128MB enough for XP?

I went to my father-in-law's house to set up his e-mail account on his WinXp box and noticed that his McAfee virus scanner was disabled. I updated it and then enabled it, rebooted etc. I think his box ran okay before but now it runs like a dog! All apps take forever to load and the screen refresh is so slow that remnants of various windows remain on the screen. Is it possible that enabling McAfee on this box was the "straw that broke the camel's back "? He's running WinXP (probably never updated) with only 128MB of memory (SDRAM I think). It's an HP Presario 7935 with a 1.33G Tbird.

Isn't 256MB the "real" minimum needed to run XP? You wouldn't think HP would ship a box with XP loaded with insufficient memory to run it!

 

My company is recommending 256MB for all desktop / laptop systems that will be running Windows XP. However it will work fine with just 128, just slower.

 

Thanks, Eric - I'm getting replies on another board with most people recommending 256MB.

 

256 is probably optimal. Some Pcchips boards, and possibly others, actually run slower with more than 256.
A friend with 128 runs fast with no problems, but there does seem to be more disk access going on .

 

Definately go with 256. XP will consume 128 with only a couple of apps running on top of the OS, then you're into slower virtual memory.

With regard to Mcafee. I wanted to use it in preference to NAV if only because EVERYBODY uses NAV.

I too now use NAV! Ho hum.

I found (unfortunately) that Mcafee slows the system down noticeably, but especially on a slower/older ATA33 system. Even their latest v6.x just doesn't compete with NAV. On my second slower ATA33 Celeron @ 525 w/256 RAM, NAV only made a slight performance hit.

 

my sentiments exactly.

128 works but just doesn't do XP justice.....

 

I'd certainly agree to 256Mb as a minimum for XP

I'm a bit surprised to see McAfee being blamed for speed problems

I install TVD or AV at all customer's sites and never see any problems with speed....

 

I agree too with the 256 MiB. minimum. /Me running very nice with 384 MiB., Windows XP Professional, StarOffice 5.2 and many many things. 128 MiB. are probably O.K. for Windows XP 'HOME' Edition, because it's dramatically trimmed and slimmed (and trashed, anyway ) down.

... And I DEFINITIVELY agree with McAfee slowdown problems. I was a big fan of McAfee (was using it since 1987-89), 'till version 5.x, which slowed me down horribly in almost every machine slower than 1600 Mhz. & 192 MiB. RAM.

So... I'm trying a new discover in anti-virus: AntiVir Personal Edition, by H+BEDV (Datentechnik GmbH): http://www.freeav.com

The Personal Edition is LEGALLY FREE for individual users, so no fear.

Is not very fancy in it's interface, but is small, efficient and well rated, and that's enough for me. Give it a try!

 

There have been tests that show the optimal performance to be at 256, and the effiency with an increase in ram greater than 256 will increase speed with diminishing effiency. If one can visualize a graph with speed on the "Y" and ram size on the "X" axis the curve will be steep up to 256 and then begin to taper off and when it reaches 512 the curve declines.

This consistent with Abraxas' post, but I wasn't aware of any slower performance after 256. It is my understanding the rate of return decreases after 256.

 

I think McAfee has to be the culprit here too. It was the absolute tops for AV software at one time but recently (past 6-7 years at least) has been such a dog I greatly dislike having to use a system that is running it.

At work I run XP-pro on a P3 with 128Mb system memory and 4Mb video memory. Not ideal but not so slow as to be annoying. I keep 4 or 5 network apps open all the time and can still fire up a word or excel or access session and have it run pretty well. Not lightning fast by any means but fast enough.

I do have quite a bit of stuff paged out (usually 150-200Mb) but XP handles it pretty well and I don't really suffer major speed issues from paging.

AV is a corporate version of trend officescan which works well.

 

Yep. Using it in the whole University now. The concept is well done, but two years ago it was a piece of ****. Now it works pretty well...

 

Yup. Trend has good corporate products these days.

I still wish their Office Scan was more like the server product though. Lots easier to manage on the network.

With the server piece, you can change the Trend Push server by simply setting up the new one and having it notify the servers of the change. With the Office Scan and NT PCs, you gotta fire up the web management app, remove trend from each PC from ServerA and then push it back down to each from ServerB. Major pain in the hindparts if you got a couple thousand systems to deal with. Lots worse if any of the clients are 9X.