WinME or WinXP for a PC with 128MB RAM?

[Opticreep]

I'm fixing a Pentium 4 1.4GHz, with only 128 MB RAM. Unfortunately, I
cannot upgrade the RAM at this point, because the motherboard requires
RIMM sticks. RIMM sticks are no longer available in the country I
live in.

Would I be better off installing Windows XP or Windows ME on a system
with only 128MB RAM? I have already installed WinXP on this thing...
and the hard drive just keeps grinding and grinding and grinding.
It's insane. Sometimes, it would take 5 or 10 seconds to load
something as simple as winamp. And occasionally, I even get a 2
second pause after double clicking an mp3 song (with winamp already
active in the background). I used WinME on my old Celeron 500MHz
96RAM system in 1998, and it was never THIS bad. Will changing my
current 128MB RAM computer to WinME help *significantly* with the
memory management problems I'm experiencing?

Approximately how long will WinME stay afloat, before Microsoft
abandons it like Win95 and Win98?

And finally...

Where can I get the necessary files to create a start-up disk for
installing WinME?

 

[GateKeeper]

WinXP will run with only 128 MB RAM, but not very well. Even if you
adjust the settings for best performance, you won't get very good
results. Because of this I think WinME would be the better choice. Best
would be Windows 2000, if you can get it. Win2k will run with only
128MB RAM.

 

[Richard Urban]

Windows 98

--
Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

 

[Myron J. Mandell]

You've provoked an interesting debate.
In my experience, Windows ME is more demanding (and less stable) than XP.
I've tried out both these systems on P2-350 (192 MB) and P266 (128 MB).
In both cases, WinME was slow and crashed a lot; WinXP was slow but stable.
(I should say this was XP Home; I haven't tried XP Pro.)

I agree with the previous poster who said Win2K may well be the best choice.

I would go to Win98 only in desperation. (Don't really think it would
help.)

Myron

 

[Steven Henson]

XP Home is the best choice in my humble opinion - but make sure you optimise xp
for best performance - check out

http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/winxp_services/

and

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/winxp.htm

Others may know of more tweaking sites.

I run a P111 laptop with 128mb RAM on XP Home without a problem. Little slow to
start but very stable and performs surprisingly well.



Steven

 

[JerryMouse]

I'm fixing a Pentium 4 1.4GHz, with only 128 MB RAM. Unfortunately, I
cannot upgrade the RAM at this point, because the motherboard requires
RIMM sticks. RIMM sticks are no longer available in the country I
live in.

RIMM sticks are, however, available on Ebay and lots of other places.

I assume postal service is available in The Phillipines.

 

[Ron Martell]

I'm fixing a Pentium 4 1.4GHz, with only 128 MB RAM. Unfortunately, I
cannot upgrade the RAM at this point, because the motherboard requires
RIMM sticks. RIMM sticks are no longer available in the country I
live in.

Would I be better off installing Windows XP or Windows ME on a system
with only 128MB RAM? I have already installed WinXP on this thing...
and the hard drive just keeps grinding and grinding and grinding.
It's insane. Sometimes, it would take 5 or 10 seconds to load
something as simple as winamp. And occasionally, I even get a 2
second pause after double clicking an mp3 song (with winamp already
active in the background). I used WinME on my old Celeron 500MHz
96RAM system in 1998, and it was never THIS bad. Will changing my
current 128MB RAM computer to WinME help *significantly* with the
memory management problems I'm experiencing?

Approximately how long will WinME stay afloat, before Microsoft
abandons it like Win95 and Win98?

And finally...

Where can I get the necessary files to create a start-up disk for
installing WinME?

If you cannot obtain additional RAM then I suggest you use WindowsMe,
as it will perform quite well with 128 mb of RAM.

However WindowsMe systems tend to be very "brittle" - the either work
very well or they fail miserably - nothing in between.

As for a boot disk you can get one from www.bootdisk.com if you need
it. However all WindowsMe CDs are bootable and so you should not need
a startup boot disk to install it. Just make sure that the BIOS setup
is configured to boot from the CDROM before the hard drive (most BIOS
versions give 3 boot device choices so they should be A: first, CDROM
second, and C: third).

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."

 

[Plato]

I'm fixing a Pentium 4 1.4GHz, with only 128 MB RAM. Unfortunately, I
cannot upgrade the RAM at this point, because the motherboard requires
RIMM sticks. RIMM sticks are no longer available in the country I
live in.

Would I be better off installing Windows XP or Windows ME on a system
with only 128MB RAM? I have already installed WinXP on this thing...

Neither. Install win98SE.

 

[Opticreep]

If you cannot obtain additional RAM then I suggest you use WindowsMe,
as it will perform quite well with 128 mb of RAM.

I was leaning heavily towards WinME. But I was concerned about
software support. Generally speaking, would often would a typical
home PC user (not a PC gamer) encounter a piece of software that
requires WinXP?

And how long does Microsoft plan to continue releasing patches for
security leaks in WinME? At this point, are there even new viruses
(virii?) that are harmful to a 4-year old OS like WinME?

 

[Alias]

I was leaning heavily towards WinME. But I was concerned about
software support. Generally speaking, would often would a typical
home PC user (not a PC gamer) encounter a piece of software that
requires WinXP?

And how long does Microsoft plan to continue releasing patches for
security leaks in WinME? At this point, are there even new viruses
(virii?) that are harmful to a 4-year old OS like WinME?

