Best operating system choice for a 32mb laptop?

[FantasyAcquiesce]

A while ago I found an old laptop with an intel pentium 1 @ 133ghz and some software which was meant for Windows 3.1 and 95 inside my Grandparents' attic. I have a question before I reinstall a 9x os since the laptop has a virus (I happened to find a Windows 95B & plus, Windows 98SE disc)

 

Has anyone here ever used one of these OSes on 32mb of ram or a similar amount? I'm wondering if Windows 98 "Degrades preformance" since hardware requirements are a bit higher.

 

Anything else important would be appreciated, thank you

[netbookdelgob]

Well, i have a toshiba satellite 320cds with 32mb ram, but a pentium mmx 266mhz, 98SE runs fine, even with a ton of programs installed. Also ME runs fine.

[submix8c]

KInd of slim pickings (the RAM). 98SE would "work" but 95B would "fit better". Try both. What's to lose? KISS on the "extras".

[jaclaz]

Yep, Windows 98 on 32 Mb is definitely "border line" (while Windows 95 would be more than happy about it).

Most probably you can get away with a "mixed mode" 95/98 install.

 

What I would suggest you though (as I believe you are more into experimenting/having fun than anything else) would be to try on it also an unconventional OS at the time it was the fastest thing on earth on low RAM machines:

https://web.archive.org/web/20000815060709/http://www.be.com/products/freebeos/

https://web.archive.org/web/20000815094229/http://www.be.com/support/guides/beosreadylist_intel.html

 

Working download link (around 45 Mb):

http://tecnologia.tiscali.it/download/scheda.php?id=94952

 

jaclaz

Edited August 29, 2015 by jaclaz

[CamTron]

I have an old Dell with a 133 MHz Pentium, and 32 MB of RAM with Windows 95, and the thing is ridiculously slow. Windows 98 would run on it if you want to run some newer software, but I think 95 would be faster since it has a more streamlined shell and a smaller kernel.

 

If you want the fastest OS ever for a low-end machine, try this. http://kolibrios.org/en/

An OS with a full-blown GUI, written entirely in x86 assembly, and fits on one 1.44 MB floppy disk. It's very lacking in the software department, but it's still pretty cool.

[cov3rt]

even those specs are slow for windows 95,

 

A while ago I found an old laptop with an intel pentium 1 @ 133ghz and some software which was meant for Windows 3.1 and 95 inside my Grandparents' attic. I have a question before I reinstall a 9x os since the laptop has a virus (I happened to find a Windows 95B & plus, Windows 98SE disc)

 

Has anyone here ever used one of these OSes on 32mb of ram or a similar amount? I'm wondering if Windows 98 "Degrades preformance" since hardware requirements are a bit higher.

 

Anything else important would be appreciated, thank you

even those specs are weak for windows 95, i wouldn't recommend anything less than a pentium III for windows 95, unless your strictly doing it for educational purposes and not to re sell it, then the pentium 133 Ghz on w95B or C is fine, for windows 98, i would not use anything less than a pentium 4 or a processor that doesn't have SSE2 instructions, with SSE, its ok with w95 because most people probably won't do much or can't do much extensive work on the internet anyways, your limited to fairly basic sites like craigslist, wikipedia, youtube ( with basic 240p video playback ) if you use the unofficial flash 7 plug in, and other basic sites.

[CamTron]

I wonder how well 98lite would work for that setup. It basically takes Windows 98 or ME, and allows you to remove components and streamline it into something more like Windows 95.

 

I've even seen people run Windows 2000 and XP on machines with 32 MB of RAM, I really don't recommend it. Windows NT does not run well with low amounts of RAM.

[cov3rt]

I wonder how well 98lite would work for that setup. It basically takes Windows 98 or ME, and allows you to remove components and streamline it into something more like Windows 95.

