Running Windows XP on a 1Mhz Computer?

[erpdude8]

check out these recent articles I saw:

Softpedia News - Turns Out You Can Install Windows XP on a 1MHz Computer

Neowin - Booting Windows XP on a 1MHz Pentium CPU takes three hours

guess someone out there was bold enough to try to run XP on the oldest and slowest intel pentium system

[Tommy]

I'll give them credit. It's just about as pointless as putting up a blockade in front of a door that opens outwards...but at least we know that someone wanted to be extremely mean to Windows XP and the computer they put it on in the name of science. 

[RainyShadow]

The POST screen shows 50MHz, and speed measurement in emulated environments is sketchy most of the time. 

So, what was the actual speed, huh?! 

 

P.S. Maybe i should dig out the 386 i have laying about and test that, lol...

Edited April 30, 2022 by RainyShadow

[Tommy]

53 minutes ago, RainyShadow said:

The POST screen shows 50MHz, and speed measurement in emulated environments is sketchy most of the time. 

So, what was the actual speed, huh?! 

I didn't even catch that. The slowest processor speed I've ever installed Windows XP on myself was a 100mhz original Pentium on a Compaq Presario. Took about 4 hours to install and boot up time from boot screen to usable desktop took about 10-15 minutes, depending on its mood for the day.

[dencorso]

Well... I'm actually posting this from an Eee PC 900 (from 2008!). FTW, it's powered by an Intel Celeron M 353ULV @ 900 MHz (0.9 GHz), single-core and works quite well (if one has some patience, of course!)... But most of the latest batches of POSReady 2009 are not compatible with such installations...

[RayZen]

On 4/30/2022 at 7:29 AM, RainyShadow said:

The POST screen shows 50MHz, and speed measurement in emulated environments is sketchy most of the time. 

So, what was the actual speed, huh?! 

 

P.S. Maybe i should dig out the 386 i have laying about and test that, lol...

It was likely ran in an emulator where you can change your speed. My guess would be Bochs.

Also you can't run Windows XP on a 386, as unfortunate as it is, it is true. The lowest you can go is Pentium OverDrive, as Windows XP uses 586 instructions, NT 4.0 is likely as far as you can go for a 386 processor

[Mov AX, 0xDEAD]

Chipset/CPU emulators based on PCEm run at "original" speed, they try to emulate Time and Instruction Set of CPU 8088/../Pentium2  exactly

[Nerdulater]

 Dumb and unusable, But it shows how reliable XP can be!

[exogenesis]

Not a real world test at all, need to be tested on actual hardware.

Tested with real hardware (sometime ago)

OS install varies with CD, DVD, BluRay optical drives used to install (Manual Install) - 40 minutes approx (have seen 30 minutes previously, that optical drive now dead) (HDD Quick Format)
Boot from cold - 20 seconds approx
Boot from cold with loaded softwares DIrectX9c, VisualStudios many, NetFrameworks 1 to 4, GFX, Sound drivers - 30 seconds approx

Similar observed with Intel P4 just in case someone posts about a test for that CPU.

Why would it take longer !, Why would anyone think it would take longer !, What was the reason for testing.

If they needed a faster XP3 install. Would install from USB from an XP3 CD image by now or is that not possible yet. I did read some do the same from XP3 image on HDD different partition or was that for an update install. Above tests were vanilla XP3 installs.

I didn't take a look at the above links, they may have been April 1 foolery if that still happens today. I cannot think why that would happen still today in the 20th Century and 22 years (2022)

[XPerceniol]

I run a very very slim XP on my systems and they don't take up much space or require much in the way of resources. I suspect win 2000 would be the smartest choice. I do miss 95 and 98 and have legal DVD with keys. My IBM (both) finally busted so I discarded them but keep the hard drives as can't ever (totally) remove personal info. The CMOS and everything fried anyway Lol...

[XPerceniol]

On 5/27/2022 at 12:27 PM, exogenesis said:

I didn't take a look at the above links, they may have been April 1 foolery if that still happens today. I cannot think why that would happen still today in the 20th Century and 22 years (2022)

Still shake my head that we are still able to use this in 2022 and those of us still have the passion to keep it going. If I had to buy something new, I don't really know what I'd do, but cross that bridge then as I'm on failing hardware now so never know when that day will come.