much less overhead to the os.

 

[zerocool1]

win xp wouldn't even run on my old computer-k62 500 192mb pc100. It ran 2kpro fine though.

 

[0pt3r0nG33k]

Originally posted by: aswedc

Originally posted by: Woodchuck2000


You'd be very surprised. I've run Windows XP on a Pentium 100 with 128MB of RAM, and I swear its faster at browsing the web than any of the 64MB OS9 IE 5 iMacs in school.

Ok yeah, and how did you get around the built-in "You can't do that" of XP? I know several people who tried it for kicks and got blocked at the door. Unless you have a RC copy of XP or something, it won't even run on that config.

One of my friends here jokingly said "You sure he's not missing a 0 at the end of that?"

lol