Time to throw out the old Pentium I/MMX computers? Not yet... read this guide on how to install Windows 2000 on a very old computer with only 32MB RAM and tweak it to run very fast.
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2005-07-07
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2005-07-08
I seem to recall I installed NT3.1 then NT3.5 on a 486 with 16M, and NT4 on 32M cyrix or so, NT5 should never have required vastly more resources than that since alot of the code was still common. Every W2k install I do I strip out all the junk media files but nowhere near down to this level.
Mot all apps today would want to run on an unpatched no sp2 either but its intersting to see what this install would do on a high end XP 1G PC. Something to try out soon.
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2005-07-09
The guide suggested not to install any service packs at all, which I consider a pretty careless thing to do, unless you don't plan to hook the computer up to the internet
Also, the obligatory virus and spyware removal tools will be hell to use with only 32 MB, so unless you absolutely need to run Windows, you're probably better off installing a lightweight Linux distribution customized for running on older machines.
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Agreed, and pretty pointless too IMO. Service Packs mostly install newer versions of files that already exist. Maybe somewhat bigger, maybe some new functionality, but normally doesn't do much to memory/disk space requirements. Certainly not when installing a version with integrated Service Pack. So this tweak doesn't look smart if you consider most SP's include lots of security/performance/stability updates.
1c3d0g wrote: "Don't get me wrong, it might be useful for some people, but I'd rather see articles focusing on better stability/security/scalability between O.S. on systems with low amounts of RAM."
Running on low-spec machines IS about scalability (downscaling in this case). And stripping unneeded crap can do a lot to improve security + stability.
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Damn Small Linux can work on systems with 16MB of RAM...so what's this article about? Showing the Open Source community that M$ can produce a streamlined O.S. too? Or is this another flamebait article? 
Don't get me wrong, it might be useful for some people, but I'd rather see articles focusing on better stability/security/scalability between O.S. on systems with low amounts of RAM.
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2005-06-29
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2005-07-06
It wouldn't run any faster on a machine with 1GB of memory, tweaks like this are only useful on constrained machines.
I used to be quite an avid tweaker, essentially a habit I picked up from the days when I only had 8MB's of memory. One day I decided to setup 2 profiles on XP one heavily tweaked the other had windows defaults then ran some benchmarks. Guess what the tweaked profile wasn't a single bit faster.
The moral of the story is that it's pointless releasing servicing purely to save memory if your not short of memory in the first place.
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2005-07-06
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Where NTFS is likely to be faster is a situation with multiple threads updating the filesystem(s) simultaneously: the FAT32 FAT in a badly fragmented situation may get as bad as reading through 8 megs of memory to access 8 megs of files, and that's for a single file, on a single volume. Now, imagine if you had a full load of drives, where you had somewhere around 25 volumes or so, and you were doing lots of file updates, such as running a webserver that has a forum on it that's very active, and is serving up webpages, and is also serving email.
Granted, there are ways to minimize the impact, but NTFS starts making more sense there, especially on recovery if there's a power glitch or another type of hardware/software failure.
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2005-07-17
To make Windows 2K hum on an older computer all you need is two disk drives.
Adding a second drive for the pagefile is sometimes enough. Just add a second drive, under a gigabyte in size, and format it FAT. FAT only looks at the disk once per read/write, FAT32 twice and NTFS four times. However if you are daring enough do this:
Get two drives of equal size. Put them both in your old (Pentium II minimum IMHO) machine and get ready to install 2000. Install Windows on the first disk, using as little space as you can - like a partition of 5 Gigs. After the install convert/upgrade both disks to dynamic disks and get ready to blaze.
After you have dynamic disks create at least two striped partitions, one large one for Programs and Documents and the second for TEMP, Pagefile and Internet cache (for example). I personally like to create 4 1-Gig striped partitions for the Pagefile, Temporary space ($TEMP and $TMP), Internet Cache, and Indexing service.
You just have to hunt down and find all of the stuff to put on the striped drives. The Temp files can be moved (in system properties), the My Documents by right clicking it in 2000, remember to install your programs on the striped drive, move the pagefile, etc...
