Hello everyone I have been testing and distro hopping for ever and I really would like to settle down on one. To start here is a list of the hardware in my pc which is 7 years old. I love linux and the applications available for it, but I have some old games I want to play and I need to run a version of autocad with survcadd. This rules out linux for me. I have used windows xp with sp2 slipstreamed and w2k with sp4 slipstreamed. Both will run my applications, but I want maximum performance from my older hardware expecially since I will be using it for some gaming(emulation, NFS series, and other open source games), Cadwork(autocad 2006 seems to run well with survcadd 2006 and toolpac), other everyday stuff like ripping and encoding dvd's, editing pics etc.

P3-733
384MB RAM
80 GB 7200RPM 2GB cache drive
NV GF4 MX 440
DVD+-RW
CD-RW

I love linux and the applications available for it, but I have some old games I want to play and I need to run a version of autocad with survcadd. This rules out linux for me. I have used windows xp with sp2 slipstreamed and w2k with sp4 slipstreamed. Both will run my applications, but I want maximum performance from my older hardware expecially since I will be using it for some gaming(emulation, NFS series, and other open source games), Cadwork(autocad 2006 seems to run well with survcadd 2006 and toolpac), other everyday stuff like ripping and encoding dvd's, editing pics etc.

I have googled and read forums, benchmarks, tests, and tweaks until I am sick. Right now I am running windows xp sp2. with bbclean for a shell, and windows classic theme. I want my puter to look good too. I have used the revolutions pack for 2k with success for 32bit icon support. Programs I usually keep running in the background include: Privoxy, samurize, kerio personal firewall 2.1.5, volumouse, and jtk(joy to key). What do you guys suggest for my os? 2ksp4 or xp sp2? I want the best performance, but I also want my os and apps to look good.

I can't understand why programs seem to use more memory in xp than in 2k. For examply bbclean(blackbox) uses around 18mb in xp. I am certain task manager wont show nearly as much for that app in 2k. I understand that xp manages memory differently and I have heard that unused ram is wasted ram. I am thinking that xp probably allocates more for performance until something else needs it

Any suggestions on anything will be much appreciated.

griz

Stay with XP, there is no use in running 2k anymore.

You could probably upgrade your current computer very cheaply with used parts; check out eBay or any other similar site.
It's understandable if you don't want to shell out lots of cash for that old comp, but a slight (and cheap) upgrade will be worth it.

Adding some more RAM will do that machine good, adding just one stick of 512 MB (PC133) is enough.
You could also replace that P3 with a 933 or 1-1.13 GHz.
These two should cost you less than 50$.
The graphics card may also be replaced, but that is not as important. At my parents place we've got an old P3 1.26 GHz/896 MB RAM/GeForce6200, running XP and any normal program (haven't tried games on it) very well (it's really quick and responsive).

Removing unnecessary startup progs, cleaning out malware and tweaking the services will also help your performance.

This is exactly what Vista does...

Take a look at the nLite forum here on MSFN, you could make your OS lighter by kick out unused drivers and parts of 2K/XP. For your GeForce 440MX I would use drivers from Omega by the way, check them out on www.guru3D.com...

Welcome to MSFN by the way .

XP is faster, and actually uses less ram than 2000 after you configure it & disable the extra services. I've tested this under an extreme situation; I took a machine with 96mb of ram, booted 2000 and booted XP, XP was visibly faster.

Yes XP does some pre-fetch stuff and makes use of un-used ram, but who cares, once you need the ram it's given up and that doesn't slow you down at all. Why do you think XP is faster than 2000 in the first place?

Plus there are tons of security improvements to XP, it's the first MS OS where you can fully run as a non admin, and use RunAs to run admin functions or use some of their un-official tools like MakeMeAdmin, DropMyRights, PrivBar and such to make your non-admin life easier. These things don't work with 2000.

Keep in mind most MS OSs are in 2 steps: revolutionary and evolutionary. The first is an overhaul (big ram & computing increase) the 2nd is improvements & tweaks (faster, sometimes even leaner). So Win95->98, Win2000->XP, Vista->Win 2009 (WinME didn't get a sequel because, well it sucked). So generally speaking you'll always want to run the 2nd OS when you can choose as it contains huge improvements over the one before it.

PS: Task Manager does a HORRIBLE job reporting ram usage, for example it puts shared memory under every program. So if you have two 5mb programs that can share a 10mb block of memory (ex: .Net apps or a common DLL), Task Manager will report each program uses 15mb of ram (30mb total), when technically it's 10mb (20mb total). A better program to use (but much more complicated) is Process Monitor as it will list the shared amount of memory.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysintern...essmonitor.mspx

windows2000 imo, the boot time is a bit longer becuase it checks file integrity at startup. As for running faster, I disagree, they run about the same.

windows2000 is also a lot more secure than windows XP, but it doesn't have all the fancy schmancy gui stuff that XP does. IMO it's just for looks and nothing else. Both operating systems are based on Windows NT, as is windows2003 server and Vista. It all depends on what your going to be using the system for.

