Will a 500mhz 128mb ram PIII run XP? (1 Viewer)

[Wes]

And will newer E-machine Reinstall disc for my AMD 2700 work and install on my older 500mhz PIII E-machine? Is there any copywrite system in it that will not alow the reinstall disc to be loaded on another computer?
Is there any advantages to doing this?

Just wondering?

Wes

 

[Christ Reynolds]

the 500 mhz machine should run xp just fine, but you are only allowed to use your license of windows for one machine. a restore disc may not even work on another computer anyway.

CJ

 

[MikeH1]

128 ram for XP? Its a pretty big ram hog and I use more than this amount of ram and have no other programs running ...

I'm no tech guy but if it actually does work I imagine it will be quite sluggish.

 

[SethH]

It will work with 128MB of RAM (that is MIN according to MS). However, your restore disc probably will not work. Not to mention the activation issue you'd run into with MS.

If you can work out the OS issue, I would add at least another 256MB of RAM to it. Go on eBay. You're not running a performance machine there, so just get the cheapest RAM you can find and it will likely run you $50 or so.

 

[Wes]

The computer is in my kids room and is not used to much. Just thought about reformatting the HD and reloading the windows 98 back on to speed things up, and thought why not just load my XP on it to make it a better PC.

Thanks for the feed back, Has anyone tried putting another systems reinstall disc in a different PC?

Wes

 

[Rob Silver]

Are you serious? How's that different from making copies of your friend's movies. I mean, it's free, and it's not like you're selling the copy, right? :rolleyes

Reinstallation disc is made to restore the system that came with it, not install free software (on the restore CD) on every system you see, even though it's in your own house. But hey, who's to tell you about morality.

If you want to install WinXP on your kid's system, go out and buy a copy of the OS.

 

[Jordan_Brulotte]

It will run poorly with 128MB of ram. 256MB is the realistic minimum. That machine will perform much better with win98

 

[Wes]

Rob, If your going to flame me at least get the analogy correct.

"How's that different from making copies of "Your own" movies. I mean, it's free, and it's not like you're selling the copy, right?"
Remember it's my XP!

Thanks Jordan, that is what I was looking for!

Wes

 

[Scott Merryfield]

I agree that additional memory will help this setup run much better. However, depending on your eMachines model, you may find that additional memory is more expensive than expected. Our second PC is a 1.3GHz Pentium III eMachines that requires Rambus memory, which is hard to find and, therefore, more expensive than other more common memory types. When I upgraded the above eMachines' memory from 128MB to 256MB, I found that the cost was about twice that of the more common memory types.

 

[DaveF]

I'm runing Win XP on my P3 450 with 384 MB of RAM. It ran better with Win98 SE. I'd leave well enough alone and keep 98 on it.

I suffered a major system crash, so I reformatted and upgraded to WinXP. It runs well, but is slower than 98 was. I'm also not convinced it's more stable, and some patches have caused me troubles.

I'll stick with it since I'm there. But I'd recommend against installing XP on a healthy, older machine that's running 98.

 

[Christ Reynolds]

i put xp on the dell i gave my parents, pIII 500 mhz, 128 mb ram, runs just fine.

CJ

 

[DaveGTP]

I was running XP on my Dad's K6-2 450...it ran like crap with 128MB of RAM..at first install it seemed fine, but it took very little in startup programs, etc, to drag it down and make it use the swapfile like mad. I swiped a 128MB stick from my wife's 1.1 Athlon machine and gave it to him (taking her down to 384). It ran much better. My Athlon 1800+ machine had 256MB for a while and upon bootup it generally only had 96MB free. And I keep my PC free up startup crap as much as possible.

I would stick with win98se for a sub-600 mhz machine.

You could probably find a deal on a 128MB stick of PC133 RAM somewhere that would boost performance on XP quite a bit.

 

[MikeyWeitz]

Yep, 500MHZ and 128 ram will run XP like compleate crap, even with all of the non essential services disabled. Have tried it numerous times.

You also will not be able to use the XP disk on another machine unless you crack it which is BAD!

 

[Ray Chuang]

Folks,

Realistically, if you want to run Windows XP reasonably fast you need AT LEAST 512 MB of RAM installed.

I actually installed Windows XP Home (SP2) on a Celeron 466 MHz machine with two 256 MB 168-pin PC-100 SDRAM DIMM's installed and things actually ran reasonably fast. Mind you, given that it was an Abit AB-BM6 motherboard with only ATA-33 IDE connections, hard disk access was a bit on the pokey side even on an 80 GB hard drive that has 8 MB of on-drive cache. :frowning:

I will soon have a rebuilt machine with an Athlon XP 1500+ CPU, 1 GB of PC2700 DDR-SDRAM and ATA-100 IDE interface; I think that should be sufficiently fast enough to run things in XP very quickly, given that XP is a major memory hog.

 

[Mike Fassler]

its only a memory hog if you dont turn off all the crap you should disable.

 

[DaveGTP]

256MB of RAM is fine for internet browsing and stuff. My 1800+ system was running 256MB for a long time - until I started playing CnC Generals and started hitting massive slowdowns from swapping. But for normal J6P use - 256 is fine. I wouldn't go any lower, though.

 

[Robert_Gaither]

A friend of mine and his wife used it on their ibm which was a P3 500mhz with 128 mb ram, 8.4 gb harddrive, 2 mb int video onboard, and ide 33 controller. I thought it ran reasonably well for what they did which was surf the net, download a few movie trailers, instant messaging, played some older games, and checked email. Since you don't have a second seat license I'd recommend (if it let's your) to load it for a week and if it works good to pay MS for a licensing. I don't think they'd mind if you test drive it but for any type of long term (meaning you actually find it acceptable) then I would recommend buying a seating license, who knows you might can contact emachines and they may give you a discount for an upgrade disc. If it doesn't work you'll go back to win 98se anyway.

 

[Tom Lowden]

That should be no problem. I'm actually running XP Professional on a P2 400MHz notebook with 128mb RAM and a 6GB hard drive. It's slow for any serious work, but it works fine for an internet station & word processing.

 

[nolesrule]

I'm running XP on a PIII-500 w/ 288MB RAM. I wouldn't recommend less than 256MB, although I used to have it running on 196MB.

Not only is it running XP, but it also runs my home automation software, Apache, MySQL and PHP. And I use it through the Remote Desktop over the network and it runs fine.

So, double the RAM and you should be fine for regular use. Just don't let the kids use IE or Outlook or that thing will be filled with viruses and spyware before you can blink.

 

[David Lawson]

I posted a similar question a few months ago. My PIII/450 with 256 MB RAM now runs XP Home SP2 reasonably well for most tasks, thanks in no small part to disabling most of the eye candy, startup items, indexing services, etc.

I have an additional 256 MB RAM on the way just because it was cheap (~$25), but I don't plan on doing any further internal upgrades unless I come across a considerably faster Slot 1 or Socket 370 PIII for a similar price.