Installing XP on Dell 4100 .. any potent. problems

[fiask0]

I plan on doing a fresh format and install of XP Pro on my aunt's Dell 4100 series tomorrow. I plan to use partition magic to create a second partition and back up her email files, .doc files, and anythin else to the newly created partition - formatting her C: drive with the XP Pro CD, and installing it clean. She doesn't have any other added hardware, and I was wondering if I should expect any problems with drivers, like the mobo drivers particuarly, or anything else I should look out for? It in running win98 SE right now. Thanks in advance

fiask0!!

 

[Crashman]

Unless it has 512MB of RAM, it will be DOG slow. These older systems are already taxed by XP, but lack of RAM just totally destroys performance on them under XP.

Basically, it takes XP at least TWICE the RAM to run like a similar 98SE installation. I recommend 256MB or more on 98SE, and 512MB or more on XP.

Why the heck are you putting XP on it anyway? A fresh install of 98SE should run nearly perfectly on that system.

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[allanon1965]

i agree with crashman on this one, doing a winxp install on that machine is asking for trouble, even if you had enough memory, there WILL be problems with outdated hardware and software issues, dont do it! experience speaks volumes!

Fat, Drunk, and Stupid is no way to go through life Son.

 

[jimbo99]

Well, it isn't just the amount of ram. The video card and hdd speed, and very much the processor play an important role.

I used a 800mhz duron in my workstation at work. I then used my ram and my video card (a spare gforce 4 ti 4200). Some local guys would come into the shop and play games (EQ mostly) and I would let them play when I was gone or working on large projects.

When they played the stated that the machine ran so much better then the other game machines we were offering on our internet cafe.

My machine also had 1 gig of ram.

Many months later I decided to setup a RH 9 linux box at home and noted that the graphics were so so slow. Linux was a dog. Same processor speed as the machine at work but it ran so slow. I took my gforce 4 ti 4200 out of my machine at work and installed it in my linux box at home. This ran well. I grabbed the next best I could find--a Voodoo3 3000 card and installed it instead. Guess what. XP runs dog slow even with the 1 gig of ram.

I'm just trying to show how performance is affected by many things. BTW, 1 gig of ram on XP didn't show that great of a performance increase over 256mb of ram. 128 is about the bare minimum. 512mb isn't required. 256mb is sufficient.