Windows 2000 Pro on Pentium 166mhz

[clicknext]

Right now I'm running Windows 98 on a Pentium 166. It's... well... functional, but not much more than that. Has 80MB of RAM. Would Windows2000 run properly at all and actually be usable if I installed it on this thing?

 

[spyordie007]

it would run, not very fast but it would run.

I wouldnt recommend multi-tasking, but than again Windows 98 wouldnt really run all that good on it either.

-Spy

 

[PowerEngineer]

I have a dual-boot P2 300Mhz machine, and W2K Pro runs as fast (and much more stabily) as Windows ME. I believe part of the reason is that I bumped the memory up from 96 Mb to 351 Mb. You'll probably need to add a bunch too if you want to give W2K a reasonable chance.

 

[calpha]

I run W2k on a AMD K62-300. Not fair to compare to the 166mhz I know...but it's usable. Not for anything more then word processing and graphics...but it is usable.

BTW. I've installed W2k on a 166 w/ 64 Megs of RAM (I think that's the min specs) and it was tough to use. IMO....unless you've got a ton of ram...you'd be better off with a fresh install of 98. if you can keep your system without a bunch of junk on it.....I think you might be able to use it w/o too much irritation. (I got one of dem here that I use for testing, and it's bearable)

 

[techwanabe]

My computer instructor says Win2k will run decent even on a Pentium 133 if you feed it enough memory. Memory is cheap so feed your computer memor, lots of it, and upgrade.

 

[Electrode]

I'm running win2k on a P166 MMX with 144 MB of memory, and it is a little sluggish, but usable.

 

[TheCorm]

Windows 2000 will be more sluggish than 98 on that old a machine....probably a bit more stable though.

Corm

 

[NogginBoink]

I ran the domain controller for my home network on a Pentium 133.

Two user accounts, three machine accounts. The server just sat there and did nothing but DC roles.

It was completely unusable from a user interface perspective. It handled the domain controller duties, but there's no way that even the world's most patient person would use that as a desktop os.

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: NogginBoink
I ran the domain controller for my home network on a Pentium 133.

Two user accounts, three machine accounts. The server just sat there and did nothing but DC roles.

It was completely unusable from a user interface perspective. It handled the domain controller duties, but there's no way that even the world's most patient person would use that as a desktop os.

Win 2K Server running as a DC does much more work than Win 2K Pro browsing the web and running office.
To give you an idea my P3-733/512 DC takes well over 5 min. to boot!

Right now I'm running Windows 98 on a Pentium 166. It's... well... functional, but not much more than that.

I would expect the same from Win 2K, it will browse the web and work in Office just fine (unless you are running Office XP with all the bells and wistles). 80MB of RAM is enough to run Win 2K + IE + Word 2000 at a reasonable pace.

-Spy

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: spyordie007

Originally posted by: NogginBoink
I ran the domain controller for my home network on a Pentium 133.

Two user accounts, three machine accounts. The server just sat there and did nothing but DC roles.

It was completely unusable from a user interface perspective. It handled the domain controller duties, but there's no way that even the world's most patient person would use that as a desktop os.

Win 2K Server running as a DC does much more work than Win 2K Pro browsing the web and running office.
To give you an idea my P3-733/512 DC takes well over 5 min. to boot!

Win2k Server is set up by default to give priority to background processes, so of course the UI is going to be rather sluggish, especially on a slow system like that.

Right now I'm running Windows 98 on a Pentium 166. It's... well... functional, but not much more than that.

I would expect the same from Win 2K, it will browse the web and work in Office just fine (unless you are running Office XP with all the bells and wistles). 80MB of RAM is enough to run Win 2K + IE + Word 2000 at a reasonable pace.

-Spy

For me, MS Word still loads too slow on my zippy Athlon XP with 512MB of RAM, but my parents wouldn't know the difference between 2GHz of Athlon XP power and a 166MHz Pentium. An interesting observation I have made about Win2k is that on equivalent hardware, Windows 98 may appear to be slightly faster while single tasking at a few small things, but Windows 2000 will "feel" very "smooth" (it's hard to understand unless you've experienced it), and will keep running reasonably well even under a large multitasking load.

 

[Priit]

I've installed and ran W2k Pro on 486DX2/66 with 32Mb RAM. Even thought installation took about 24h and boot-up about half an hour, it somewhat run. I had plan to try it run on even lower hardware (like 486SX/25Mhz without "turbo" mode, should give ~10Mhz processor) but never had time for that. I doubt W2k will run well on P166 even if it has enough RAM. I'd suggest Win95 OSR2 for that kind of system (that is if you need MS Windows at all).

