Revisiting Windows XP on Minimum System Requirements

[@vasileios6301]

Up to SP2, Xp runned ok on very old machines. After SP2, you needed a Pentium 4 and 512mb for normal experience.

[@orion1983uk]

SP2 is fine on higher end socket 370 / slot 1 processors as well. My parent's old Gateway from 1999 (pentium 3 500MHz, 256MB RAM) lasted fine to 2006. I also used my custom build from 2001 (pentium 3 1GHz, 512MB RAM) right up to late 2007 and it was totally fine - in fact it only got retired because something on the motherboard broke. From my experience, I'd say any coppermine processor with sufficient RAM would cope acceptably for everyday computing with SP2 right up to the introduction of Vista (and of course assuming you weren't gaming or using any specialist software).

[@Dragonfire511]

I'd say 1GB of RAM.

[@kreuner11]

Why

[@kreuner11]

​@@Dragonfire511 on windows xp? Not needed

[@Dragonfire511]

Yep, but needed for running a lot of programs simultaneously more smoothly.@@kreuner11

[@brenty4110]

I was 13 and the only computer I had was my Pentium I 233 MHz MMX, that I had already had for about 2-3 years. I had accidentally gotten an upgrade of RAM in the system because I had asked my grandparents if I could have more more "memory" when I should have asked for more disk space. This however made my first time ever dealing with Operating Systems pretty successful, considering this upgrade was from 32MB to 192MB at the time, which i didn't understand back then one bit, but now thinking about it, was an absolute waste for Windows 95 (no wonder it was so expensive). I didn't want to hurt my grandma's feelings at the time after she had just spent a lot of money to give me more "memory", so I lied when she asked me if the big upgrade helped and just compressed the hell out of my 4GB drive instead. Basically, my computer was my grandma's old PC. Her new computer had Windows XP, which my siblings and I thought was amazing, literally because of the interface. Colors, 3D icons etc. When you don't understand any of the background concepts of a computer and when there was no way you could make a cent, being able to install WIndows XP onto my Windows 95 computer was absolutely astonishing. I used that PC for about 1 year before I even learned about drivers. It's just too bad that I didn't know what I was doing when it came to partitioning while being a child. I remember being so excited that I figured out how to do it (no internet answers back then). Notcing that all of my stuff from Windows 95 was missing, came much later and seemed completely worth the loss. I absolutely loved Windows 95, and since I had never used a newer version of WIndows before, going from Windows 95 to Windows XP was everything I could have hoped for.

[@MLGKid420]

What year exactly did you first have the experience of installing an OS?

[@brenty4110]

@@MLGKid420 Probably 2003 or 2004

[@mtunayucer]

This was nice to read. Such stories make me realize how quick computer hardware evolved back then. 233mhz pentium from 1996 was considered pretty slow in 2003-2004 standards. Nowadays many people use 8+ year old computers.

[@Roti-Poulet]

@@mtunayucer I use a 10 years old computer on windows 7 and it looks fine

[@Chris.Davies]

We forget how amazing XP was. After the disaster that was Windows ME, upgrading to XP from Windows 98 was amazing. And I need to tell you that I still have a computer that today was upgraded from Windows 98, all the way to Windows 11, moving across multiple motherboards. I kept expecting it to fail - and it almost did - but upgrading to a newer windows versions always fixed all the problems. :)

[@dawng.8836]

Good job on reaching more then 1000 subscribers.

[@1163562]

I remember one of my friends running XP on an HP Pavilion with a P2. Thought they were crazy without running it on at least a P3. They got the PC for free, and only had to launch maybe $200 at it, between the OS and RAM upgrade.

[@dyter424]

Many years ago I installed XP on a Celeron 466 system with 128 MB of ram and an ancient Seagate HDD. It probably took three hours, I don't even remember. At the time I thought 128 was the bare minimum... likely for the better. Someday I might try on a P133 wirh 48 MB...

[@electrogeek4039]

Very interesting, it would be necessary to make the test with 128Mo of ram and a graphic card a little faster to know what gives this processor on Windows XP

[@9852323]

Then that wouldn’t be the minimum system requirements.

[@DeAngeloStevens]

I remember this from Fifth Sunday in January 2006.

[@Pdor_figlio_di_Kmer]

Working as a technician I HAD once to install XP on a PII 350Mhz with 1Gb RAM and it took something like 3 hours only to complete installation. I shudder to thing what it could take on a 233Mhz machine.

[@MLGKid420]

1GB of RAM on a Pentium II???

[@Pdor_figlio_di_Kmer]

@@MLGKid420 It was a machine that was brought in for upgrade when the main CPUs were the PIII above 500Mhz. The owner simply had no want to spend money beyond the memory upgrade and the installation of Windows XP. It was a waste of a morning to put together the sluggiest PC I ever saw right after a fresh OS installation.

