Fresh install

Remove all ads!

I put my hands on a almost new pc; is a Notebook Compaq Presario 2500; Pentium 4 2,40 GHz, 192ram, on-board Conexant AC audio system, Radeon IGP 345M (ATI RS200M, 350MHz DAC). I own WinXP Home SP1 and Win98 OEM. The question is: what Win should install? Then: internet browsers, what is the best one?
The reason I'm doing the fresh install is because I've noticed that it runs very slowly for the hardware it has and internet gets slow after 10 minutes or so and I have to restart to gain speed again; all the system get slow after being "on" after 10-15 minutes; fans are working fine, and it has another one which starts automatically when gets too hot.
Thanks for any repply.
Best regards.

 

Unless you feel like installing all the drivers for your hardware manually, Win98 is out. I'm guessing your notebook came with an operating system (probably WinXP); use that.

Browsers: you can use IE 6 if you feel like having your PC drown with spyware Or you can stick to Firefox. Opera is good (though a tad odd to use)

 

Well, you should always do a clean install after getting a new computer from Dell, Compaq, HP, ect...they put so much useless crap on your hard drive. I think it's better to start from scratch and then choose what you want on YOUR computer.

Oh, and as for you question: you should install Windows XP Pro! The Pro version is a lot better than the Home version. Don't even consider 98...I don't even think that Windows Supports 98 anymore. If you call for help, all they will tell you is to upgrade to XP.

 

Don't install Windows XP with 192MB Ram, it'll be slow as hell. I'd recommend Windows 2000 pro or a memory upgrade. So go with Win98.

I know people will say go with the XP, but XP by itself consumes 128MB of RAM, making the minimum amount to be tolerable 256MB. As for support, Win98 is still supported, and will be until 2006 (longhorn).

 

If it has to be Windows, Win2k is the best of them. Just remember that there are other options too.

 

If it has to Win2K, make damn sure you install SP5, or you're going to suffer.

I never tried the thing on my own system, but I've seen MANY people suffer when using anything older than SP5. Either some hardware wouldn't be detected, or some software would refuse to run. Or both

 

Yep, I ended up using WinXP when Win2000 just couldn't cope with all the new hardware on my new computer. I thought SP4 was the latest one though, 5's news to me.

 

Ziad, i call on that SP5 issue. It doesn't exist.

My opinion on that issue is: Win 2k or linux.

 

When I had XP, on average I had to reformat every six months. Not on general principle, but because it would become massively unstable with corrupted registries. Then I switched to 2000. Except for a stick of RAM that burned out, I've had not a problem since.

 

2000 is heavenly isn't it?

You could leave it on for days at a time without worries too. *sigh*

 

The thing is I just own Win98 and XP...
Untill now, things are working very smooth, I have Firefox installed and internet seems to run very nice; now I'm working in those things inside WinXP to make a little more reliable, this edition has an activation via internet thing (28 days left) but I don't want Microsoft getting into my pc every time I connect to internet to tell me what I have or no to install.

 

If you don't activate, you can't use WinXP. Activate it unless you have a pirated copy or someone else's registered copy or something.

 

You do not need to activate it legally -cracking it is always a good option even if you have a valid serial-number (...we all know M$ is a bit nosy...). For that there are activation-key generators, probably the same M$ uses when you give a call to them, but with the benefit that there is one less ID-registry made out of you.

 

Just to prove i trust in the stability of w2k i reformatted my HDD and installed it instead of 98SE.

Been sitting here 10 hours configuring... aagh.

And the choice between 98 and XP... XP is more stable but eats more ram. 98 runs fine with 64mb ram, but needs a reboot every five hours. XP needs 128mb of ram or more, but it's uptimes are measured in weeks.

 

I have a legal copy, it came with the pc...
Now I have this little box coming out every now and them: your computer will shut down (59 secs timer), something like "procedure calling system" (RPC in spanish), the shut down is authorized by: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM... who the heck is that???
And just like that the computer restarts... I'm going to kick BG's butt...