Political Crossfire Forums

[The Grandmaster]

Well, a friend of mine got a computer the other day, a hand me down. She wants my help with it, but upon hearing the specs, I was disappointed. A piece of junk it sounds like. It’s an old HP, and from the description, sounds like it’s from about 1999-2000. It has a 19 gig hard drive, and 96 megs of RAM, and Windows 98. So from this, I’m assuming it has about a 500/600 MHz processor, possibly as high as maybe a 1GHz at best.

Well, I haven’t installed windows 98 in years. I have a Windows XP SP2 Disk I use. Is it even worth trying to install it? Can the hardware on this computer even run Windows XP, and if so, would their be enough resources left over to even do tasks? What say you, what’s the best way to rebuild the machine.

[Gus]

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/evaluation/sysreqs.mspx


Windows XP will work. But if you can get your hands on a copy of Windows 2000, I'd go that route.

[FCTE]

The Grandmaster wrote: Well, a friend of mine got a computer the other day, a hand me down. She wants my help with it, but upon hearing the specs, I was disappointed. A piece of junk it sounds like. It’s an old HP, and from the description, sounds like it’s from about 1999-2000. It has a 19 gig hard drive, and 96 megs of RAM, and Windows 98. So from this, I’m assuming it has about a 500/600 MHz processor, possibly as high as maybe a 1GHz at best.

Well, I haven’t installed windows 98 in years. I have a Windows XP SP2 Disk I use. Is it even worth trying to install it? Can the hardware on this computer even run Windows XP, and if so, would their be enough resources left over to even do tasks? What say you, what’s the best way to rebuild the machine.

XP will run slow as dirt, it's not even worth it. Get the specs on the processor, if it's 1Ghz then up the ram to at least 128MB, and upgrade the hard drive to a 7200 RPM with at least 40GB of space, (it probably has a 5400RPM which is going to be pure misery, you can tell if it clicks really loud) and then install Windows 2000 if you have a copy lying around, if not reinstall 98.

If the processor is below 1Ghz I wouldn't bother with it, it's junk.

You can build a decent machine for $300. I just put together a 2.53GHz Celeron 64 with a really nice motherboard for $150. Granted I had a new case w/ a PSU lying around and a spare 1Ghz of DDR400 Memory.

[Pzatchok]

Even if its a bit slow it will make an fine internet box running anything you can make run. Though Xp would be the easiest. Just don't let it update past you SP2. MS is update 'installing' a registration tracker that leaves an annoying message box up at the worst times and places.


I'm just not annoyed enough to remove it yet.

[David]

You need at the very least 256 megs ram to run XP without taxing the system.You'll wear out the hard drive using virtual memory and it's s l o w going.