[@9852323]

@@MLGKid420yeah best I’ve ever heard of is 768mb

[@ariusulibarri2418]

Congrats on reaching 1k subs!

[@JohnDoe-ml8ru]

Minimum specs for XP SP3 is 512mb's ram and 1ghz Pentium III. While CPU speed really doesn't matter, 512mb's is required. 1-2gb's is the sweet spot.

[@itstheweirdguy]

Love the video. I've been playing with XP in hyper-v, to master any P2V and V2P scenarios...hyper-v does check all the boxes here and it can boot clonezilla (secret, it takes 14 minutes to boot in a gen 1 hyper-v vm, WAIT!). I have xp pro, xp mce, and xp 64 vm's that all are super stable. Think I'm a little over-powered here, with a ryzen 7 5700x, i do the 32 bit vm's with 2 cores and 2gb ram. An old computer like that is definetly a win 98 computer!!!

[@keremqwehd]

Here is a gaming windows XP PC specs GPU: Radeon HD 4880-6880 GTS 8800 720MB ver - 320MB ver CPU: AMD FX 5000-8000 intel core i3-i5-i7 duo extreme-850-2770-3770 Motherboard: AMD motherboard - intel motherboard PSU: Minimum 200W - Max 500w HDD: Minimum 160GB - Max 500GB RAM: Minimum 2GB - Max 8GB

[@keremqwehd]

You need to get Windows XP 64-bit to use 8GB of RAM

[@art.tropical5545]

I remember back in that time magazines said, RAM is the best for XP, the processor does not too much for performance. I remember some tests, they compared systems with 64/128/256 mb RAM. For Windows 9X was too much RAM not the best idea, but 2000/XP could show, that RAM is most important. I think in 2001 most standard PC systems used to have 128 MB. SD-RAM prices dropped extremely through that year, so I remember that I bought 512 mb on my old celeron300A, and for such things was XP the best (most modern) system. That was reason for a lot of concern back in that time, even the required activation, the older systems did not require any activation. Today a lot of people like Windows XP, but in 2001 there was a lot discussion and negative reviews.

[@CathrineMacNiel]

oh damn, ACDsee. I haven't seen those icons for over 15 years.

[@baremetaltechtv]

woohooo! 2.5 thousand subs now, that statement aged like milk.

[@plainsabertooth7828]

The windows xp tour requires a decent gpu, I know because I've tried it.

[@pete8475]

I just commented on one of your other videos that I have basically the same case. Well I have the EXACT same case as this one in my stock of old parts. The front is a bit more yellow on yours though!

[@mrvomit101]

I actually installed and ran Windows XP SP3 on a 350mhz Pentium 2 With 256mb ram and a 16mb Matrox, and it was surprisingly usable.

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

Interesting video!

[@downundergarage6968]

How did you get web browsing to work on XP? The IE6 does not work, you can upgrade to IE7 and then after SP3 you can do to IE8 but none of them work.

[@NTGTechnology]

The "web browsing" I'm showing is actually the HTML version of the Windows XP tour. It's not connected to the Internet at all and is just loading local HTML files. With that said, if your networking hardware is working properly, you should still be able to use IE6 to connect to sites that don't require up to date SSL/TLS. Something like frogfind.com for example should work fine on IE6.

[@Biaanca5036]

You can technically use a more powerful computer to emulate the internet as a streaming image and then look at it with IE6. But you don't get any audio like that I think. My personally, I just use remote desktop if I wanna do anything internet related from winXP

[@jiangzhao1142]

I just test WinXP SP3 on Virtualbox, just give 64MB RAM, and running OK!

[@nathanlamaire]

That's genuinely usable machine. You need to take for granted that this is a 'standard' speed back in the day. But yes, it seriously needs more RAM to actually be useful in productivity. This thing with this bare minimum specs will only run 90s games. In my childhood memory it's exactly the same speed as what I was using my PC back in the day, and that thing is much better than this PC.

[@WinXP_SP1]

Did you go into the performance options and adjust it for speed?

[@honkhonkler7732]

This machine definitely needs Windows 95. My personal standard is as follows... 8088-slow 386: DOS 6.22 only fast 386-Pentium 75: Windows 3.1 Pentium 90 - Pentium 233 MMX: Windows95 Pentium II 233Mhz - Pentium 4 Willamette: Windows 98 Pentium 4 Northwood - early Core 2: Windows XP Late Core 2 and later gets modern 64 bit Windows.

[@RABBIDGamfan]

If I could go back knowing what I know now, I'd probably implore my family to install 2000 on the family Aptiva instead of XP. It's way too slow with less than 256MB

[@milasudril]

RAM determines the size of the "problem" you can solve. If you try to load an image out of a modern DSLR, it will swap constantly. The OS does not matter in this case.

