XP with NO SPs!

[SimpleSi]

I came across an old toshiba laptop (one of 1st laptop for teacher scheme ones in Lancs) that a reception class teacher used and had been connected up to a SMARTBoard - the new teacher asked me to look at it because it had no sound.

 

Having fixed the sound - I was a bit suprised to find that the machine seemed to work quite quickly - I was even more suprised when I found i only had 256MB RAM as most machines with SMART installed need 512MB just to get out of bed

 

Basically - it was vanilla XP Pro - no SP1, 2 or anything

 

Just shows what the root cause of XP PCs slowing down over the years is

 

regards

 

Simon

PS OF course, if it wasn't in a primary school behind an RBOC firewall - god knows what infections it would pick up in about 30 secs! (did that once on someones home PC in early days of ADSL broadband - didn't enable a firewall before surfing - not a good idea )

[FN-GM]

To be honest i don't think i have used XP without a service pack.

[SimpleSi]

Wait till your older and someone like you says "Whats XP?" :)

 

Simon

[localzuk]

XP was amazingly nippy compared to now when it first came out. The rollout of SP1 slowed it down a little, but not a huge amount. The rollout of SP2 was like taking your processor out and replacing it with a 486, removing half your ram and then working with the result.

[cookie_monster]

It was fast but i remember it being a buggy nightmare but yes i agree SP's have slowed it down but SP2 added allot of extra guff. Still even SP2 is speedy on any half decent hardware.

 

 

I know a few people who run a machine without any XP service packs, but with no net access.

 

Hell yeh there's still plenty of 95/98 boxes around running basic apps quite happily keep them off the net and they'll run untill the hardware dies.

[Sirbendy]

I ran XP RC2600 for..ooh, a few years with no SPs...no problems emerged. I bypassed SP1 totally and went straight to SP2. Until I made a slipstream CD, I still installed RC2600 as standard.

[localzuk]

It was fast but i remember it being a buggy nightmare but yes i agree SP's have slowed it down but SP2 added allot of extra guff. Still even SP2 is speedy on any half decent hardware.

 

I don't know about buggy. It had some problems, sure, but it was remarkably stable.

 

And when you say 'half decent hardware', considering Micrsoft state that the minimum hardware for it was 233Mhz with 64Mb RAM or 300Mhz and 128Mb RAM recommended, I would say the hardware requirements have gone up a large amount. I would never recommend running it on anything less than 1.6Ghz with 256Mb RAM...

[cookie_monster]

We ran some XP0 machines in the office not long after it came out and it never ran well on anything under 400MHz with 256 Mb memory. The 64Mb mimimum spec made me laugh out loud every time a saw it i don't the the realistic happy level has ever been under 1Ghz with 256 Mb RAM, i remember unboxing some at that spec around that time and thinking it was quite speedy on that hardware.

 

Again alot of out issues were with third party and older software and drivers (same as vista) , but XP did have it's share of issues even MS admit that it had many issues on release.

Edited April 25, 2008 by cookie_monster

[StewartKnight]

I just put Vista on a prefectly good machine that was running XP SP2

Even though I have 2gb or ram, it's turned my desktop into a three legged donkey!

 

Bl**dy VISTA!!

[Michael]

I remember running XP Gold a few months after it was released all the way back in October 2001. Not sure why I remember that!?

 

XP was very similar to 2000 at this stage, apart from the rather obvious New Start Menu and it was only until SP2 came along did things change a lot for XP.

 

It would be interesting if someone did a benchmark test between XP Gold, XP SP1a, XP SP2 and now XP SP3.

[cookie_monster]

Yeh SP2 really was XP Second Edition it was only at that point that we bothered moving from 2K Pro.

 

Interestingly i've noticed that on Computer Performance there is a disscussion about a 10% speed increase over SP2 from a fresh install and some claim to of verified this.

 

 

http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2007/11/windows-xp-sp3-yields-performance-gains.html

 

 

I would just settle for not any slower :-)

Edited May 7, 2008 by cookie_monster

[NickHoughton]

Well

 

In my loft, I have 2 pentium 200 machines which run XP SP 2 and are OK for web browsing except when something that needs flash appears!

 

For general windows stuff and 2d work they are OK.

 

Still can't sell them though

[cookie_monster]

Flash grrrr gets right up my nose especially when whole pages are covered in the stuff, sometimes i'll be viewing a few tabs and i notice the fan running on my notebook (AMD 1800 Mhz, 512Mb RAM) and i notice that the CPU is running at 80% +. I know i can stop this with FF and i do but i shouldn't have too.

