Windows XP on old Laptop?

[PCDumbass]

Can she possibly handle it, or will she just go unbelievably slow once I put it on there?

What is the minimum RAM req'd (bare essentials) to run XP anyhow?

-Rob
robpilgrim@gmail.com

 

[NuNuNYC]

roffle, 233 Mhz? Don't think u'd even get past the boot screen. Actually, I don't even think u'd be able to fit the O/S on it. Maybe if you cut out all the junk stuff.. but even then, you probably won't be able to install any applications... this might be a little below average to average setup for a linux box (or laptop)...

 

[DetroitSportsFan]

You could fit it on there, but you still don't meet the minimum requirements. Shooting from the top of my head, Microsoft says minimum requirements are 3 gig of hard drive space, 128 mb of ram, and at least a 300 mhz pentium II processor.

IN REALITY WinXp needs closer to 5 gigs by the time you install all the updates and you include its virtual memory paging file. Not to mention, minimum memory specs in my book are at least 256mb and 512 recommended. I also wouldn't install it unless I had a pentium III class processor. Sadly, your machine will run best with win98 on it. You could run win2000, but I wouldn't recommend it. I installed win2000 on a Pentium II 300 mhz laptop that had 192 mb ram and a 5 gig hard drive and felt it ran too slow. It would take close to 5 minutes to completely load. Once loaded, it ran ok, but still pretty slow.

So, its probably not even in your best interest to even try winXP on this particular laptop.

 

[bdjohnson]

I have installed xp with 2gb hard drive, 98mb ram, and a 166mhz cpu. If it lets you install with so little ram you will need to turn all the visual effects off. 2gb is enough for sp1 and office with a few hundred mb left over.

 

[GfW]

Tried to install it on a PC with a 350MHz CPU/ 256MB RAM ... it installed and ran ... very slowly. Almost to the point of it not being useable. And that was with very little else on the PC.

 

[DennyD]

Hi there... I work for MS XP Tech Support and I see this question all the time. The minimums req's for XP is 64mb ram and a 233 cpu. There is a workaround to drop down the ram to 32 but I'd advise against it. If doing a clean install on a reformatted drive the 3gb is enough as well.

The thing you have to really worry about is if your laptop's BIOS is up to date or not.

 

[mtnagel]

The responses have been shocking to me.

First, I just installed XP Home and it took 1.5 gb (that was before SP2, which was 90 mb to download, but I don't know what it expands to) so I'd find it hard to believe that it wouldn't fit in 3 gb (plus, can't you just uninstall some optional features?).

Second, I ran XP on a PII 350 mhz machine with 196 mb RAM and it ran wonderfully. While no, it wouldn't win any speed records, it ran everything I needed it to.

As a matter of fact, my daughter is using that machine as basically an internet box, but I've downgraded to ME for that machine because I didn't have 2 licenses for XP. But she does run some older kids games and obviously IE works fine.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: PCDumbass
Can she possibly handle it, or will she just go unbelievably slow once I put it on there?

What is the minimum RAM req'd (bare essentials) to run XP anyhow?

-Rob
robpilgrim@gmail.com

It will work fine, but I'd use Win2k on there because it will perform a bit faster due to a lower memory footprint. Add a RAM chip in there for a huge speed increase. The CPU itself will be fine - not super fast, but fine for basic use.

RAM is your main constraint. Upgrade the RAM in the box.

 

[mtnagel]

Interestingly enough, I just installed 98 on an old computer I'm selling and it was a whopping 119 mb! That's a pretty big jump from 98 to XP (over 10x!).

 

[earthman]

LOL Win 95A used to fit into about 50 Megs including page file. It actually has more to do with installing it then turning off effects and services to maximize what you have. If you force XP to use the old-style interface its noticeably faster on older CPU's.

 

[KoolDrew]

I would suggest installing a Linux distro rather then Windows as Xp would not run well on it at all

 

[LeetestUnleet]

I've got WinXP Pro installed on a P2 300 desktop and 64MB of RAM completely updated with everything except SP2 (I haven't used that machine since it was released). It's got a 4GB drive and I've got plenty of room left over... Like other have said, just do a minimal/custom install of what you need, and make it run in classic style. It'll be fine. However, dclive is right in that upgrading the RAM will give you the biggest increase in performance -- even if it's a meager jump to 128MB. The machine I just described was originally running at 192MB but I took out the stick of 128 to put into another machine, and it runs just fine (although slowly) on 64MB. I don't know about *INSTALLING* it on 64MB, since I installed it at 192MB, but it'll run just fine on 64MB. If possible, I suggest pulling another stick from another machine for the install just to speed things up.