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XP on a Pentium 166? Heck yeah.

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Ok, maybe the title is misleading. XP-Pro can't be installed on a P-166, but XP Embedded can. For details you can check out the XP Professional system requirements here, among others they include:

  • 300MHz proc
  • 64MB RAM

A common question I hear about XPe is "what is the lowest proc and minimal amount of ram we can install XP Embedded on?".

Well, even though technically the specs for XP-Pro apply to XP Embedded as well since we use the same files, we can cheat and go lower in both RAM and Proc speed. The reason is that XP-Pro has Setup.exe to help enforce that requirement during the install while we don't have that 'burden'. As long as the kernel can boot and recognize the proc as being supported, it'll continue to boot and load the OS as long as you don't run out of physical plus virtual memory. The smallest amount of RAM i've tested on was 32MB, the slowest proc i've tested was a Pentium 166.

Search the Google newsgroups for other success stories in using 166's. Though to be honest here, i'm not recommending this as a supported HW platform since there's a possibility you may not have a good experience wrt performance unless you keep the runtime very small <grin>

Woohoo, look at us, we've had a post on this blog every day this month!

- Andy

[edit: 6/1 - fixed typo]

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 31, 2005
    I actually recently gave our secretary a P200Mhz 128MB RAM Windows XP system and its working fine for her purposes. With these lowend configurations RAM is much more important. Even a fast CPU but with only 64MB of RAM will crawl.
  • Anonymous
    May 31, 2005
    1011111011101111 111111101101 1011101010111110
  • Anonymous
    June 01, 2005
    How does one obtain a copy of XPe to install on a P-166? I have an old laptop that I'd like to bring back to life, and I think it would be great to run XP on it.

    Thanks,
    Walter
  • Anonymous
    June 01, 2005
    A "Megahertz"? What's that??
  • Anonymous
    June 01, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    June 02, 2005
    a P-75? HAHAHAHA!
    -andy
  • Anonymous
    June 04, 2005
    The comment has been removed