With the low cost of RAM nowadays, why don't you just upgrade your RAM?
Check out the prices here:

http://www.crucial.com/

Alias

 

[Ron Martell]

I was leaning heavily towards WinME. But I was concerned about
software support. Generally speaking, would often would a typical
home PC user (not a PC gamer) encounter a piece of software that
requires WinXP?

It will happen, in fact it already has. Microsoft Office 2003 will
not run on Windows Me - requires Windows 2000 or XP.

And how long does Microsoft plan to continue releasing patches for
security leaks in WinME? At this point, are there even new viruses
(virii?) that are harmful to a 4-year old OS like WinME?

There are some, but the new viruses tend to be Windows 2000/XP
specific, as that is the predominant operating system these days.
Windows 95/98/Me are rapidly becoming a "target that is not worth
shooting at".

Microsoft is still releasing security patches for IE6 running on
Windows 98 and Me, but I am not certain as to how long this will
continue. You can see the latest published information from Microsoft
at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycleconsumer.asp

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."

 

[J. S. Pack]

XP Home is the best choice in my humble opinion - but make sure you optimise xp
for best performance - check out

http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/winxp_services/

and

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/winxp.htm

Others may know of more tweaking sites.

I run a P111 laptop with 128mb RAM on XP Home without a problem. Little slow to
start but very stable and performs surprisingly well.



Steven

I agree w/ the above.


Disable any unneeded background apps w/ msconfig or other startup
manager. Windows Messenger is notorious from nearly the beginning.

Then see http://home.earthlink.net/~rikhardk/index.htm and do all the
optimization steps there. He mentions blackviper's site, which has free
..reg files to turn off all those unneeded services running in the
background--highly recommended.

Turn off hibernation.

After you turn off system restore, use ERUNT on a
schedule for registry backups.

http://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/erunt

Finally, use XPlite to get rid of much bloat. I think there's a freeware
version.

PS: You can use a smaller, faster alternative shell like bblean, litestep,
or aston (payware).

 

[Al Smith]

I was leaning heavily towards WinME. But I was concerned about

software support. Generally speaking, would often would a typical
home PC user (not a PC gamer) encounter a piece of software that
requires WinXP?

And how long does Microsoft plan to continue releasing patches for
security leaks in WinME? At this point, are there even new viruses
(virii?) that are harmful to a 4-year old OS like WinME?

I've been using Windows98 SE for years. A couple of days ago I
finally bit the bullet and upgraded my main computer to Windows XP
Pro. Why? Because there are already some software programs and
games that won't run on Windows98, and as the months advance,
there will be more and more of them.

I estimated that I could use Windows98 (which is more or less the
same as Windows ME) for another year, but decided not to delay the
OS upgrade any longer. Now I'm a proud Windows XP user. As far as
viruses go, Windows XP is a hundred times more virus prone than
Windows98 or Windows ME, and as fewer people use Windows ME, there
will be fewer viruses in circulation that can infect it.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I'm fixing a Pentium 4 1.4GHz, with only 128 MB RAM. Unfortunately, I
cannot upgrade the RAM at this point, because the motherboard requires
RIMM sticks. RIMM sticks are no longer available in the country I
live in.

Would I be better off installing Windows XP or Windows ME on a system
with only 128MB RAM? I have already installed WinXP on this thing...
and the hard drive just keeps grinding and grinding and grinding.
It's insane. Sometimes, it would take 5 or 10 seconds to load
something as simple as winamp.

I would go for ME on that rather than XP. Indeed I might well decide to
use Win98SE rather than ME, provided you do not have anything around
that is ME only

 

[Ken Blake]

In

As far as
viruses go, Windows XP is a hundred times more virus prone than
Windows98 or Windows ME,

Not really. It's rather that as new viruses are written, they
target the most popular operating system, and at the moment
that's Windows XP.

 

[Bob I]

Well part of the problem is the "zombie" capability in the NT flavors
and the money to be made in the "remote spam mail" business.

 

[Al Smith]

Would I be better off installing Windows XP or Windows ME on a system

I would go for ME on that rather than XP. Indeed I might well decide to
use Win98SE rather than ME, provided you do not have anything around
that is ME only

XP runs just fine on 128 megs of RAM, on an older system. I
installed Windows XP Pro on a P2 400 with 128 megs or RAM -- no
problems. Unless your CPU is *really* old, you should look
elsewhere for the source of the slowness.

 

[Al Smith]

As far as

Not really. It's rather that as new viruses are written, they
target the most popular operating system, and at the moment
that's Windows XP.

You will observe that your statement doesn't actually negate my
statement. In fact, it supports it.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

You will observe that your statement doesn't actually negate my
statement. In fact, it supports it.

No, it doesn't. I was differentiating between properties of the
operating system and habits of the virus writers. They are two
different things.

 

[Ron Martell]

XP runs just fine on 128 megs of RAM, on an older system. I
installed Windows XP Pro on a P2 400 with 128 megs or RAM -- no
problems. Unless your CPU is *really* old, you should look
elsewhere for the source of the slowness.

XP runs fine on 128 mb of RAM *provided* you never ever try to run any
sort of an application program on it.

128 mb is woefully inadequate for running application programs except
perhaps for the very simplest ones, and then only if you make sure you
close whatever application program you are using before you launch
another one.

Any attempt to use XP as it is intended to be used, with perhaps 4 to
6 application programs open at the same time, plus background stuff
such as antivirus, antispyware, and firewall, will see the system bog
down to a crawl with only 128 mb of RAM.


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."