 

[PurePeon]

why bother...time to bury that ancient relic. or use linux

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: PurePeon
why bother...time to bury that ancient relic. or use linux

There you go, throw a couple of nics in it and turn it into a firewall or something and spend the $400 to set yourself up a new box

-Spy

 

[Spyro]

Originally posted by: spyordie007

Originally posted by: PurePeon
why bother...time to bury that ancient relic. or use linux

There you go, throw a couple of nics in it and turn it into a firewall or something and spend the $400 to set yourself up a new box

-Spy

Welll, you could also use it as a DOS gaming box.....

 

[clicknext]

Originally posted by: spyordie007

Originally posted by: PurePeon
why bother...time to bury that ancient relic. or use linux

There you go, throw a couple of nics in it and turn it into a firewall or something and spend the $400 to set yourself up a new box

-Spy

lol, it's not my comp, it's my "workstation" at school for this term... even though it's very difficult to get any work done on such a crappy old thing.

 

[NogginBoink]

Originally posted by: spyordie007

Originally posted by: NogginBoink
I ran the domain controller for my home network on a Pentium 133.

Two user accounts, three machine accounts. The server just sat there and did nothing but DC roles.

It was completely unusable from a user interface perspective. It handled the domain controller duties, but there's no way that even the world's most patient person would use that as a desktop os.

Win 2K Server running as a DC does much more work than Win 2K Pro browsing the web and running office.
To give you an idea my P3-733/512 DC takes well over 5 min. to boot!

No, a DC does not do "much more work than Win2K browsing the web and running office." After the user is authenticated, the DC actually does very little.

Yes, it takes forever to boot and start all those services, but once they're started, they just sit there waiting for something to do. Since I never log off my machine, the DC is mostly idle.

It only groans when I log on locally and try to do something that has a GUI on the DC.

 

[spyordie007]

Yes except running as a DC it will eat much more RAM even when it's not "doing" something. Also like mentioned before 2K Server is set by default to give priority to background services and not the GUI (as it should be).

My point was that it really wasnt a fair comparison, just because 2K Server runs seriously sluggish on that hardware doesnt mean that 2K Pro would run the same.

-Spy

 

[Chaotic42]

I'm considering putting W2K on a P1-200 here at work. All it needs to do is word processing. I'm just kind of worried, because it only has 32MB of memory.

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: techwanabe
My computer instructor says Win2k will run decent even on a Pentium 133 if you feed it enough memory. Memory is cheap so feed your computer memor, lots of it, and upgrade.

Close... but a Pentium 166 probably isn't going to be using SDRAM. It probably uses EDO or maybe even SIMMs... unless you're lucky I don't think the motherboard will take SDRAM. SDRAM is cheap. The rest is rare, hard to find, and therefore not so cheap.

 

[kurt454]

I have a Pentium 166 machine with 80 megs of edo ram. Windows 98 seemed sluggish to me as well. I have Windows NT 4.0 on there now, and it is quite zippy. NT was designed to run on 64megs of ram(I believe).

 

[sciencewhiz]

I beleive (I just looked at the box yesterday) that win2k's minimum requirements is P133 with 64mb of ram. Recommended was PII 300mhz with 128mb of ram.

I never try to run an OS so close to the minimum requirements.

Why do you want to install windows 2000?

 

[asb002]

Following the theme: Would Win2k Pro run OK on my Pentium I 266 Laptop with 144MB Ram? 98 is really unstable on the old thing.

 

[kurt454]

Originally posted by: asb002
Following the theme: Would Win2k Pro run OK on my Pentium I 266 Laptop with 144MB Ram? 98 is really unstable on the old thing.

I have run 2000Pro on 128meg machines . If you are doing light duty stuff(no multitasking), it will run reasonably well. If it starts swapping to disk, it drags down badly.

Hard drive speed has alot to do with it as well. An older slower hdd will make the boot time intolerably long.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: sciencewhiz
I beleive (I just looked at the box yesterday) that win2k's minimum requirements is P133 with 64mb of ram. Recommended was PII 300mhz with 128mb of ram.

I never try to run an OS so close to the minimum requirements.

Why do you want to install windows 2000?

Well, I installed it on a P1-200 with 32MB. It took for freaking ever, but luckily another system got hit by a power surge, so I got to deal with that while the install was happening