The idea of splitting the striped drives into smaller parts will help you keep them defragmented at a pretty normal rate.
It will work great, trust me. I've used this a lot on machines with 30 MB RAM (shared video) and they stay up for months without needing a reboot and take even the abuse of children users.
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I've got a K6-2 450 with 64mb of ram running an nLite customized and up to date XP SP2 nicely. Has only about ~10 services running at start, including a lightweight rules-based firewall (Kerio 2.something), immunized with Javacool's Spysweeper and Spybot S&D, with AVG available for on-demand scanning. Using Opera and behind a NAT router, running a limited user account.
It's pretty reasonably secured and fully functional, and surprisingly snappy. Not sure how it would scale down to 32MB, but it's not bad at all, and plays Starcraft and other old games fine.
That said, my P2 400 w/128mb is also very fast and smooth running Arch linux.
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I've tried both NTFS and FAT32 on my 80GB drive and I really didn't notice any speed difference. What I did notice was how much FAT32 sucks. File size limits, easy to corrupt, poor security, etc. In this day and age no one should still be using FAT32 with a modern OS. It's a dinosaur.
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2005-07-06
I've been doing this sort of thing for ages..
windows xp pro will run great on a p75/64mb after its heavily tweaked. My brothers 1.7ghz p4 tower died and i put him on my only spare for about a week. that machine... the only thing he couldnt do was play mp3s without stuttering while surfing via opera 8. web browsing and everything is speedy on it. with a pci audio card i could probably get it to play mp3s while doing other stuff without stuttering. all i have on hand is an old isa sb16
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2005-07-06
Don't disable the Event Log.
If you do, it will take longer to boot up at first. Just to let someone know incase they were wondering why the boot up took longer. What it does it that it is loading the settings, then the network connection and suddently goes blank for a while looking the event logger. After like 10 seconds, it doesn't find it and logs in normaly. Most other tweaks worked. Will not try Fat or Fat32 tweak, even though I am interested in knowing about the dynamic disk thing and putting temp and such on another disk. If someone wants to elaborate more on this or link some instructions, much appreciated. Or if anyone tried this and it doesn't much help improve overall speed and efficiency, please post.
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This is all fine and good, but for the average home user, this skeleton setup would be very impractical. No sound, only 10 MB to spare for apps, few resources available to spare towards installing security updates. At best, an out-dated workstation. At worst, an ITs worst nightmare in the making
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I could probably get Windows 2000 down to smaller than that using nLite to remove all the unneeded parts (including IE), and disabling a few more services.
Still, i usually use Windows 95 or Windows 98 (or even DOS sometimes) on older computers for a slightly more retro feel.
and stop it with the BUT OMG, LINUX CAN DO IT. I for one prefer Windows, for all its wrongs. Plus its fun making a pile of bloat run on ancient computers.
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Does anyone know how ext2 comapres to FAT/NTFS in terms of reability and performance on windoze systems? I'm talking about the FOS ext2 drivers on sourceforge
http://e2fsprogs.sourceforge.net
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look here
http://winhistory.de/more/386/winq.htm
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in 1999, I run Windows 2000
on an 80486DX/4-100
with 32 MiB EDO PS/2 DRAM.
It took like 15 minutes to
boot, but run smoothly
afterwards. I did about
the same things as he did,
but the box was used for
network serving, too.
And I never liked hibernation;
you know x86 hardware has
its own will, and a reboot
can heal it.
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2005-07-17
To all the suggestions about using linux or *nix or win9x or nt 3.* - this guy CLEARLY says that he needed to do this because he is using his phone for internet and there are only 2000 and above drivers.
He clearly says:
Why would you do that?
I had an old but very leight-weight small subnotebook that I needed for after hours support for one of my clients... I needed to install Windows 2000 to use my mobile phone as a modem to access the high speed 3G data network. Your reason might be that you have an old PC you don't want to throw away and Windows 95/98/Me might not give you the features you are looking for... be aware though that if Windows 98 meets your needs it is stupid to upgrade because you have lots less memory to work with when installing Windows 2000.
