I have a system with a Pentium III 333 Mhz, 512 MB RAM, which technically meets the requirements for Windows XP, but it seems to get really sluggish and unresponsive. Would downgrading to Windows 2000 improve overall responsiveness? I did some research that says it would, but I would like to know if anyone has personal experience.
P.S. I do have a legal license for W2K. (Hooray MSDNAA.)
P.P.S Also, are there any important features of XP that are missing in 2K?
Honestly, I'd aim for 98. But 2k should run fine.
in all honesty you should go with linux
[QUOTE=humpalump;26023408]Honestly, I'd aim for 98. But 2k should run fine.[/QUOTE]
98?? Are you serious? Do you know how unstable 98 is? It's not even NT-based, plus it can only run Firefox 2 (or Firefox 3 very badly with KernelEx).
[editline]13th November 2010[/editline]
[QUOTE=JohnEdwards;26024320]in all honesty you should go with linux[/QUOTE]
Please stick to answering the original question. This is for a friend who absolutely cannot run Linux. It doesn't do anything the same as Windows, doesn't support certain proprietary camera software, etc. I would use Linux if I thought it was appropriate.
you are asking a old station wagon to carry 8 people across a state, or asking a old station wagon to go to the store and back.
[QUOTE=shill le 2nd;26024584]98?? Are you serious? Do you know how unstable 98 is? It's not even NT-based, plus it can only run Firefox 2 (or Firefox 3 very badly with KernelEx).
[/QUOTE]
My 233mhz CF-25 toughbook runs it fully patched up and it's fantastic short of the ACPI restart bug which more the fault of the BIOS.
I would recommend Windows 2000. I have had it running on a system as low as a 266mhz PII with 96mb ram and a five gig drive.
Get Windows ME
~Never Look Back~
Try using nLite to strip some stuff out of Windows XP. You can improve the overall responsiveness of XP a surprising amount, however it won't really increase performance in applications much.
[QUOTE=2 > 1;26030016]Get Windows ME
~Never Look Back~[/QUOTE]
BSoD's galore.
[QUOTE=shill le 2nd;26024584]It's not even NT-based[/QUOTE]
Coulda swore it was NT 4.0 or something... would check, but can't
[editline]14th November 2010[/editline]
oh, and yeah, I vote 98 or linux
[QUOTE=Mokkan13;26044448]Coulda swore it was NT 4.0 or something... would check, but can't
[editline]14th November 2010[/editline]
oh, and yeah, I vote 98 or linux[/QUOTE]
Windows 98 was still based on DOS, Windows NT 3.1 came out with the NT kernel in about 1993-1994.
I'm running windows 98 on a computer similar to that (even more powerful actually), and planning on switching to 2000 soon.
The most 98 can have is like ie 5.5 i think? and on top of that you can't even use newer browsers because of hardware AND software limitations, getting opera 9 to run on it is a BITCH. get 2000 and save yourself a lot of trouble. I've installed XP on mine before, and it seemed a little too sluggish (even with a 420 Mhz amd k6-2, 256 MB ram, radeon 7000)
[QUOTE=MIPS;26024696]My 233mhz CF-25 toughbook runs it fully patched up and it's fantastic short of the ACPI restart bug which more the fault of the BIOS.
I would recommend Windows 2000. I have had it running on a system as low as a 266mhz PII with 96mb ram and a five gig drive.[/QUOTE]
Windows 2000 will run on a 486 SX/DX of any speed grade, but it will be painfully slow. I've run Windows 2000 on a 486 DX2/66, 80, 120, 133 and 160 (OC) with 192 MB of RAM and it was pretty awful on all of them. The biggest limiting factor was the IDE controller only supported PIO-0 (3.3 MB/s). Using a VLB controller or SCSI made a huge difference in performance.
Windows XP will not run on a 486 due to missing two CPU instructions (CPUID and CMPXCHG16/32). However, it WILL run on the Intel 486 overdrive (due to it being a hybrid Pentium with 486 bus logic.)
[QUOTE=Seven Of Nine;26095911]The most 98 can have is like ie 5.5 i think? and on top of that you can't even use newer browsers because of hardware AND software limitations, getting opera 9 to run on it is a BITCH. get 2000 and save yourself a lot of trouble. I've installed XP on mine before, and it seemed a little too sluggish (even with a 420 Mhz amd k6-2, 256 MB ram, radeon 7000)[/QUOTE]
Windows 95, 98, ME and 2000 all can run up to IE6 SP1. Windows 2000 isn't much better in terms of software compatibility because everyone is on the ".NET Framework" bandwagon. Windows 2000 supports up to .NET 2.0, while the current release is 4.0+. I think Firefox is planning on dropping support for Windows 2000 when 4.0 is released, if it hasn't already done so in the betas.
The primary limiting factor of XP is RAM. With XP fully patched from Windows Update, the OS alone will use between 300-500 MB of RAM idle, which will cause massive swapping on a 256 MB system.
If you can get your hands on a copy of W2K, there's a program called nLite that can strip it down and use significantly less RAM and CPU, be just as responsive as a lightweight linux distro, and still be fully functional for what you want.
Thanks for the replies. Unfortunately, this computer seems to be on its last legs so I probably won't be installing anything on it. It started shorting out and hard-locking recently.
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