[@WellBeSerious12]

Would be also interesting to see both configurations tested with low-end Linux/Unix. To at least have internet, music streaming, Discord/messaging?

[@InternationalLiaison]

Im looking to install windows XP 64bit professional edition on an Alienware R1 with a intel i7 920 and 24GB 1600Mhz ram. Wish me luck and see where the compatibility conflicts are at

[@NTGTechnology]

Godspeed, good sir.

[@weelebaseknowles4410]

Can it run a webrowser

[@DonMr]

I have a computer with a amd k6-?. It ran OK.

[@chrisrudi7162]

If you also install SP3 as well as all the updates and Net Framework, it will be torture on this PC. Then the RAM requirement in particular increases significantly and the swap file is heavily used. Then you have the HDD LED permanently lit. It's no longer fun under 512 MB and 800 MHz. By the way, I've had it on machines with 90 MHz and 133 MHz, terrible. Even if you deactivate Luna and many services. Instead, it's better to use Win2000 or NT.

[@art.tropical5545]

The reason to use XP (and not 9X) on such a system? It think, XP was much more stable. But best idea for such systems might be Windows 2000.

[@josiahbarkhau9359]

You should start doing videos on vintage laptops, restore them and push them to their limits and install XP on em!!! 🔥🔥🔥☠️😈☠️🔥🔥🔥

[@Jordansklar0698]

i love T-Mobile js and Windows xp lol

[@TheBrettMizer]

I use office xp

[@bluethunder863]

nice floor bro

[@woofgbruk5947]

Now do Vista on minimum specs!

[@resolvanlemmy]

Now this will be torture. And well, this is what most people had when Vista first released, which contributed massively to its poor reception. Thankfully, I thought about upgrading my entire computer a year after Vista came out, and I had an amazing time with it. That computer would last me 11 years.

[@crabdonkey6381]

Win 98 failing to shut down may have induced some Win XP upgrades.

[@ZaheeruddinSaikh-ty7hi]

Windows XP compatible pantiam 4. P3 menlium. P2 Windows 98.👋🌸🔚👊🌻.

[@bregrif19]

20:53 25:01

[@seanland]

Windows xp setup install Sean happy 😊 pc computer 🖥

[@robertjakeregulto8351]

Bro please run minecraft server on it its gonna be insane

[@borislavdavis4526]

XP on i3/i5/i7 (with legacy support turned on)with 4GB RAM is much faster than this

[@MLGKid420]

Obviously.

[@9852323]

No shit..

[@mtunayucer]

Bruh

[@rogermeyer5695]

Dude, unless you are knowledgeable about this don't upload a video. I built many Windows XP machine and always had a Pentium 4 hyper thread technology 3.0Ghz and 2GBs PC3200 memory never had slowness like your video.

[@tronalddump8776]

In 1999 my mother bought a dell 8100 p4 with 256 mb ecc rimm or whatever it's called. Came with ME which was terrible and she upgraded it to XP which I remember it being painfully slow. She used it until 2010 and now it sits here on my desk in pieces for the first time ever, I pulled a cat size dustball out of it. I put 98se on a SSD and she's actually quick enough to use for some word or light stuff maybe a giant mp3 player that draws 100watts and can't move lol. I don't even know what to do with it besides keep it on the shelf or maybe regift it to her modernized somewhat.

[@NTGTechnology]

I'm pretty sure those have an AGP slot so you could probably turn it into a pretty good 98 gaming machine. The stock GPU might already be enough, looks like those came with GeForce 2 GTSs or Radeons in some configs. I'd look into it if I were you.

[@tronalddump8776]

@@NTGTechnology it has a mx2 dell edition and a Santa Cruz turtle beach. But we weren't allowed to put anything on her computer we the kids had our own we shared I forget exactly the model but it was Compaq presario running 98

[@tronalddump8776]

@@NTGTechnology I'm looking for matching ram there's one stick of the exact stuff on ebay. It's infineon. It was alright running me back in the day I did put quake 3 on it for about 2 days until she removed it lol. It didn't like XP or at least I didn't like how slow it felt. It had a enhanced ide drive (sits on a shelf now) that sounded like all the 747's taking off at the same time.

[@tronalddump8776]

@@NTGTechnology the biggest thing I want to do before reassembling it is to find a good power supply with strong enough 3 and 5 volt rails. I grabbed an adapter to pull the second 16 pin mb connectors power off the 24 pin connector since this has some weird proprietary crap. The power supply does work great still except it is pretty loud like it competes with the hard drive.

[@9852323]

All of that came out in 2000.