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What do you recommend as the minimum system specs for Windows 2000 SP4?

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computerdude92

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What I mean is being fast enough for a long period of use as an offline OS, at least 1 year. Is a Pentium II Dixon 366MHz with 128MB ram enough for a clean install of Win2k? What about a Pentium II Tonga 233MHz with just 96MB of ram? Those are specs for my slowest working laptops and I know even WinXP feels kinda slow on the early Pentium III CPUs.

I tried a few alternative media players for my PIII 700 WinXP SP1 laptop and it still was so slow that it would randomly skip ahead when playing songs sometimes... so I'm using Win2k instead. I think I had better times with music on my previous XP SP1 laptop which had a Celeron Coppermine at 450MHz and 100MHz FSB. I don't think I remember hearing songs skip with that laptop.

Also, are laptop PII/PIII chips slower than their desktop equivalents at the same speed?

Thanks for any advice.
 
computerdude92 said:
What I mean is being fast enough for a long period of use as an offline OS, at least 1 year. Is a Pentium II Dixon 366MHz with 128MB ram enough for a clean install of Win2k? What about a Pentium II Tonga 233MHz with just 96MB of ram? Those are specs for my slowest working laptops and I know even WinXP feels kinda slow on the early Pentium III CPUs.

I tried a few alternative media players for my PIII 700 WinXP SP1 laptop and it still was so slow that it would randomly skip ahead when playing songs sometimes... so I'm using Win2k instead. I think I had better times with music on my previous XP SP1 laptop which had a Celeron Coppermine at 450MHz and 100MHz FSB. I don't think I remember hearing songs skip with that laptop.

Also, are laptop PII/PIII chips slower than their desktop equivalents at the same speed?

Thanks for any advice.
Click to expand...
As a barometer, if you had or have a XP machine W2K will run on that. Then you can go from there.
 
I ran XP on a Pentium III 600 for some time with no problems even playing movies and music. I think your problems are either related to a lack of memory or a slow hard disk.

Check what Task Manager shows under performance for memory used. The systems described would be tight under Windows 2000. With limited memory, it was often better to leave the system alone after startup until the hard disk light stops flashing to prevent trying to read applications while still loading the OS.

Is there a reason you are rejecting Win98?
 
I think I used to run it on an AMD K6. 2K is definitely smoother than XP on old hardware. I think you probably need more RAM. Laptop performance was often compromised for battery life
 
My main home jukebox was for a long time a Compaq C600 (unknown CPU at 600MHz) with 384MB of RAM and Windows 2000 Pro. It worked perfectly right up until it was replaced by a Windows 7 machine. I dug it out of the spares pile recently and it's still working fine.

I use Media Monkey software to handle the playing of music.

oh, EDIT:

I also have some Compaq C500 (Mendicino CPU at 500MHz) with as little as 64MB RAM running Windows 2000 with no problems. Perhaps this might be a better answer to the question.
 
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computerdude92 said:
What I mean is being fast enough for a long period of use as an offline OS, at least 1 year. Is a Pentium II Dixon 366MHz with 128MB ram enough for a clean install of Win2k? What about a Pentium II Tonga 233MHz with just 96MB of ram? Those are specs for my slowest working laptops and I know even WinXP feels kinda slow on the early Pentium III CPUs.

I tried a few alternative media players for my PIII 700 WinXP SP1 laptop and it still was so slow that it would randomly skip ahead when playing songs sometimes... so I'm using Win2k instead. I think I had better times with music on my previous XP SP1 laptop which had a Celeron Coppermine at 450MHz and 100MHz FSB. I don't think I remember hearing songs skip with that laptop.

Also, are laptop PII/PIII chips slower than their desktop equivalents at the same speed?

Thanks for any advice.
Click to expand...
I would recommend 128MB minimum for 2000 and 256MB minimum for XP. You can run them both with less but things can get sluggish.

I had Windows 2000 on a Pentium 200 MMX with 128MB RAM and it was fine. No problem playing MP3s in the background.
 
My slow PIII 700 laptop has 256MB of ram. Upgrading from 128MB did not fix the media skipping issue in XP.

Is it slow because XP SP1 was installed onto an SD card with an IDE to SD adapter board? The OS file system was FAT32. I think FAT32 runs easier on SD cards than NTFS. It's also the default file system when you buy them.
 
computerdude92 said:
My slow PIII 700 laptop has 256MB of ram. Upgrading from 128MB did not fix the media skipping issue in XP.

Is it slow because XP SP1 was installed onto an SD card with an IDE to SD adapter board? The OS file system was FAT32. I think FAT32 runs easier on SD cards than NTFS. It's also the default file system when you buy them.
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I would say its FAT32 because they are designed for Cameras, Media Players, Mobile Phones and other devices which don't understand NTFS. My experiences with SD cards suggest that they are slow and shouldn't be used as primary OS storage, but perhaps thats my bias. Raspberry PIs use them and seem OK...
 
Oddly I haven't noticed the sound skipping issue in Win2k on the same laptop. I also used FAT32 for Win2k.
 
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