"Small" Windows XP

I am very familiar with all versions of Windows, but, I was wondering if anyone knows about some sort of old Windows XP that I could use? I have Home and Pro, and I know I can tweak it out, overclock it, edit the services, and do everything to 'soup it up', but, at times due to certian programs it can really slow it down.

I used to run Windows XP Pro (no SP2) on my eMachines T1090 (20GB HDD, 128MB RAM, 900MHz), and it will only work in order only when no software is installed. I'm currently running Windows ME on my PC now, but if anyone knows of like a "mini-windows XP" edition it would be awesome.

Thanks

 

Hey there Roborappa
The reason your finding windows running slow as soon as you install other programs is due to the small Hard disk drive you have,20gig is really not big enough to store todays programs and expect good performance - just having windows on there is eating up a lot of what little space you have.There is no such thing as 'mini windows' - my advice would be get a new HDD you can pick them up for fairly cheap.

I was also wondering what you ment by overclocking windows?

 

I realize there isn't any "mini-windows", but I meant like a corporate edition of Windows XP or something smaller than really needed. I actually found a corporate Windows XP (WinXP Pro VLK), and I'm going to try my luck with that.

I also realize that today's programs won't run on Windows XP very successfully, but in correction to your post, it's not the Harddrive that is really affected, it's only the storage center, but the 900 MHz that I have. Windows XP requires 233 MHz min. (AMAZINGLY SUPER SLOW), but even 900 is too slow depending on some circumstances.

Overclocking is when you can use programs to "accelerate" your computer's "thinking speed". Something like SpeederXP is used, it's a "turbo boost" to windows that has a simple drag arrow to make your processor clock speed 2x it really is supposed to go, or 1/2 it's supposed to. Mathematically speaking, 900MHz doubled is 1.8GHz, found in many early 2003 PCs, the problem is, now that the processor has pushed its limits at such a rate that more electricty is needed to run it, causing friction and heat. The problem is the fan works at the same rate as according to the 900MHz, so, an electric serge can happen and it could cause a fire, that's why it's only good to use this method when dealing with something big for a short period of time. But, windows would respond twice as fast, and you could let's say convert a movie in half the time.

Wow, I just answered my own question and then some.

Peace

 

Software overclocking - I have never found one that really makes a difference. As for the Page file - it needs to be there so your hard drive needs to have some spare capacity. XP Corporate edition - no speed difference.

I run XP on P 1000 512 Meg RAM and AMD 1000 768 Meg RAM - quite usable. The things that make a massive difference I find are - the amount of RAM - if you are running less than 512 Meg on a Pentium 1000, then XP runs slow. You are running XP on a PC with 128 meg of RAM - your PC was made for Windows 98, even with ME it will run slow, Windows 2K would be better, but my advice would be to increase the RAM to its maximum, it would certainly go to 256, however, if you are lucky, you might be able to put 512 Meg of RAM in it. The difference between 128 and 512 Meg of RAM is massive, it will be like have a new PC - it would run 3 times faster.

Norton Anti-Virus home edition - makes a massive difference and slows down the PC. Symantec Corporate AV has a very low overhead on the processor as does Zone Alarm - so on slower machines they are much better than say Norton Internet Security 2005.

 

As i posted in the thread "windows downgrade help?" :

i suggest , u use Nlite.exe ,with this prog. you be able to create a very very lite version of xp(even installment whitout explorer). the prog automaticly creates an img file of the new winxp setup disk, that can be downgraded to an installcd of 200 mb

for more info check: http://nuhi.msfn.org/
hope i helped you !!

 

Excatly on what I think. Corporate edition is the exactly the same as normal Pro. As for the RAM, it does effect the speed of XP and windows, but it isn't 100% everything. To my expirences, whenever I try to tweak or clear my RAM, everything goes slower. RAM is just a temporary storage drive for all these files to be placed on for fast access. My laptop has 512MB RAM, with a 2.4GHz processor, and when I check the RAM usage, only about 96MB is used of 512MB. Its the processing speed keeping it up.

As you said, windows xp with NAV Home runs slow as hell. I know from expirence. To me I've never tried corporate, but I have downgraded from NAV 2005 to 2002. Exact same thing without the bullshit. But I used to use XRampAV. There was an AV. Friendly GUI, had it's own system recovery access when in Safe Mode (or something like that), and virus definitions were like Norton. One thing though was that the company took this product off the market, and stopped all updates and support for it. It still got the Virus Definitions from the site, but all the updates were old, which led to security flaws and spyware attacks. So, I had to get rid of it.

I checked out the nlite program. Wow. There's something I would be interested in. I'm not kind of worried about the components, just something a little light for my computer.

Thanks a bunch everyone