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can a PIII handle Windows XP?


Professor Frink

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I'll add my two cents: I used to run XP exclusively on a PIII (slot 1!) 500 MHz with 128 of ram and a 5400RPM HD. It ran just fine. My primary recommendation (after nLite-ing and disabling nonessential services, of course) is to defragment often. That way if you ever have to page, it will be a nice clean section of hard drive that windows will be working with.

Best of luck,

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i hate u... lol, but do u use it every day, my dad does, its the family's main comp, but i have my own :)

No, lol! Why would I use a 233 as my main comp? I use a 2.54GHz machine with 1GB of RAM (don't need more) as my main machine. I have an iBook G4 @ 1.33GHz with 768MB of RAM as my laptop... I have a 300MHz machine w/ 256MB of RAM running XP as my server... And a bunch of other computers which just sit here to be used one day, but they all work! ;)

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Many older PC's will run XP satisfactorily if only you give it the RAM it requires.

(it can be a real RAM hog)

256 is said to be a bare minimum. 512 is very good and 1 gig is 'Prima!'

One key factor that most users and even some techs seem to miss is.....unload your CPU...!!!!

Shut down all those redundant Services that Windows loads by default.

Here's a good list to start with:

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Here's my short, short list of services to disable for a stand alone PC, not on a network: From the RUN box, type in Services.msc , then maximize the window to full screen size. Then scroll down the list of services to each item on the following list and right click on an item and then click Properties. In the properties box you can Stop a running service and then set the action box to "Disable". Then Apply the change and OK the window to close it. Move down the list to the next item and repeat the process. When done, close the entire window and reboot your PC.

Clip book

Computer Browser

Error Reporting Service

Messenger

Performance Logs and Alerts

Portable Serial Number

Remote Registry

Remote Desktop Help Session Manager

Routing and Remote Access

Server (leave this on for a local network)

Smart Card Helper

System Event Notification

Task Scheduler

Themes

Universal Plug and Play Device Host

Upload Manager

Web Client

Windows time

Wireless Zero Configuration (disable if you will never use a wireless network)

Removing half the load off of your CPU, equates to an improvement in performance of 100% !!!! Now, that ain't too shabby!!!

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Go through your MSCONFIG and deselect all those resource hogs that you don't need to have running all the time.

Then go into the registry and get windows tweaked out to run most efficiently with your installed ram.:

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Decrease Shutdown Time

Cut the amount of time it takes your computer to shut down to only a few seconds.

Click Start, click Run, and type regedit.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ System \ CurrentControlSet \ Control.

Click the Control folder.

Right click "WaitToKillServiceTimeout" and click Modify.

Set the value to 1000 (one second).

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Memory Performance Tweak

These Settings will fine tune your systems memory management -at least 256MB of ram recommended, 512 preferred for first tweak.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \

Session Manager \ Memory Management

1.DisablePagingExecutive -double click it and in the decimal put a 1 - this allows XP to keep data in memory now instead of paging sections of ram to harddrive.

2.LargeSystemCache- double click it and change the decimal to 1 -this allows XP Kernal to Run in memory improves system performance a lot.

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Thank you Shadow for the above mentioned tweaks.

Just a few minutes spent doing the above tweaks can result in a much better running PC. I applied all these tweaks to my own PC and it made a BIG difference in performance.

Cheers,

Andromeda43

Edited by Andromeda43
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