Does Windows XP affect WUBI performance?

[welshmike]

My friend runs an XP system that runs very very slowly. This is despite my tuning his system with many software tools. I suspect that one or more drivers is deficient, especially the monitor driver.
I understand that WUBI runs as/on a virtual disk. So if I install WUBI on his XP system, when it runs, will it depend on any part of XP (for its performance)?

[critin]

If drivers are suspected, check the Window device manager and see if any have the yellow mark across them. Upgrade them. Has it been defragged lately? It's generally recommended to defrag twice before installing wubi.

Try a live ubuntu cd and check the performance. Go ahead and install wubi, if it doesn't work well it can be uninstalled. It won't harm and it's the only way to find out for sure.

Install ubuntu over windows as a fresh single OS if windows can't be improved.

[oldfred]

One of the main reasons Windows gets slow is full partition. If you do not have 30% free, it then starts to slow and at 10% free is very slow.

Wubi depends on Windows to boot and uses the NTFS file system but none of the Windows drivers. So if a full NTFS file system wubi may not even fit or will slow things down more, if a driver issue wubi should be ok.

[coffeecat]

So if I install WUBI on his XP system, when it runs, will it depend on any part of XP (for its performance)?

No - it won't depend on XP, only on the NTFS filesystem. However, if the filesystem is badly fragmented it could mean that the wubi installer won't be able to create the virtual partition (which is a single file in the NTFS filesystem - \ubuntu\disks\root.disk) as a contiguous file and the virtual partition root-disk file will itself be fragmented, which will impact performance of the wubi installation. Hence critin's recommendation to defrag before installing.

[welshmike]

If drivers are suspected, check the Window device manager and see if any have the yellow mark across them. Upgrade them. Has it been defragged lately? It's generally recommended to defrag twice before installing wubi.

Try a live ubuntu cd and check the performance. Go ahead and install wubi, if it doesn't work well it can be uninstalled. It won't harm and it's the only way to find out for sure.

Install ubuntu over windows as a fresh single OS if windows can't be improved.

Thanks for your reply.
No yellow mark but the monitor driver is way out of date.
I have defragged the hard drive and run total care with System Mechanic.
I did run a live Ubuntu 10.04 CD and the PC performance was very good. So I believed that there was no PC hardware problem.
Also I'm quite familiar with WUBI because that was the trigger that converted me to run Ubuntu as my main operating system way back with 8.04 in 2008.
Oh what a revelation to have an operating system that never slowed down and ran, followed by upgrade to 10.04, for the last four years with no slowdown.

[welshmike]

One of the main reasons Windows gets slow is full partition. If you do not have 30% free, it then starts to slow and at 10% free is very slow.

Wubi depends on Windows to boot and uses the NTFS file system but none of the Windows drivers. So if a full NTFS file system wubi may not even fit or will slow things down more, if a driver issue wubi should be ok.

Again thanks for your help.
There is at least 10GB free on the smallest drive. So WUBI should not be a problem.

[welshmike]

No - it won't depend on XP, only on the NTFS filesystem. However, if the filesystem is badly fragmented it could mean that the wubi installer won't be able to create the virtual partition (which is a single file in the NTFS filesystem - \ubuntu\disks\root.disk) as a contiguous file and the virtual partition root-disk file will itself be fragmented, which will impact performance of the wubi installation. Hence critin's recommendation to defrag before installing.

Live and learn. Thank you coffeecat.

[critin]

Again thanks for your help.
There is at least 10GB free on the smallest drive. So WUBI should not be a problem.

10 GB free with windows? That's not enough room for windows to move, ubuntu will need at least 10GB to run smoothly after updates. Or are you going to try to give wubi its own 10gb partition?

Per oldfred's post, this is the reason, or one of them, that windows is so slow.

Originally Posted by oldfred
One of the main reasons Windows gets slow is full partition. If you do not have 30% free, it then starts to slow and at 10% free is very slow.

[welshmike]

Critin,

The HDD is 40GB.
XP including apps, personal data and the rest occupy some 25GB and thanks I've now rechecked and the remainder of the HDD (15GB) is free.

I think you'll find that WUBI 12.04 fits in less than 8GB.

[coffeecat]

I think you'll find that WUBI 12.04 fits in less than 8GB.

A default fresh install of Ubuntu takes up only about 2.4GB, but with wubi you have to take into account the size of the root.disk file, the virtual partition. The default (smallest size) for this is 8GB. Whether your wubi install only has 2.4GB of files or whether it has more, the root.disk file stays the same size - 8GB - in the NTFS filesystem. You say XP takes up about 25GB. Add 8GB = 33GB, which leaves only 7GB breathing space. 33 of 40 used up leaves only 17.5% free which is less than the 30% that oldfred mentioned can cause XP itself to slow down.

But the situation is worse than that - those figures are not correct. The 40 GB is in gigabytes (base 10) which equals 37.25GiB (Gibibytes - base 2). The 8GB virtual partition is in fact 8 GiB and if you got the 25GB figure off XP's explorer that is probably also in GiB. 37.25 - 8 - 25 = 4.25 GiB left free which is only 11.4%. It will work, but you don't have much space to work in and XP will probably be slowed even more.