XP Pro on older Compaq Presario

I just finished networking an XP Pro Dell and a Win98 Compaq Presario (with a tremendous amount of help from Mike Flynn.)

I installed Office XP on the XP Pro machine, and after checking requirements, installed it on the Compaq also. It seems to be much more efficient than the previous version of Office and that made me wonder if XP Pro would be more efficient on the older computer as well.

It barely meets minimum requirements:

Cyrix 6x86mx MMX ~256

1.5 Gig of HD space left (although I could easily clean that up and I also have an external USB Maxtor)

316.0 MB RAM (after video)

Would it be a good idea to put XP Pro on the Compaq or leave things as they are?

 

My immediate impulse with Compaq's, especially laptops (you can't just pop out an incompatible modem, for example, and solve your problem for $10), is that you will end up in a world of hurt.

Because of Compaq's often proprietary hardware and drivers, you may have difficulty finding drivers for the hardware that the laptop contains.

Check the Compaq site. If that laptop was never sold with XP, then they won't have XP drivers.

This test will do a basic scan of your computer online and advise you if your computer is ready for XP:

http://www.pcpitstop.com/xpready/

For a more thorough test, try Microsoft's XP-readiness test. It will examine your hardware as well as present software for XP-compatibility. It is a large, over 30 meg, download:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Utility/1.0/WXP/EN-US/UpgAdv.exe

 

FYI, it's a desktop. However, I will try those suggestions--thanks.

 

The CPU is "sort of ready" so that's pretty much enough information for me. Sounds like it wouldn't be worth the possible trouble.

Thanks.

 

I 100% agree with Abraxas!

and

I 100% agree with you Margot! Smile!

You can help performace on it by a deep cleanup an a review and cleanup of startups!

Mike

 

And I agree with Mike and Margot. What a mutual admiration society we have here!

Margot--I didn't think it was going to work easily if at all, but I thought it better for you to convince yourself of that.

XP is a rather CPU-intensive OS compared to 98 or ME. Office may have been faster, but I doubt XP would have been. It may have dragged and you would have regretted it.

(I don't know where the laptop came from---maybe because I used to have a Dell? )