Can I run 2000 where 98 and ME used to run, on old latop.

[mm]

Can I run 2000 where 98 and ME used to run, on old latop.

I have a Dell Thinkpad 600E which came with win98 and had been
upgraded to winME and was running well.

I only used it on a trip and to take digital photos to show a friend.

It was working fine 2 years ago but after sitting around, the
harddrive has failed** and a refurbished 4gig HDD is 10 dollars or
less.

Is there any reason I can't install win2000 on the new hardrive?

I'd rather use that because so much new software won't run on 98 or
ME, and even though I don't plan to put much software on it, still it
seems a mistake, I'm sorry to say, to load 98/me.

I'll still only be using it lightly.


The cpu is 366MHz and I don't remember how much RAM it had (whatever
it came with) perhaps 320 Meg, is that possible?

But I'm posting anyhow on the possibility those things won't be
necessary to answer the question.)

**I have a backup, but the files are not the issue. (and nothing I
didn't have copies of was on the the computer, except 200 outgoing
emails, about 20 of which are of value.)

 

[mm]

Can I run 2000 where 98 and ME used to run, on old latop.

I have a Dell Thinkpad 600E which came with win98 and had been
upgraded to winME and was running well.

I only used it on a trip and to take digital photos to show a friend.

It was working fine 2 years ago but after sitting around, the
harddrive has failed** and a refurbished 4gig HDD is 10 dollars or
less.

Is there any reason I can't install win2000 on the new hardrive?

I'd rather use that because so much new software won't run on 98 or
ME, and even though I don't plan to put much software on it, still it
seems a mistake, I'm sorry to say, to load 98/me.

I'll still only be using it lightly.


The cpu is 366MHz and I don't remember how much RAM it had (whatever
it came with) perhaps 320 Meg, is that possible?

That is, the original ad said 320 PC100 ram . I don't know what
320 means, 320 Meg? The computer was made around 2000 or 2002 iirc.

 

[BillW50]

In mm typed on Fri, 14 Jan 2011 22:51:46 -0500:

Can I run 2000 where 98 and ME used to run, on old latop.

I have a Dell Thinkpad 600E which came with win98 and had been
upgraded to winME and was running well.

I only used it on a trip and to take digital photos to show a friend.

It was working fine 2 years ago but after sitting around, the
harddrive has failed** and a refurbished 4gig HDD is 10 dollars or
less.

Is there any reason I can't install win2000 on the new hardrive?

I few points here. You mean an IBM ThinkPad 600E and not a Dell, right?
And a 4GB hard drive is large enough for Windows 2000. Although I would
slipstream the install disc if you are going to update it to SP4 first.
As it will take up less room on the drive that way.

And the ThinkPad 600E came with 128MB of RAM. IMHO, you will not like
the speed too much with this. As I ran Windows 2000 on such a system,
but it had 192MB of RAM. And Windows 2000 swapped to the drive way too
often. Although I had another machine the same, but had Windows 98SE on
it and I used the Windows 2000 one far more. These two are Toshiba
2595XDVD laptops which has about the same specs as yours.

Luckily in my case with Windows 2000, it had all of the drivers on the
install disc for everything. That is one problem you might have, finding
Windows 2000 drivers for the video, sound, I/O, etc. But let's talk
about speed.

Windows 98SE booted up in about 90 seconds I recall. But Windows 2000
under this little amount of RAM had taken 10 minutes. Even waking up
from hibernation takes that long and slightly longer, so no help there.
The reason why it was so slow was because it would load a bit, swap to
disk, load a bit, swap, etc.

Watching video (like youtube), Windows 98SE could handle up to 700kbps.
While Windows 2000 could only handle about 100kbps. And I could watch
DVD movies on the Windows 98SE machine, but unusable under Windows 2000.
None the still, I used the Windows 2000 machine more for the web, email,
etc. if I was going to use the computer for a few hours or more anyway.

I have four netbooks and the CPUs are underclocked down to 633MHz. So
they are still faster than the laptops we are talking about. But you can
install up to 2GB of RAM on these machines. But even with just 512MB of
RAM, Windows 2000 flies on such a machine (virtually no swapping).
Although I believe 256MB of RAM or more works really well with Windows
2000. And any more memory than 512MB I don't think you will see any
improvements.

So the driver issue and very slow booting, slow hibernation, and poor
streaming video are the problems I believe you will see if you install
Windows 2000 on it.

A weird thing about Windows 9x and memory, anything more than 64MB
doesn't seem to help performance at all. At least I never have seen any.

 

[jw]

I have four netbooks and the CPUs are underclocked down to 633MHz. So
they are still faster than the laptops we are talking about. But you can
install up to 2GB of RAM on these machines. But even with just 512MB of
RAM, Windows 2000 flies on such a machine (virtually no swapping).
Although I believe 256MB of RAM or more works really well with Windows
2000. And any more memory than 512MB I don't think you will see any
improvements.

So the driver issue and very slow booting, slow hibernation, and poor
streaming video are the problems I believe you will see if you install
Windows 2000 on it.

A weird thing about Windows 9x and memory, anything more than 64MB
doesn't seem to help performance at all. At least I never have seen any.

Thats not true at all. I'm running Win98se right now on 512megs of
Ram. 1GB processor. It runs much better on the 512 than it did on
less ram. I hear that 98 cant use more than 500megs of Ram so I;m
wasting 12megs No biggie...

To the OP, since you're installing a new drive, just install Win2000
and see what happens. If it dont work, format the drive and install
Win98 or ME. Your processor sounds a little slow for 2000, but it may
work.

I run BOTH 98 and 2000 (dual boot) on this machine, both work. (This
is a desktop computer).