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Datatalk
- XP on low-end systems
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 XP
on low-end systems.
1.
What is low end?
XP
runs on 'lower end' systems as well, but there are some things you have
to pay attention to. These are my experiences thus far. This is in no way
a complete guide, but it just might come in helpful... And it's a bit of
a sport, see here for the results thus far :-)
Again, what is low-end? That depends on the time of year, the money in your wallet, the year you live in, and the complaining of your spouse... :-) Most of this was written in 2005, so in your eyes this may now be very low end :-( That's progress for you! :-) In general, low-end is that which barely runs or is considered minimal configuration for the specific software. In this case: for XP. (Often, the (Microsoft specified) minimal configuration doesn't even work, but that's a different issue.) Windows XP and Windows XP Professional are a huge leap forward. Although they have their shortcomings, they are often considered better than their predecessors, including Windows 98SE, Windows 2000 and NT. Often (though not always) more stable, better support of hardware, easier to install. The user interface has its friends and enemies (I personally hate the 'windows for children' look, but it's a matter of taste. No comments there.) Here's what Microsoft says:
Ok. So what's *workable* low end then? A bit more :-) Here's the bottom configuration I had acceptable results with running Windows XP and Microsoft Office:
Here's the set of software I tried:
My
comments to MicroSoft? Well... 64 MB is outright silly.
One of the strange problems I ran into is finding an objective way to measure the performance of low end machines regarding usability under Windows XP. To be honest: I have not yet found a proper way to do so... The best I could come up with so far is PassMark's Performance Test. But, unfortunately, it contains an 'advanced graphics' component (Direct-X stuff) which is something I do not like. At least it works... any score below 30 clearly indicates that the machine is, well, somewhat below specs :-) Most of the other programms I have tried have either these kind of 3D graphics included, or don't give a single total score / rating, and a few of the likely candidates WindBench, PCMark, SysMark, error out on some of the machines I have tried, Business Winstone forces me to install loads of apps, etc. etc... So, any suggestions and solutions are welcome! Now first a classical warning... Still got data on your harddisk? Then first make a backup before you continue! XP. XP is not cheap. You may consider postponing and buy a complete new pc including an OEM license... For home users, XP Home is enough, you won't need XP Professional (perhaps if you build your own little ad-hoc home server). If you have an older version of Windows, you may be entitled to an upgrade (and thus a lower price for XP. However, you may be happy with what you got, so think it over... Please note: never let Windows do an 'upgrade', ie. install Windows XP over an existing (other) installation, things can get way out of control, instability and lack of speed will be yours for ages to come... especially on older machines. Wipe the harddrive and do a clean install. Always. SP1 vs. SP2. The
added security (what security?) of XP SP2 takes its toll. In fact, a slipstreamed
Windows XP Pro SP2 turned out to be (a little) slower thatn SP1 on the
same
(old) machine... Regular users with newer machines may not notice.
Yet, if you want to run XP on a P1 AND if you like living on the edge AND
you're not online AND you're not into 'sharing' software from 'exotic'
sources... well, then you could settle for SP1 :-)
Windows 95. Go
go go. If you can't do XP then at least try 98.
Windows 98. Win98 users... Well, you decide why or why not. If you are happy with what you are running now: stick to it. Win98 runs often faster on older, low-end systems (though not by much). Win98 lives happily with a mere 32 MB of memor, and you might not be able to find all drivers for your hardware when you try to run XP. If you got the hardware and drivers are no issue you may consider going to XP, as it is a lot more stable. If performance is an issue, stick to / go for Windows 98! If
your PC doesn't do Windows XP you may consider upgrading to Windows 2000,
but only if you have at least 128 MB of memory.
Windows ME. WinME
users... format your drive, and go back to 98 or forward to XP. ME is,
well, I cannot think of anything polite to say about WinME. But if you're
happy with it, why change?
Windows NT 3.5. Go
go go. If you need NT and can't do XP try NT4.
Windows NT 4. If
you like games and the 98 ease of use go for XP. If you're in a stable
office environment, you might stick to what you got.
