Old System Improvements

subway_ie

I've got an old Packard Bell PC, sitting unused in a spare room , rough specs: Pentium 3, 533Mhz, 256MB SDRAM (Roughly, I think it's a little less), 13GB HDD, Windows 98se. Right now, it's barely usable. Slow, noisy and the pain of using Windows 98 is just too much. What I'd like to do is format the hard drive and install a copy of Windows XP... but would I be better off sticking with 98 and just doing a reinstall? It's basically just used for word processing and internet browsing and some (very) basic games. I need to be able to network it to another PC running XP in the same room for internet connection sharing.

So really my question is: Which is better - installing (a stripped down) XP or reinstalling 98?

grimloch

if you only have less thann 256mb of RAM do not install xp it leads to problems

generally i find that a defrag and a virus scan speeds up my machine a bit

tman

stick with '98 and do a reinstall.
it might handle 2000 alright, xp would be a waste of time if you're after greater performence

subway_ie

I don't have access to 2000, so it'll have to be 98 or XP. Right now, I don't even want to touch the thing. Can't believe I used it for nearly 3 years. So I suppose I'm stuck with trying to reformat/reinstall 98 and try to set up internet connection sharing between it and the Xp system. Sounds like fun.

Dempsey

Formatting a PC with 98Se myself, having a grand time getting ICS working on the thing

sceptre

My laptop is only a p3-450. Surprisingly XP runs pretty darned well on the thing. Now it's got 384 megs of RAM these days, which helps, but it ran perfectly well with XP when it had only 128 (I'm pretty good to defrag on a regular basis which doesn't hurt). The bottleneck (if there is one) is in the graphics card, which unfortunately is only 8 megs. Given what you're thinking of doing on it, I'd go for XP instead of 98. It's at least worth a trial run.

joePC

I'd say install XP, If your only using it for light apps, Xp would be better, More stabe etc...

Im running XP Pro on a P533Mhz + 158Mbs Ram, runs perfectly no problems @ all, even running DW & FW MX.

Thanks JoePC

knucks

I have set up quite a few PIII 800Mhz 128Mb ram with XP Pro and Office XO Pro and have found them all to be very suitable for Internet/email/word-processing use. However, I would stay away from installing anything else really. I have found that it is all the small applications, downloaded from the web, and from free CDs in PC magazines etc. that end up bloating the registry and affecting performance.
Stick to a small number of quality applications, do not install every application you come accross, defrag often and you should have no problem with XP on the spec you describe.


k

dazberry

I ran XP Home for a while on a p2-450 with 256mb of RAM. I disabled the services I didn't need, and it had about 80mb RAM free after it started (by default - could be tweaked to about 120mb using a memory optimiser - read: force things to virtual memory).

It ran pretty well, but the key to this was that it was (also) running off a fast hard disk - only a 40gb, but at DMA 66 (board limitation) and 7200 rpm.

But as Knucks said, I was using the machine just for testing the UIs of the apps I was writing, so it didn't get bloated with software.

D.

subway_ie

Thanks for the advice. I think I'll give the XP install a go, the admin/user settings will be handy too, since it'll only be used by my sister. Hopefully I wont have any driver/install problems now...

Gerry

Similarly, I've recently installed 2000 on a machine with 128mb of ram. A p3 700, it runs surprisingly fast, and the key to this again is a fast western digital 7200rpm drive.
I'd suggest that you try to find more memory for the machine, and buy a more modern hard drive for it, the cpu is not the bottleneck at all.

TacT

win2k will keep the machine happy. XP will have it on it's knees

C Fodder

100% agree with Gerry and spend a little time getting the drivers correct for all the components especially IDE/chipset drivers. Performance won't be king but will run OK and fine for typing/internet useage. If its only for light use a cheap but fast 40GB should be enough plus more RAM always more RAM.

kmb

Its simple to get win98se working with xp with internet connection sharing just go to network wizard setup on the xp machine,pop in a floppy which xp will write to and just run it on win98se.Its a cinch and this from someone with knowledge of networking.

I was suprised how easy it was so i cant see a problem you reusing win 98 especially as it should run better as xp needs a lot resources especially memory.


regds kieran

subway_ie

Originally posted by kmb
Its simple to get win98se working with xp with internet connection sharing

I need to do a reinstall of windows anyway - internet connection sharing wont work on the 98 computer as it is, and along with al the crap that's been installed over the last year or two, I've gt to do a fresh install anyway.

subway_ie

I just reinstalled Windows 98 and it's running "fine". It all just feels so wrong when you're used to a nive big TFT and Windows XP. It's like I'm looking through a fishbowl.