stuck between a rock and a hard place

[brentconn]

This is my problem. My wife's boss wants me to upgrade one of the office computers with XP. After getting the information on the computer, now I am wondering if they should stick with win 98. The hard drive is only a 1.9 G. Easy enough to put in a HD but this thing is a dinosaur(in my opinion). The computer is an AST Bravo MS 5100 with 48 M Ram. I can already see motherboard problems. I can max out the ram at 192 M( this thing has 6 banks at 32 M max! LOL), but I am wondering if XP might be a problem with this type of computer. What do you guys think?

[not important]

I believe 128MB of ram is the least amount acceptable for XP.

[sdkfz]

my suggestion would be to run the hardware check on it and present the results to the requestor. I would stick to 98 myself

XP needs 256 mb ram to run smoothly and with less on a slow old machine that box will definitley run slower (I am assuming you somehow force XP on it in the first place) The specs below indicate a higher max on the ram, I might have he wrong model though, i only did a quick search

specs on box

http://www.epinions.com/S0509023-Bra...ay_~full_specs

MS XP compatibility tool
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/h...t/software.asp

download and burn this to a cd, this is a big file, it actually is the first part of the install as a separate app.


XP reqs from MS

PC with 300 megahertz (MHz) or higher processor clock speed recommended; 233-MHz minimum required;* Intel Pentium/Celeron family, AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended
128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)
1.5 gigabyte (GB) of available hard disk space.*
Super VGA (800 × 600) or higher resolution video adapter and monitor
CD-ROM or DVD drive
Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device

[Confused]

You're in for a lot of problems if you try to make that box run XP. And to top it off you poor wife has to face the boss every day. That's a raw deal for him to even ask it of you.

For XP you are going to need 8G to load it. That means a new drive. Old system like that probably won't see anything over 8G anyway. So now you are into a BIOS update or overlay program. Neither one is good. I wouldn't even attempt to run XP with less than 256M of RAM/512 if he wants XP Pro. You need a processor of at least 500Mhz.

And your poor wife is in the middle.
Chas

[morriswindgate]

For that computer with that hard drive even Win98 is going to be a stretch.

[brentconn]

thanks for the advice. The best thing to do is to ditch it and that is what I will tell her. She can get a nice used one for 300 - 400$

[Fuze]

I think it's time to break down and get a Lindows PC lol