Windows 2000. Ah, XP without the gadgets :-) Actually, this decision is more difficult. If you're happy with what you got, stay there. If you want to play games, go for XP. Some have claimed that Win2K is more stable than XP... I am not so sure. XP does include more drivers, so for people upgrading from Win98 oir NT I'd rather suggest to go for XP instead of Win2K. 128
MB should be enough for Win2K, but it's (too?) tight for Windows XP. Stripping
out unneccessary services and tuning a little may overcome part of that
memory squeeze...
You may need to do some upgrading. First the good news: XP eats almost any regular video card, harddisk, mainboard, audio card. The key word is regular... Now the bad news: forget about anything exotic... no tv cards, no scanners... More good news: XP (SP1) includes most drivers, so you don't have to leave for an endless journey through obscure and incomprehensible websites for that one, half complete and fully undocumented driver. Win2K and NT drivers often work as well. And then more bad news: the drivers included with XP often do not support any 'advanced' features... (You should see how slow my old HP Deskjet 520 is under XP when doing landscape printing, it flies under Win98.) Look around on the internet for more info on drivers and XP. If you got a 'brand' system, even a Dell :-) or Packard Bell, you might be lucky (although Packard Bell will definitely not be my favourite). As the numbers sold are higher, chances are XP does include the drivers. Anything Celeron 333A and up should do. Things run a lot better if the CPU has enough cash... oops, typo, should be cache... on board. I tried it in two identical machines, one with a 333, the other with a 333A... The regular non-cache 333 Celeron was a definite no-go. P2's will do, so will Durons and Athlons. I have my reservations about anything K6 based, but that might be more due to mainboard issues than CPU itself. If the CPU is too slow, forget it. Buy another machine. If it's *just* fast enough, add memory. Memory always helps. (Harddisks sometimes help as well...) Again, go for at least a Celeron 333A. XP recognizes most regular mainstream brand mainboards. Some exotics are *not* supported (but you never know until you've tried it). Be carefull with anything that needs a special driver to fix some bugs... If there were multiple versions of a mainboard, the drivers included with XP may not take into account the 'buggy' version, and you can bet your arse on it those 'bugfixing' drivers don't work with XP. Intel boards are a safe bet, Via chipsets work most of the time (as there are huge numbers sold) but there are IDE issues with several (older?) models. In general there is support for the better known brands, but not always... Don't fiddle too much with tweaking and patches to get XP working on a 'faulty' / unsupported mainboard. It's not worth it. Try to get a mainboard that supports ATA66 (see harddisk below) and make sure it supports the (amount of) memory you have in mind. Make sure the bios can boot from a cdrom drive! Older mainboards may not (properly) support power management so switch that off if neccessary. You can *never* have enough memory. Well, that's not entirely true :-) XP likes memory a lot, but not all mainboards like a lot of memory. You need at least 128 MB of ram (forget Microsoft's suggestion of 64, it's unworkable). However (and I haven't got a clue why) Windows XP starts working smoothly at 192 MB or more. It looks like XP, depending on the configuration, simple eats up the first 128 MB or so for itself. I've seen this on most of the machines I tried XP on. So, got less than 128? Forget it. 128? Try it, but it's probably best to go for 192 or 256 total. Interestingly, my laptop (an old Sony Vaio SR1K P3-500 128 MB 8 GB HDD and factory installed Windows 2000) runs better on XP than it did on WIndows 2000, even though it has 'just' 128 MB... (Then again, that Win2k installation was bloody bloated, so that's an unfair comparison.) If there is an expert out there who can explain the reason behind this behaviour, I *really* would like to know why... I've tried it now too many times: XP needs 192, even when it reports there's a lot of free memory left. (I strongly suspect there is something hardcoded inside XP, set to 192 or 256 for optimal performace.) When you want to install additional memory, please note:
(Sometimes you can't. I've got a Sony SR1K here, fitted out with 128 MB, and it's pretty much impossible to get additional RAM for it. So I'm stuck. Nevertheless, I'm running XP on it.) Anything will do if you're not into games. Make sure you got 16 bit colours in your preferred resolution. An old Ati Rage II with 1024x768x16, or a Riva TNT2 will do fine. Forget Vesa Local Bus or ISA, and be suspicious of exotic PCI cards. Video cards often screw up any form of power management. You may consider adding a newer card to replace, for example, on board chipsets that don't like power management (especially hibernation). In some cases the on board chips still block power management, even though you added another video card (for example the Dell Optiplex G1)... Fortunately, video cards cost nothing these days. Unfortunately, it's getting harder and harder to find them, but you might still find a Riva