I am personally a 2K user, never needed the fancy stuff of XP, and in my experience, if you remove the unneeded stuff from 2K as well, it will be (slightly) faster (meaning a bit more responsive) than XP on lower end hardware.
Just two notes:
1) Using XP or 2003 NTLDR+NTDETECT.COM to boot Win2K provides a faster booting when compared to original Win2K files
2) USB Mass Storage access (pendrives or sticks) appear to be WAY faster in 2K

Though not a "mathematically exact" method, a good idea is to always check the minimum requirements Microsoft gives:
http://www.dewassoc.com/support/win2000/require.htm
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314865
and at least double amount of RAM and speed of processor to get a "working-in-real-life" system.
As you can see, memory requirements betrween the two are pretty similar, while a higher speed CPU is required for XP.

And of course you can experiment with LESS hardware power:
http://winhistory.de/more/386/xpmini_eng.htm


jaclaz

WFLP anyone?

Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PC's would definatly be worth it on that PC. (If you could find a copy of course)

Hello People, Thanks for all your replies. I had never heard of what jaclaz said replacing the 2k boot files with the ones from xp. I will check out the link from travis0 to check the shared memory deal. I am still a bit unsure as to which OS I will use. I know I can tweak, trim, and nlite xp to death to make it faster and use less memory. But as someone mentioned I can do the same to 2k. I seemed to me that xp seemed to be more responsive in opening explorer windows and browsing directories with lots of files. Again, I say it seemed that way, it could just be me. I definately want to keep the 32bit icon support and even though the revolution pack for 2k works pretty good, there are a few glitches. I would like to get my hands on a copy of the windows fundamentals version of xp just to try it out. As someone may have mentioned, its probably just regular xp with stuff took out kinda like it's been nlited.

Thanks again for all the replies. I'll let you guys know what happens. Right now, working in xp with the apps mentioned running in the background Autocad 2006 with Survcadd works pretty good as long as I'm working with relatively small files. I would like to try the same in 2k and when I get time I might do that. I just hate going through all the riga-ma-rore of re-installing all my apps.

griz

A copy, that would be illegal... and they are not sold in every country too...

Any way, it’s better to make your own W2K or XP with nLite, just kick out the thing you are sure about that don’t break any thing, on the other hand people are very helpful in the nLite forums .

Thanks for the ntdetect and ntldr trick, this works very nice.

Hey TravisO, why dare you write :



MakeMeAdmin (cf. Aaron Margosis's at MSDN blogs) and similar work fully in Win2k, indeed they were developped on it. I run as a restricted user all the time & use MakeMEAdmin and never have to logon as Admin in 2k, not even for running and installing Windows Updates. Please do not sow FUD.

Cheers

--
Ninho

not only 'appear' but they ARE faster.
There is no DRMs built-in into the code of W2K (as opposed to XP).
Thats the sole reason why.

Completely unscientific I know, but I've run both 2000 and XP in a virtual machine on the same box with the same settings. 2000 is (just) passable while XP is truly painful.

I also have to somewhat disagree with TravisO on the evolutionary front:

Except the actual sequence is NT4 -> 2000 -> XP, the bit about wanting the 2nd OS is dead on though.

With the notable exception of DEP (which won't work with older hardware anyway), Win2000 can be made just as secure as XP by the use of free 3rd party Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware and FireWall.

Interesting , do you have any link with some details and data?

(I used "appears" as I have no exact comparison/test data to show the amount of lag you have under XP.)

jaclaz

no link will ever exist until Windows code is publicly known (apparently never).
Some smarter than me people came to this conclusion in the past, and I believe this explanation to be correct, because testing i.e. exactly same computer with same pendrives but different OSes always is faster on W2K (test it for yourself, dont take my word for it). What other possible reason in WinXP OS could slow it down when compared to 2K - we do know the major difference between NT5.0 (W2K) and NT5.1 (XP) are basically built-in DRMs into the WinXP OS code (and few other things like GUI, which won't matter in this case).

edit: Pls. don't say the XP drivers are 'slower'

I know, its old post, but made me chuckle
By your logic (which might have some substance actually) it is actually Win2000 that should be the best 'second OS' because you missed NT4 (pls dont say the name fooled you to think it was something different than 2K/XP
IMHO it should look like this:
Win95->Win98->WinME :: 1st so-so, 2nd great, 3rd completely overdone (too many mostly useless changes)
WinNT4->Win2000(NT5)->WinXP :: 1st so-so, 2nd great, 3rd completely overdone (too many mostly useless changes)