 

I've even seen people run Windows 2000 and XP on machines with 32 MB of RAM, I really don't recommend it. Windows NT does not run well with low amounts of RAM.

i was gonna experiment with nt 4.0 next, though i gave up halfway because i couldn't even login to the operating system and i couldn't find out what exactly i did wrong for that to happen. i think i used the terminal server edition, i picked that one because i thought if i picked the newest or a newer version, i would encounter less problems in general. i think i may try out the regular server version next and see if i can get it even past the login phase lol, there seems to be a lot of limitations though from the research i have done such as the 7.8 GB hard drive limatation which i still have not find a clear answer of what exactly you would have to do to get past it or fix it, like some source said if you have the install disc with service pack 4 at least, then you just format it as the largest it can take without necessarily setting a manual size and then after your within the os, put sp6 on it and it fixes the issue and displays the full size? i do find it attractive though that you can install lots of ram, up to 4 GB i believe without issues ( or at least, that is what wikipedia said ). is this true?

Edited August 31, 2015 by cov3rt

[jaclaz]

A Pentium III with 16, 24 Mb or 32 Mb of RAM was what was a "good" configuration in Windows 95 times, the actual requirements were much less than that:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/138349

 

As a matter of fact very few machines at the time had more than 32 Mb of Ram, just for the record the typical Windows 3.1/3.11 machine had 4 Mb of Ram and with 8 Mb it became very fast (in relative terms).

 

Re: NT 4.00.

The 7.8 Gb limit is only a "virtual" limit, it is related to the "system" (please read as "boot") partition and it is due to the use of the BIOS INT 13 (pliease read as CHS addressing):

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/224526

and it is only related to the bootloader, if you have access to a later version the limit is nowhere to be seen:

http://www.nu2.nu/fixnt4/

 

BUT the actual "setup limit" is lower, actually 4 Gb, so you will need "external" means to create the partition:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/119497

 

Consider how these sizes shoudl be compared to the actual size of a "normal" NT 4.0 install which is around or below 150 Mb, and there is no need (actually it makes very little sense) to make a huge "system" volume.

 

The real issue (if you are going for NTFS, created outside the NT 4.00) might be the change in NTFS specs, you need at least a SP4 integrated source, see:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/169500-chkdsk-refuses-to-check-ntfs-volume-under-windows-nt-40/

 

jaclaz

[FantasyAcquiesce]

Thank you so much for the advice guys!~ <3

 

I never knew such an efficient OSes existed!

[sdfox7]

I have one of the first Gateway Solos ever produced, the Solo P3C. The world certainly has changed since then.

 

It has a 120MHz Pentium with 40MB RAM and a 1GB 4000RPM hard disk drive. Manufactured in February 1996, it was a state-of-the-art system at the time. Likely irreplaceable at this point.

 

I still use it nearly 20 years after its inception, and I can say I would not considering putting Windows 98 on it if you have multi-tasking in mind. I would say you should have between 64MB-160MB if you wish to multi-task.

 

After booting Windows 95, initializing the wireless card and opening Internet Explorer, there is not much memory left over for multi-tasking. It runs fine if you are browsing with one browser window open and Office 97 open, but that's about it.

 

That being said, this machine will remain a special collectible to me. A fantastic piece of quality workmanship and computing history.

 

I hope you enjoy the pictures below that I have linked to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[M()zart]

Recently I have run my very first computer - Pentium 133 with 16 Mb RAM. In its times it has Windows 95 installed, and it was OK at that time. Now it has Windows 98 installed. It works, but things are slow, and multitasking is bad. However it's usable.

[jumper]

Win98 regains much speed if one disables Active Desktop and sets [386Enh] ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 in System.ini.

Also set accdate=c- in Config.sys for faster boot.

IE5 can be (completely?) removed if you don't need it.

Every version of Windows is larger and slower than the previous version. I recommend using the earliest that will run the applications you want to run. If you only plan to run DOS games/apps, only install DOS. If you also want Solitaire and Minesweeper, Win3.1 will boot the fastest and do the job.

[pangoomis]

Why accdate=c- would speed boot time?

Is it just like the NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate in NT systems?

[cpucollector]

I had a P166 running Win98SE with 24MB of RAM. Didn't run terribly but I wasn't expecting speed anyway. It now has 64MB (the total cacheable amount for a non-HX Triton chipset.), runs much better. Another thing you have to consider is what hardware do you want to hook up to it? Since it's a laptop you probably won't run into driver issues like a desktop, but 98SE has much better hardware support.

 

EDIT: Also swapped the 166 for a 200MMX. That helped quite a bit also.

Edited October 22, 2015 by cpucollector