TNT2 or a Gforce MX if you need to. This doesn't affect the speed that Windows XP 'runs' but it does affect the way the system as a whole 'feels'. Drive speed (both the transfer speed and the access time) turns out to be more important than expected, however once you use a somewhat larger (read: newer) disk of 10 GB or more you're on the safe side (most of the time). Rotation speed. Don't bother. These old boxes are all alike. The interface speed is much more important... Interface. Speed matters. The faster the interface, the better the performance. However, don't go overboard, there's little difference between ATA66 and ATA100 on these low-end machines. Go for an ATA66 drive, and don't forget to replace the (often used) 40 pins cable with an 80 pins one. The difference can be a whopping 100% extra. (The mainboard or seperate controller should support ATA66 as well.) Access time, caching and drive logic. There's no way to figure out how 'responsive' a drive is. Numbers only say so much, if they are available at all. Files are spread all over the disk, and the time the drive needs to find that data makes a lot of difference. Funny enough, even though actual benchmarking shows one drive is faster than another, the user's perception may disagree (try the old 'Bigfoot' drives). Older models (basically anything smaller than 10 GB) can be expected to be rather sluggish, even if the transfer rate is sufficient. Anything larger (read: newer) is bound to have better logic, bigger caches and lower access times. Note that there is very little difference on these low end machines when using drives above the 15 to 20 GB range. Size. Size matters :-) If you want to go deeply into details, check this out: http://www.freewebs.com/hdat2/ where you will find the HDAT2 program (nice if you have a nobbled Compaq harddrive) but a very interesting hdat2en.pdf which explains things in more details than you could ever want to :-) Even more information about all these funny limits can be found here: http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm though they missed the Compaq 64 GB limit :-) that I ran into a few times too many :-( Anyway... Size matters ;-) If you want to install the whole of XP, it'll fit on 1.5 GB. But you got nothing left. At 4.5 GB or so you can have XP and Office and some other things, but I'd strongly suggest to get at least 8 GB to have some breating room. Older machines sometimes do not (always) recognize the harddrive properly! The symptoms: large harddisks are reported as being smaller ones...
Multiple controllers and drives. Got more than one controller and more than one harddisk? Hook them up like this for maximal speed: controller 1: harddisk 1 + cdrom 1 (or dvd)Rememver: when two harddisks are connected to the same controller, the slowest drive dictates the speed! (In other words: don't mix up ATA33 and ATA66 drives on the same controller). Put a cdrom on controller number 2 unless your bios only supports bootable cdroms on controller 1 (I've seen that happen). Location of swapfile. Yes.
It helps if the swapfile is on another harddrive. But only if that drive
is at least the same speed and / or on a different controller. If possible,
put everything on the fastest drive.
This is actually the easy part.
FAT32 vs. NTFS. Use FAT32 if:
One
thing you should install now is PowerToys XP. You can use it to tweak some
options later on. Also, a tool like Windows Commander will come in handy
at later stages..
This is what it is all about. XP is so... versatile (ahum) that it includes many things we will never need. But, as they are all installed by default, they'll eat up disk space and processing power. XP, conceptually, should be roughly as fast as Windows 2K but might be slowed down somewhat due to all 'extras'. After stripping all fluff, I've found it to be a bit faster than Windows 2000 as well as Windows NT, and (with the same but powerful hardware) often even faster than Windows 98 (probably only due to better / newer drivers for newer hardware, but still). However, other people have reported the opposite. I guess it depends on how much you tweak :-) Note: if you have an old P1, XP may NOT install. Not even from a bootable cdrom. If it doesn't boot or hangs, and the i386\winnt route didn't work either, you may try the 'six floppy set' that you can find on Microsoft's website. Some P1's may not install XP at all (sorry) but you can still try Windows 2000. (So far, I haven't had much luck with P1's at all. I did get an overclocked P1-225 MMX to work, sort of... You're free to have a go at it yourself :-)) There are many great sites on the subject of tweaks and tuning and registry hacks, and I'm not going to replace them all. Here's just a little summary of the steps to take, and some notes where I felt they were necessary. (I've added some links if you need in-detail information.) A little help... The following file changes the registry, and disables many services (not all though). Download it, save it, and execute it. If you want to use Internet you'd better go into the control panel / administrative tools / services and re-enable 'dns client service'. If you're using a DHCP server you have to re-enable 'DHCP client service' as well. tweakservices_aggressive.reg
The first thing I do...
