Will windows XP run on this old laptop?

[Dr. C]

It will run Microsoft Windows XP but it can be very slow. The limitation here is the 256 MB RAM not the processor or video card. I would find out the maximum amount of RAM the laptop will take and max it out. It will make a huge difference. I have got XP to run on lower specs: Caleron 400 with 192 MB of RAM

If you wish to run Microsoft Windows on the laptop, consider Windows 98SE. It will run really well on those specs.

For GNU / Linux consider a light distro Puppy, DSL etc or get the RAM up to 512K and run the latest Ubuntu!

ReactOS would be a good idea were it not for the fact that it is still in alpha, and there again extra RAM is a good idea.

[Dustin2128]

XP? (Facepalm) Unless you NEED Diablo, Quake, Doom, Starcraft, Scrabble Comeplete, XP is going to be a frustration in patience for the web.
Lubuntu (LXDE Desktop)
or Puppylinux, Tinycore (A Whopping 20 megabytes),

Flubuntu, and Xubuntu just didn't do it for me. - A WiFi guru test. Xubuntu was slower than Ubuntu - yech.

Quake and Doom run nativley in linux, diablo and starcraft work well in wine. Well diablo II does..

[eragon100]

It will run Microsoft Windows XP but it can be very slow. The limitation here is the 256 MB RAM not the processor or video card. I would find out the maximum amount of RAM the laptop will take and max it out. It will make a huge difference. I have got XP to run on lower specs: Caleron 400 with 192 MB of RAM

If you wish to run Microsoft Windows on the laptop, consider Windows 98SE. It will run really well on those specs.

For GNU / Linux consider a light distro Puppy, DSL etc or get the RAM up to 512K and run the latest Ubuntu!

ReactOS would be a good idea were it not for the fact that it is still in alpha, and there again extra RAM is a good idea.

512 K of RAM? :O

I already bought a memory bank to upgrade it from 128 to 256 MB of ram, it was very cheap on ebay. But usually this old memory is very expensive (right?) So 256 MB will have to do... >_<

[FoxEWolf]

Yes it will run. I would keep it in Windows Classic and disable as much GUI effects as much as possible and it would run smoother.

[mips]

34 posts later and we still don't know what cpu it has or the brand/model of the laptop everybody is providing suggestions to....

[fyfe54]

I have a similar spec Dell at my second home - used for surfing etc. I was running XP-Pro-SP3 but it was sloooooooow. Didn't want to buy a new machine just for weekends, so I went dual boot with Ubuntu and it was like it got a shot of steroids. Despite the improved performance, I had to keep XP for my wife as she hates change.

[CharlesA]

34 posts later and we still don't know what cpu it has or the brand/model of the laptop everybody is providing suggestions to....

Yep. Gotta love it.

[mips]

Yep. Gotta love it.

I suppose that's the internet for you.

I honestly don't understand how people can even make suggestions when they don't know the details surrounding the question.

Maybe I should have just replied with "42"

[Pogeymanz]

XP will run fine on that guy. And SP3 shouldn't give you too much trouble.

The real question is what kind (if any) anti-virus do you want to run? I've heard that Windows now has its own anti-virus (Microsoft Security Essentials) that works very well, while being much lighter on resources than the other options out there.

Also, you can disable a lot of services by going to Start->Run and typing "msconfig" and going to the services tab.

Make sure you also go to the advance settings in the appearance options and you can disable things like shadows and fade effects.

We're all Linux fanboys here, but XP SP3 will run way better on that machine than any flavor of Ubuntu (maybe Lubuntu stands a chance), especially if you ever want to watch a flash video. Or open an office document.

[Quadunit404]

Oh, of course, anti-virus!

Keeping the low specs of this machine in mind, here's my recommendations:

Paid:
- ESET Smart Security 4: I use this and it's really quite possibly one of the best paid anti-virus suites out there. It's fast, it's light-weight (ekrn.exe typically takes up 44MB of RAM on idle and 128MB when scanning) and viruses barely stand a chance against it. Seriously, I saw a protection test video on YouTube where the user mzrios installed it on a heavily infected virtual Windows XP box (I'm talking 100+ viruses here) and in the end only ONE of those ~100 viruses - a nasty rootkit - survived. It will even cancel downloads as soon as it detects a virus in whatever it is your downloading, which is nice. Basically any Windows security "expert" (as they call themselves) should know how untouchable ESET's reputation is when it comes to protecting your PC while not draining your resources.
- Norton Internet Security 2011: It's lightweight, but the interface sucks and it's very hard to get it to exclude items from scans AND keep it that way (which is annoying especially for false positives.) That, and the threat activity map is useless. Those three reasons are why I dumped it for ESET (and eventually the rest of my family's gonna switch too.) I guess it's okay because Symantec typically delivers at least ~200 updates per day.

Free:
- Microsoft Security Essentials: It's free, it's lightweight and provides good basic protection against viruses. It's not perfect, though - but then again, what is? The only major problem is that, being a Microsoft product, it will refuse to install on a copy of Windows Microsoft does not consider to be "genuine."
- MalwareBytes Anti-Malware: Absolutely, ABSOLUTELY have this on your PC as a backup anti-virus/malware. MBAM is often considered to be THE best at detecting malware and other bad crap and is frequently used in rouge anti-virus removal videos as the preferred method of removal. There's also a pay-once version that costs $24 and provides real-time protection, but it's not worth the extra cost as while it's extremely capable in on-demand detection, it's not at real-time detection.

Feel free to contribute to this list of possible good choices if you wish.