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Uh no it does not. I suggest you actually 1) try it or 2) read about it before posting. Just because your mouse and or keyboard function properly does not mean that ALL USB devices work properly.
For reference:
SP4:http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;819332
http://support.microsoft.com/search/default.aspx?query=usb&x=0&y=0&...
(A list of 20 errors and their patch-fixes included with SP4)
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;320853
(A site identifying all that was "fixed" in service packs 1-3, including MANY USB fixes, as many as 100)
I know for a fact that Windows2000 pre SP1 does not work with 90% of USB devices, because I'VE PERSONALLY TRIED IT.
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uh....duhh....
well considering w2k is the only thing i run besides linux i think i do know a little at least...
my usb keyboard works fine
my usb mouse works fine
my usb printer with card reader works fine
(printer after installing drivers)
my lexmedia media reader works fine....
but there is a difference in support for USB and support for USB devices... as well as a difference in support for USB and USB2...
I didnt bother with your links, but my guess is that you are confusing usb for usb2... read your own links and see if it doesnt mention usb2 and then post back telling me everything that you KNOW! w2k didnt have support for usb2 built in but it was simply a inf file and update driver...
now if you are talking about driver support for the devices and not just the usb port then that is something else as well....
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actually i think win98 is as much of a hog if not more than w2k... so i think w2k is a good move... i also think w2k is a much better os than win98....
some of the tools he talks about in here he could accomplish the same thing without the tools but oh well...
most of this just sounds like normal stuff i do anyway since i like my machine to have as much resources available as possible.... also on laptops, depending on the brand you will have hkcmd or tp4mon and you can kill those off as well.... I also kill dhcp and set my ip manually,distributed transaction controler, alerter, remote access stuff, telephony, windows time....
If you do kill event log I THINK that is the one that will hang for a while on bootup...
i think i did end up with a service pack 4 recently for some program tho and it seems alright... I think my laptop uses about 24megs on startup....
I just plain DISABLE some of the services
not a bad article....
of course he could just use linux on a old machine to act as a gateway with the modem hooked to that and then he would be able to not skip the firewall, the telephony services and remote connection stuff as well...
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It is very difficult to get anything done on Linux with 32MB of RAM. Yes, DSL will "feel" fast enough, but you will find it difficult to actually use it for any sort of "Desktop" taks. You'll have word processors that make Wordpad look powerful and spreadsheets that make paper and pencil look easier. A basic Linux system will do an excellent job as a server with an old system like that, but virtually all GUI applications for Linux are dreadful memory hogs if they have any functionality. Firefox and Thunderbird are barely usable with 128MB of RAM on Linux, as is OOo. With 32MB, both are out of the question. In contrast, most Microsoft apps have the major advantage of being incredibly lightweight, loading quickly and performing well even on ancient hardware. MS Office is the ONLY sane solution for office taks if you need to get any real work done with a system that has <128MB RAM. Internet Explorer is amazingly fast, too. Unfortunately the avantages of MS products end there.
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Try PC/GEOS 4.2. It runs on 8086 to Pentium 4 from 640Kb and Hercules or CGA to TrueVesa and more: FASTer than FAST! Stable, very Stable! Only with 20MB Size on Harddisk with Full DTP OfficeSuite a'la MSOffice, but better, smaller and faster.
http://www.breadbox.com
Forget the Microsoft Dust!
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Rather than struggling and tweaking to free up that last few Kb of memory, why not just upgrade when RAM is so cheap?
There's a computer recycling centre down the street from where I live. They're paid to dispose of old PCs mainly from schools/colleges and companies. RAM modules less than 128Mb are broken down for their raw materials and they have so many 128Mb PC100/PC133 sticks that they'll give them away free if you ask nicely. For that matter you can get a whole 600Mhz PIII, 256Mb RAM, 20Gb Hard disk, etc. for about $30. That's a system that really can run Windows 2000 quite nicely for web browsing and word processing.
I suppose it might be interesting to see how well a newer OS can run on really old hardware. But I can't really see any reason to run an old Pentium MMX for any practical task when much faster computers are being thrown in the trash and are available for next to nothing.
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