5.2 Firewall and Windows update. Stop. If you are NOT behind a gateway or personal firewall, you should install one right now. Surfing with an unprotected XP is asking for all sorts of nasty stuff sneaking onto your machine. Do yourself a favour, and forget about the built in firewall of XP SP1 (and perhaps even XP2). You even may decide to install something like SpyBot S&D or TeaTimer right now. Otherwise,
you know what to do. It's up to you. Remember you can only update (to SP2)
with a valid key...
5.3 Computer browsing.
5.5 Services.
In general, you can kill off any service that is of no use to you. Those will be many! :-) Here are some you should not kill (this list is not complete, pay some attention, act with caution, run to mama if things go wrong...
5.6 XPLite / nLite. Another nice tool to have is XPLite. Unfortunately, it's commecial, but the free version allows you to take out a little more, and it's an easy way to disably the 'system file restore' functionality of XP. If you look around on the Internet, there are a few patched files available to replace the original ones so you can avoid the system file restore stuff in other ways. There's also nLite. Search
the Internet for nLite and XPLite. It may be worth your time. Then again,
it may not :-)
5.7 CacheMan. Don't expect too much from the memory management functionality, but... when you're dealing with a system with a very slow harddisk, it's sometimes worth it to sacrifice some memory.
Note: ANY additional background programms will slow down your system a little. Some of them you don't need to be 'resident' all the time (printer utilities etc.) and some others you cannot live without (virus scanners, firewalls, etc.). Disable what you can, keep wat you want or need. Too much of this stuff can slow down your computer, until it becomes unusable. Some (un)known programs that may or will slow down your machine, by either stealing CPU cycles or eating up memory. Remember, you may need certain applications, this is just to give you an idea of where to look when the slow downs have become too much...
This tweak may or may not work. First read this statement from Microsoft... Windows XP and Windows 2000 have some troubles detecting the CPU's L2 cache. If you have a CPU with an L2 cache larger than 256 KB (P3 and up) you should check the following setting using RegEdit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\SecondLevelDataCacheThis key is often set to 0 hex. With 256 KB L2 cache this is okay. If your CPU has more L2 cache, you could gain a little (1% to 5%) by changing this: set it to 200 hex for 512 KB, 400 hex for 1024 KB, etcetera. Note that at the default value of 0 Windows is supposed to detect it by itself. But it often doesn't... I tried this tweak on several machines, and they all showed some improvement. Using Performance Test on an XP2500 the performance difference was small: 287.3 before the change, 292.1 after the change. Changing / disabling some of the background / trayicon programs (snooze the virusscanner, exit cachemem, stop hmonitor, etc.) made a lot more difference: 292.1 with all that stuff running in the background, 305.7 without. Note 1: benchmarking showed a marginal increase in 'absolute' speed of the whole system. However, some systems 'feel' a lot faster after this change, just as with the newer / faster harddrives. Note
2: later service packs should have fixed this one by default...
5.9 Make a backup. Got
it working? IMMEDIATELY CREATE AN IMAGE using Ghost or some other package.
All XP's protection is now OFF. If you screw up, the only way to get your
Windows XP back is reinstall it!
7.1
Asus P3-800
Not exactly a low-end machine (although that depends on when you are reading this :-)). Upped the memory to 512 MB, replaced the 20 GB 7200 2 MB cache with a 80 GB 7200 8 MB cache. I tried different harddisks with different speeds in this one, 20 GB 7200 2 MB ATA100, 40 GB 5400 2 MB ATA100, 40 GB 7200 2 MB ATA 100, and 80 GB 7200 8 MB ATA 133. Difference between the 5400 and 7200 rpm drives was minimal. The impact of the ATA133 in combination with the 8 MB cache of the 80 GB drive was much bigger. In pure transfer speed still perhaps another 20%, but the system simply felt more responsive (logical, as access time went down thanks to higher rpm and bigger cache). Remarkable: the 40 GB 5400 drive was faster than the (two years older) 20 GB 7200 drive, though only by a fractional margin. (See, Max? I told you rotation speed isn't the conclusive all-defining factor! :-)) Lots of machines can do ATA66 / ATA100 but have that wrong cabletype still in their innards! Dunno why so many companies did not install these back then. Lack of understanding or saving a few pennies? I don't know... Spend that $5 per IDE controller and take the old cables out as soon as possible, you won't regret it.
