Pprunes lowest spec Windows XP machine

[Ant]

Just wondering whats the lowest spec machine in terms of processor speed and amount of ram that any Ppruner is using to run Win XP!

Reason I'm asking is because this machine (my FUN PC) is a 10 yr old Gateway Pentium 2 350Mhz with 198Mb ram with Win 98SE which is a little too cranky, and I'm idly wondering how it would manage if I give it Win XP to chew on!

As an aside, the 198Mb of ram is comprised of 64Mb in slot 0, and 128 in slot 1.
Will it make a difference if the larger stick goes instead in slot 0?

[Saab Dastard]

I wouldn't want to run XP on anything less than 500MHz and 256MB RAM. I have done so for a couple of years, btw. I've just replaced my PIII 600 (768MB) with an Athlon 1400 / 1GB.

I've run Win2K satisfactorily on a 233MHz Tosh laptop with 160MB RAM.

SD

[P.Pilcher]

I shouldn't bother! In a machine like that, XP will run so slowly that it will almost stand still! You may however benefit from a re-install of Win 98 provided that you have got all the necessary drivers. I sometimes wonder how fast my own XP Pro mackine would run if I was using DOS Ver 6.22!
Oh for the days that I used DOS 3.3 to run a machine with a 30 Mb - yes 30 Mb hard drive. The drive held a desk top publisher, wordprocessor, spreadsheet, drafting programme, database - and plenty of games!

P.P.

[PPRuNeUser0211]

Wouldn't have been an Amstrad 286 would it pp;)?

[P.Pilcher]

No - it was a Japaneese copy of an IBM PCXT with an 8086 and 640 kB of RAM which I acquired in Riyadh. It served me for many years, is still in the loft, but I haven't switched it on for ages!

I seem to remember that in those days, the test of a good VGA card was to see how it coped with Microsoft's FS2. Mine did a good job, but on trying Mr. Sugar's creation in the local Dixons, the most dreadful maroons and purples was all it could manage. Of course, that bit of software existed on a 350kB 5.25" floppy.

Happy Daze!


P.P.