 

I've still got an old box (P3 600) test box with XP SP2 as well and it runs pretty well.

 

 

Still can't sell them though

 

Correction, you can't give em away we had a room of nice little Elonex book shelf PC's (P3 600 with 256Mb RAM) that we had to pay to get rid of. We contacted a couple of companies that send PC's overseas and they said they were too low spec.

Edited May 7, 2008 by cookie_monster

[SimpleSi]

In my loft, I have 2 pentium 200 machines which run XP SP 2 and are OK for web browsing except when something that needs flash appears!

 

For general windows stuff and 2d work they are OK.

 

I'd lay a large wager you couldn't get 2 other people to agree that they are "OK"

 

(unless they are some sort of special setup with no AV/Defender and have large amounts of RAM on them )

 

Even my old Pentium II 400 with with 64MB RAM was running Win98SE and choked when I tried putting XP (no SP!) on it

 

regards

 

Simon

[SYNACK]

I got XP on a Pentium 166 with 128mb or ram once, that was unbearably slow, 10 seconds for the start menu to come up after clicking it kind of slow.

[maniac]

I still have a laptop running windows 2000 and it's the most reliable machine I own! It sits in my back room purely to play music from a shared network drive, and does it's job admirably! (It's an Acer travelmate 210, 400MHz with 64MB ram.)

 

I did load XP on it once, but it really didn't like it. Windows 2000 was still the most reliable OS microsoft ever produced in my opinion.

[cookie_monster]

We used to use an NT4 Workstation SP6a box as a CD server (P166 32MB RAM bless) and it used to run for months without issue i think that was probably more stable than 2K Pro. 2K wasn't the best MS OS untill at least SP2 and possibly still doesn't match NT4 Workstation for reliability. (i'm talking client OS here not server)

[maniac]

We used to use an NT4 Workstation SP6a box as a CD server (P166 32MB RAM bless) and it used to run for months without issue i think that was probably more stable than 2K Pro. 2K wasn't the best MS OS untill at least SP2 and possibly still doesn't match NT4 Workstation for reliability. (i'm talking client OS here not server)

 

I don't go back quite far enough to remember NT4 as a workstation OS, The first school I worked at however did have an NT4 server as it's main domain controller, until I changed it for a slightly better server 2003 box. That server never fell over once in the time I was there, and it was still in use as an exchange server right up until I left (that was just 2 years ago) I know it's now retired however as the person who took over from me got rid of it, well it was on borrowed time really. RIP.

[cookie_monster]

NT4 Workstation was great (well after a couple of SP's of course :-)) it was a pretty basic bussiness OS, before they started to add all sorts of unnecessary rubbish by default like 2K/XP. I remember really liking it (it was a pig when adding hardware mind no PnP) but maybe i'm wearing rose tinted glasses it was a while ago.

[googlemad]

I remember jumping from the RC with the Windows Classic interface to the RC with the new Luna interface and I just sat there for a few hours and thought 'Wow'!

[cookie_monster]

Do you remember the Windows 2000 beta that had the XP start menu though :-)

 

I can't find a shot of the start menu but below you can see a shot of the Windows 2000 Welcome Screen that never appeared in the RTM version as it was intended for the home version that (funny this) was late and became XP Home instead.

 

http://neosmart.net/gallery/v/os/Neptune/

Edited May 8, 2008 by cookie_monster

[hotwired007]

Do you remember the Windows 2000 beta that had the XP start menu though :-)

 

I can't find a shot of the start menu but below you can see a shot of the Windows 2000 Welcome Screen that never appeared in the RTM version as it was intended for the home version that (funny this) was late and became XP Home instead.

 

Windows Neptune

 

this looks quite cool...

 

i have just sorted out a friends PC,

 

AMD K6-2 333Mhz, 392mb RAM, 40GB 5400rpm HDD (Upgraded from 6.4GB), ATI RAGE PRO, C-Media Audio... Installed XP and RAN very nicely... installed office still working fine... AVG Antivirus... duck in the water... tried running windows update... ran the update install... took 1 hr afterwards to tell me it needed 99 updates... after all that it worked fine APART from flash or java...

 

friend is a facebook/youtube junkie...

 

end result - told em to buy new PC...

 

Going to set PC up as a black box in loft for file storage...

[flashsnaps]

I have a Dell Laptop which only has 128mb ram with XP Pro and no sp's its works amazingly quick!