Came with Windows 2000. Tried XP on it, and yes, XP runs fine, even if the machine only has 128 MB of memory. Some power management functionality is lost though. Again not a low-end machine, but I've listed it here because of the interesting memory behaviour. I expected the 128 vs. 192 MB memory issue here as well, but it was much less appearent than I expected. Dunno' why... I love the design of this little machine. It runs forever on its expensive battery (grrr). If only that harddisk would not make such a racket... and I could afford some additional memory... Update: I've managed to upgrade it to SP3. Windows itself may be fine and fast enough on 128 MB (well, sort of) but SP3 itself was a slouch to run... First the 60+ MB of downloads, and then the upgrade process itself which took forever. (I left it running overnight, wasn't going to stay up for that.) But it seems to be working now... I also took the opportunity to exchange the original 10 GB harddisk for a larger model (a 40 GB from a Dell Lattitude). Finally, according to the Sony website the SR1K had little power management to start with, as opposed to the SR11K. Interesting, as the Win2K recovery disks clearly had some tools for power management. Well, perhaps they never worked well :-) Here's an image of the SR1K, running Windows XP, FireFox, using an old LinkSys WPC54G 802.11G wireless card. Your average 'netbook' can't hold a candle against it when it comes to design...
Now we're talking! :-) These only costed 33 bucks a piece ex. VAT (back in 2003)... I got three, each with a 128 MB module, two with a 4.3 GB harddisk, one with a 2.1 GB harddisk, two with a cd-rom drive, one with a dvd drive, and some horrible keyboards and mouses. Not a bad deal when you're looking for scrap... Two were 333A, one was a 333. At this price, I felt free to try all sorts of things :-) Some images.
Classical beige case, custom Dell mainboard and custom Dell powersupply. The plastic looked somewhat... weathered (the coffee stains don't show on the picture). The power supply is only 150 Watts... oh well, it worked fine so far :-) There was only one mounting spot for a harddisk, so I used two pieces of aluminium to create a harddrive doublepack... (I would have added some cheese, but the drives were getting too hot and there's only so much I will do to make a computer resemble a Big Mac.) I found an old power splitter in the spare parts box, and almost blew up the drives as the +5 volt did not connect properly... Ooops. (And yes, I had blue carpet in my study at the time.) Celeron 333 vs. 333A, 196 MB. I have tried two of these Dell beasts, one with a 333, one with a 333A. The speed difference between the 333 and 333A was remarkable. So take a 333A (with cache), never a 333 without the cache... (I've abused that machine for spare parts for the other two). Celeron 333, 128 MB, 1x 2.1 GB ATA2. An excercise in patience :-) Yeah, it worked, and all software I tried worked as well. But 'fast' is not an appropriate word... Celeron 333A, 256 MB, 2x 4.3 GB ATA33. I've also tried two different harddrive sets in the 333A machine. Using two 4.3 GB ATA33 harddrives the machine was 'workable' but sluggish on drive access. Adding a little memory (so in total 256 MB) made it acceptable (not fast but just so so). I had to make some modifications to get both drives working, there are not enough power cables to hook the second one up to (I wonder if there actually is enough power :-) although it has been running fine for a year now) and there was no bracket to mount the second drive. Ah, a challenge! Performancewise it achieved the great PassMark Performance score of... 34! Yeah, incredible :-) (I'm not so sure about the exact drive specs, It is ATA33 and 4.3 GB, and I *think* it is 4800 rpm with 64 KB cache, but I found some contradicting specs on the Internet.) Celeron 333A, 192 MB, 1x 10 GB ATA66 / 5400. Same machine as above, however with a different harddisk (that I stripped from an old Compaq Deskpro) and an 80 pins cable. Drive speed went up 125% (more than twice as fast, more than the just the IDE transfer speed difference). With slightly less memory (192 instead of 256) it's still faster than the previous configuration, so this is a case where harddisk speed really mattered (and more than I expected). Dunno' about the 80 pins vs. 40 pins cable