I have 2 identical old PCs (actually 3... but third doesnt run any Win). P4 2.0GHz/1GB RAM each, all same hardware
We set' these 2 with 2K and XP, and I dont mean default settings - each one was *properly* set (no nliting but all apropiate tweaks and settings). In every prog/app/cpu/ram/.../test we did, Windows 2000 always won or was the same as Windows XP. Yes, most of the time it was better not by much, but it still did.
I dont know why would you post such bulls*** here. Sheesh.
The only things XP is better is "the look". I hate the "Win98 style" of Windows 2000, but thats about all anyone can pick on.
(Yes I'm aware some software deliberately refuse to work on W2K while it works on XP, but - not surprisingly - its usually Microsoft's software, or software relying on DRMs deeply woven into XP OS and missing or thinly-supported on 2K).

This has actually been investigated somewhat, and was found that XP and 2000 had basically the same footprint and performance, and the user opted to go with XP for updated hardware and software support with XP after running nLite on the XP install to remove the unnecessary (for him) features.

win2K is problematic with some old games. Even with the 'application compatability toolkit' ACT30.pkg (if you can actually find a copy).

in my experience XP is better for older games, and a more up-to-date ACT is available for it.

-problematic games, e.g European Air War, problems getting win2K to detect USB joystick, and I never could get the online multiplayer part of the game to work in win2K, whatever I did.....nor can anyone else, for that matter. But works a treat in XP.

I know this is a OLD thread but this is my response to all that are with the same doubt with a similar computer.

In that computer?

Windows 2000.. Definitely.

Windows XP just lag and lag in system with less than 512 MB.. People just like that Windows too much, and nlite it to the max to make it run in computers with about 64 MB ram what I think it's comic.. Probably it will work, but if you install some bull**** program it will lag like hell.


I don't think so.. Actually Windows 2000 have a compatible mode for .exe aplications like windows xp do.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/279792

I have tested it with applications that only ran in Windows 98 and with this I was able to run them in Windows 2k.

I also was with the same question 1 year ago.. People always said me that Windows XP is the best, run better, is more secure, more faster, more all..
However I have used Windows 2000 in pcs at school (at long time), they had upgraded the pcs that were running Windows 98 smoothly but unstable. I remember when I use Windows 2k in there first time.. Never saw any more crash, never saw any ctrl + alt + del problem and applications run always smoothly that in Windows 98. The bad thing was the boot time that increased since windows 98.

So I decided to run Windows 2000 in my system (P4 1.7, 256 MB ram, Nvidia Geforce 2 mx 400, 40 GB hdd). I was sick of Windows XP lagging.. I loved in that time that skin and gui. Never saw nothing similar before.

When I tried Windows 2000 I have noted some positive points and some negative ones comparing with XP (this also includes recent points):

+ Stuff
Windows 2000 eat much less ram than Windows XP (this is important in a 256 MB ram)
Windows 2000 is more stable (at least my computer never needed a format after that)
Windows 2000 only eats about 500 MB in a normal installation, while Windows XP eats about 3.5 GB.

- Stuff
Windows 2000 boot time is more than the double of the Windows XP*
Windows 2000 can't run some applications especially mad for Windows XP and Vista**
Windows 2000 don't have a basic theme customization that makes it ugly than Windows XP***

This is my opinion. However actually the bad things with * can be improved:

*
-Windows 2000 boot time is more than the double of the Windows XP

I have reduced the Windows 2000 boot time from 42 seconds to 38 seconds.. Its not a big difference yet, but probably can be improved replacing or tweaking some Windows 2000 boot files. Have a look here:
http://www.msfn.org/board/Faster-Startup-F...20&start=20

**
-Windows 2000 can't run some applications especially mad for Windows XP and Vista

Other thing that was actually been fixed by the member Windows2000 and his XP API for Windows 2000.Have a look here:
http://www.msfn.org/board/KDW-FCWIN2K-t120936.html

***
-Windows 2000 don't have a basic theme customization that makes it ugly than Windows XP

Actually Windows 2000 can be more pretty than the default Windows XP. You can actually make it look like vista without eating much resources. (I am running this in Windows2k with 512 MB ram, with all active if you have a worst system you may need to deactivate some theme options) (don't forget to upgrade true transparency to latest version 0.9.4.0 since the version that come with vista pack is unstable)

You can actually have transparency like in Vista, A task bar like vista, icons like vista, a Aero Skin, all system visually upgraded to look like this:

look here:
http://www.msfn.org/board/Vistapack-25-released-t119468.html