192MB RAM and Windows XP

[stevo1210]

A friend asked about this today. He has a laptop which he wants to use for school for word processing and light internet usage. It currently has Windows 98 and he has a copy of Windows XP SP2 which he wants to install on the laptop. Apparently Windows 98 won't let him log onto the school portal as the portal requires a Windows XP based PC. His laptop is a Dell Latitude C600 with a PIII 700Mhz CPU, 192MB PC100 RAM, 20GB Hard drive, ATi M3 8MB graphics card and a DVD drive.
I wasn't sure what to say when he wanted XP on a laptop with 192MB of RAM. I used to run XP off a PII 350 with 160MB RAM and that was ok, wasn't too bad but this was like 3 years ago. So should XP be installed on a PC with 192MB of RAM?

Normally I would define 256MB of RAM as suitable for XP and internet usage, but in this case I'm not sure.

Thanks.

[momaka]

Re: 192MB RAM and Windows XP

As long as he keeps it clutter free - that is, have only the most basic applications such as firewall and antivirus on start up - then he will be fine.
I have a computer here that I got from a dumpster. 256MB or ram and XP SP2 and the hard drive is constantly reading from and writing to pagefile. I still have to remove all of the installed junk.
Generally, XP without the service packs is much faster and can run on even 128MB very well, but SP1/SP2 adds a lot of good features to XP (like USB 2.0, which you can have on the regular XP, but you have to install drivers and a few other things manually).

[pentium]

Re: 192MB RAM and Windows XP

You ever heard of Windows FLP?
It's XP for low spec computers.

EDIT: It was running pretty well on a 500Mhz K5 with only 128MB ram after I ran Windows updated and patched 'er up.

[stevo1210]

Re: 192MB RAM and Windows XP

OK, we've managed to do it. We've installed XP on that laptop with only 192MB of RAM and currently I'm browsing the net with it using IE6 and I have 70MB of RAM remaining. On Idle I'd have about 110MB remaining out of the 192MB. I'd have to say it's pretty responsive. I have one question though, should I install any form of antivirus or just forget about it? He used to have 98 on this and there were no Antivirus apps so I suppose it would be OK to usw XP SP2 without antivirus?

Thanks.

[zandrax]

Re: 192MB RAM and Windows XP

I installed an nLited XP SP3 on a K6-II 333 MHz, 192 MB of PC66 and a 1.2 GB Maxtor hard disk (which supported only PIO mode: slow as hell) to run a print server: it was a light load (only printer sharing, firewall and UltraVNC server) and I installed XP on the whole drive because I couldn't fit Debian netinstall with a good partitioning scheme [don't ask why I turned to Windows instead of another linux distro: you won't like the answer However later I got a 20 Gb hdd for free on which I proficiently installed Debian so I ditched both the Maxtor and XP, but this is another matter].

I doubted it would have suported a full XP installation so I stripped XP with nLite removing unneeded drivers, languages and deafult apps: it used about 400 MB of disk space, 60 MB of ram at boot and rarely swapped.
IMHO your friend can install XP SP3 on his notebook: if he sticks with resource-savy apps (e.g. Opera instead of Firefox or IE7 and 8, OpenOffice 2.4 or MS Office 2k instead of OO 3 or newer Office releases, Winamp or foobar instead of WMP, Infrarecorder instead of Nero bloated Suite, Nod32 as antivirus) and kills unnecessary services then he can survive with minimal slowdowns. nLite can help in reducing furtherly XP's memory footprint but requires some knowledge and it's not mandatory: a wrong setting may jeopardize the installation or lead to hard-to-troubleshoot problems later.

Zandrax

[zandrax]

Re: 192MB RAM and Windows XP

OK, we've managed to do it. We've installed XP on that laptop with only 192MB of RAM and currently I'm browsing the net with it using IE6 and I have 70MB of RAM remaining. On Idle I'd have about 110MB remaining out of the 192MB. I'd have to say it's pretty responsive.

Yeah
Install all drivers included the chipset's one.

I have one question though, should I install any form of antivirus or just forget about it? He used to have 98 on this and there were no Antivirus apps so I suppose it would be OK to usw XP SP2 without antivirus?

The only "light" antivirus (at least lighter than competitors) is Nod32: you can try it for 30 days but unfortunately there is no free version for home use.

Zandrax

[Gianni]

Re: 192MB RAM and Windows XP

I don't know how much light it is but I'm using Antivir since I discovered it 6 or 7 years ago and till now I have not problem at all and moreover it is free.
I have installed it also on not very fast PC (P3 700Mhz - P3 500MHz) and was not so heavy for them.

Ciao
Gianni

[zandrax]

Re: 192MB RAM and Windows XP

@ Gianni:
I use Avira Antivir Classic too, but it requires too much ram for Stevo's notebook: roughly 60 MB in idle while Nod32 runs on about 35 MB. BTW Nod is faster too: Avira was pretty fast until version 7 (2007) when the interface was redesigned and the scanner got a bit slower.

