rank newbie: install xp on old presario?

[jimkleiser]

I don't know anything about laptops, as I've had them only for work and they were maintained by the IT guys. I have an old Compaq Presario 1800 (model no on bottom is 18XL390) which I ended up with after a company change, for which I have no specific disks. It's been sitting on a shelf for a couple years, but the battery seems ok. It has a buggy, corrupted Win98 installed, and I've been considering buying XP Home online for it. Can you just do this? Are there laptop-specific aspects to teh OS that the standard WinXP would not include? Are there Compaq-specific drivers somewhere? What about video, the CD/DVD reader (no burner), slots, fancy assignable keys, etc. Is it worth fooling with at all? Thanks!

[doctorgonzo]

How much memory is in the laptop? It looks like it originally came with 64MB or memory or some very low amount, which is far too low for Windows XP. I'd suggest doing a clean install of Windows 98SE. You can download drivers from HP's website.

[Kareeser]

jim, like doctorgonzo said, your laptop probably doesn't have enough RAM in it to easily run windows XP.

You can do a fresh install of Windows 98SE. As you say you don't have any disks, you can buy WIndows 98SE at a very low price (Around $30 US).

You may want to wait until after June or July, when prices may go down significantly.

If you have any questions, feel free to post a topic here, or reply.

[thefultonhow]

That laptop has reasonably good specs according to a Google search. It might be worth it to go on crucial.com and use their memory configurator to get another 256 MB or 512 MB SODIMM, and then install XP.

[jimkleiser]

Thanks for the help. I checked the computer and found it has only 128 MB installed, then went onto crucial.com (didn't know about that site!) and found that the max it can handle is 320 MB, and that there is only 1 slot available. Looks like I could get to 256 MB really. That seems too small for XP, right? I guess 98SE would be it, then. Oh, well.

[thefultonhow]

I wouldn't do a 98SE install. Windows 2000 is a better option... but with that said, a 1 GHz PIII with 320 MB wouldn't be too bad running XP. There's probably 64 MB soldered onto the board, so the 256 would be additional.

[BJDwrk]

I'd say try it. I ran XP Pro for several years on a Dell Latitude from 1998. It had 128 MB of RAM and a 5 gig HD. It was a 233 MHz Pentium 1. You can run it, it'll just be slower.

[Mesaeus]

Another vote for XP, as long as you pump the memory up as far as it can go. I've run XP on pc's that ran at a third of that speed, so it IS possible as long as you give it plenty of memory.

[kstatefan40]

XP would run ok on it, but I think you'd find that 2000 performs better and is more stable on the slower system. I've ran XP on a 1.2 Duron laptop with 256 MB Ram, and personally, it runs OK, but 2000 runs much better on the same laptop.

Just my two cents.

[jayb1234]

Here is what Crucial lists for memory for that model.