issue here though, it might not have made a difference... Some minor performance hits with SP2, but still acceptable. Celeron 333A, 192 MB, 1x 15 GB ATA66 / 5400. On request of the users (my parents :-)) I replaced the harddrive. The old 10 GB drives make quite a lot of noise, and this replacement (a two years younger 15 GB WD150 salvaged from a broken Compaq) did not. Configuration runs nice, good enough for a little word processing and Internet browsing. It even runs an acceptable 'Dark Reign' game if the need arises. It even survived the replacement of the CDrom with a new burner, so... Celeron 333A, 256 MB, 1x 20 GB ATA100 / 7200. A small experiment, upping the ante a little further. As expected the transfer rate did not increase much, as the mainboard doesn't support ATA100. The extra +25% transfer rate (compared with the 10 GB configuration) was due to a smarter drive with a bigger cache and higher rotation speed. This configuration ran quite acceptable, and felt no longer as sluggish as the previous configurations did... It's no high performance beast, but what did you expect? The final verdict? Add a little memory and a new harddrive and all Optiplex G1 owners are ready for XP :-)
Old Compaq Deskpro's have one advantage: you can be pretty sure Microsoft included all drivers, as these boxes are still used in many offices. These are P3 machines with Intel mainboards, and at least 10 GB ATA66 harddrive. No problems. Here are some notes...
Laughable :-) This system is still under investigation, sort of. Imagine, an old P1 on an Asus mainboard. Someone gave it to me, and it turned out to be a P1-200 MMX overclocked to 225 Mhz. Booklet was gone, but it was stable enough so I didn't change any bios or jumper settings. And gave it to my parents :-) But I got it back a while ago, as they upgraded to a (drum roll) Celeron 333A (yeah, the one mentioned above). The rest of the hardware? 128 MB EDO, two Quantum Bigfoot harddrives (the heavy 5.25" units, still ATA33 though), Diamond Stealth Video 64 (S3 Trio chipset). The audio card wasn't detected, so that's still something to work upon. (Hey, for 10 bucks you can buy some brand xyz card that *is* recognized by xp, so that's what I'll probably end up doing. If I'm ever going to use this machine again, that is... :-)) Harddisk performance on this machine was not as bad as expected. Although slow and outdated, the two Bigfoot drives are ATA33... unfortunately, the mainboard is not, so it's 'multi word DMA mode 2' or something similar in Windows, or 'LBA mode 4' according to the bios. Stil nothing impressive though :-) Anyway, the only way to install XP on this one was the 'six floppy' method. Took some time but got it working. Interesting to see the 'it is now save to switch off your computer' message again :-) Ah, those memories... So, now I have XP running on an old P1 225 MMX. Am I happy? No. Did the world improve? Not really. Was it fun? In a sadomasochistic way: yes. So it's now time for that one final question: is it a workable setup? Ehm... well... For starters, it doesn't multitask properly. Once those drives start loading and swapping, little else goes on. If this machine would not be connected to the Internet, it would actually be possible to do something with it :-) Conclusion:
better stick to Windows 98 :-)
7.6 Your system? Got your (low-end) system working? Tell me! I'm also still looking for a compact benchmark that shows 'user experienced performance' (very subjective indeed :-)) and runs on old and heabily patched machines. No luck with WinBench (crashes sometimes) and PcMark (expects too much :-)) and most of the syntethic benchmarks (SiSoft Sandra etc.) are too focussed on a single aspect. Suggestions are welcome! And
no. I cannot help you getting your system to work, so don't send me any
questions of that nature. There's simply too much different stuff out there,
and I'm already spending way too much time on forums and email :-) So,
browse the web, visit the forums, and you'll find someone with the same
problem and the right solution. It can take some time... so be patient.
Good luck!
I'm
not the expert, but other people are :-) Here are some links...
8.1 Tweaks and services. Remember, all information in here can be pretty outdated. So do not be too enthousiastic...
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