Zandrax

[MixMasta]

Re: 192MB RAM and Windows XP

On an old laptop like this, I am guessing the battery no longer works...

[stevo1210]

Re: 192MB RAM and Windows XP

On an old laptop like this, I am guessing the battery no longer works...

It kinda does. It runs about 1 hour at max off the battery. Which is still ok I suppose considering I've seen some newer Celeron based notebooks which last for 1.5 hours at max.

[stevo1210]

Re: 192MB RAM and Windows XP

Would it be OK to go without an antivirus or is that too big of a risk to take?

[stevo1210]

Re: 192MB RAM and Windows XP

I decided to ask my schools IT technician today about the compatibility issue with the schools server system and he said that XP wasn't the only OS supported, but any other NT based OS is, such as Windows NT and WIndows 2000 as both would work fine with the schools server system. My friend also has a copy of Windows 2000 Pro stashed somewhere in his office. So I've talked to him about this, and he seems happy to use Windows 2000 (After all he turns off the WIndows XP eye candy anyway). Now will 192MB of RAM be enough for Windows 2000 Pro SP3 to run?

Thanks.

[Wizard]

Re: 192MB RAM and Windows XP

Neither.

Get him to add more ram and stay with XP. 2000 lost ability to use other drivers and newer IE aren't supported on 2000. I had 2000 running on machine for 3 years then had to move on.

Cheers, Wizard

[Fatal0E]

Re: 192MB RAM and Windows XP

I have an old K6-2 500mhz Compaq with 192mb ram -4mb for shared video ram. I prefer XP on it, seems to run better than 2k. I disabled all services that I did not need, disable indexing, system restore. I do not use antivirus on it and it browses very well.

[bgavin]

Re: 192MB RAM and Windows XP

He needs my EZ-Tweak program to disable unnecessary services... howzat for a blatant plug?

There are a number of places he can find info on this. The Black Viper site comes to mind, among others.

He has to figure out which services he actually requires, those not required. For example, if he does not have a static IP address, the DHCP service is mandatory or the machine hangs during boot.

He can certainly disable System Restore, Security Center, and all the other fluff that consumes RAM and processor cycles.

[Gianni]

Re: 192MB RAM and Windows XP

@ zandrax: I checked now on my PC how much RAM Antivir eats, and if I'm not wrong, it is around 8MB (avguard.exe + avgnt.exe).

If I open the GUI it takes 10MB more (avcenter.exe).

Am I missing something?

Ciao
Gianni

[NxB]

Re: 192MB RAM and Windows XP

Malwarebytes, comodo internet security is ok for an AV. For computers like this 2000 is the only option. You don't want like IE7 and all of the other XP junk.

[jpdoe]

Re: 192MB RAM and Windows XP

@gianni

I just happened to be reading your post when my avira antivir started updating. As with other software packages, this is when things get interesting RAM-wise.

I have my task manager configured to show the maximum used ram too.

normal use
avgnt 1MB
avguard 12MB

maximum memory used
avgnt 48MB
avguard 60MB

updating
avgnt 47MB
avguard 14MB


But to tell you the truth, I don't quite get how to read these numbers. I found out the memory usage reported by task mananger doesn't add up. If you find yourself bored someday, try this
- add the memory usage of all the processes reported by task manager.
- compare this with the page file usage reported by task manager
You'll find that the page file usage is much higher.
I have not found a web page explaining this phenomenon.

[NxB]

Re: 192MB RAM and Windows XP

Process Explorer shows virtual and physical memory usage. I think you are seeing what each process reserves in the page file numbers. I know my ati drivers ccc.exe and mom.exe aren't using 600mb and 500mb of page file when I have firefox open. They only use 25mb of physical memory and probably reserve x+ current physical memory they are using.

[momaka]

Re: 192MB RAM and Windows XP

jpdoe - very interesting find.
I just set my task manager to show the peak memory usage.
Here are the results for AVG Free 7.5:
Normal/Idle:
avgcc.exe - 240k
avgupsvc.exe - 1000k
avgamsvr.exe - 450k

Max/Updating:
avgcc.exe - 10000k
avgupsvc.exe - 62500k
avgamsvr.exe - 6000k

The thing is, AVG Free 7.5 is getting switched out for AVG Free 8.0. I'm not sure how good that is, but a few people have already told me it's not as great as v.7.5. The interface also looks newer, so it's possible for memory usage to be higher.

stevo - you could get away with not having an antivirus, but you do need a firewall. I like ZoneAlarm free, but that program is not all that ram friendly (~20000k idle and 40000k peak).
However, I strongly recommend Spyware Blaster. The nice thing about it is that it restricts known spyware-infested and spyware-spreading websites from loading any malicious content on your computer - and it does that via registry for IE/FF/Opera, meaning you don't need the program to run to be protected. You just install it once, update it, run it once, and you're done. Occasionally it's good to update it and run it (once a month works well) as newer websites get added to the list. And it's a free program.