I have a rather old, 10 years old in fact PC that sits around collecting dust for many years.

Important specs is:

Pentium 4 2.4 GHz
256MB RAM DDR1

I was thinking it was a waste to throw it away so I reformat and revive it with new Windows XP.
Now it isn't fast at all, by today's standards. File management like moving files around is okay. Doing things like MS Word also okay. Watching movie is surprisingly okay too. But is NOT okay is web browsing. I tried all kinds of browsers and they mostly become unresponsive as in "freezed and then unfreezed" making it very unusable. I suspect it must be the RAM issue. I believe P4 can't really be that lousy.

Anyway, is there anyway that I can do to make web browsing a feature I can use smoothly on this PC? I tried some very low resource browser.

K-Meleon - still not that smooth
Opera - so far the best, but when open Facebook it's again, like when you scroll down, it freeze for half minute, then scroll a little bit, freeze another half minute. (the facebook Newsfeed page). Only way is to use the mobile version of Facebook.
Chrome - not really much good, only for minimal stuff websites. Anything with lots of Javascript/Flash or other modern stuff is a no-no.

This post has been edited by filage: Oct 29 2014, 01:13 PM

try increase virtual memory to 1000mb or more

Very low in memory system, and I will skip install any antivirus.

Another option, you can go for Linux - some distro specially make for low end pc such as Xubuntu, LXDE and etc ,,,

p/s if you never use Linux before, maybe it is the time to try out Linux - it's work like Windows.

This post has been edited by WebWalker: Oct 29 2014, 01:26 PM

u can try do this

It is ram issue, it is not enough
But if you still want to try, you could disable all those windows service to make the OS as lite as possible.. more details on how you could read this

I'm still using my old PIII 750mhz, 768mb no problems browsing the net.Just upgrade you Ram to 1gb,ebay selling cheap ddr2 ;
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_...r2+ram&_sacat=0

My old pc serves as a bittorrent,media pc

This post has been edited by WiiPS3_74: Oct 29 2014, 04:26 PM

ram issue..
with 256 ram.. once boot up.. almost all ram is fully used

Try this

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-...lightweight.htm

Wow, that's good to hear. Actually mine is DDR1 and 256MB was pretty standard at that time. I actually remember back in the days, when browsing doesn't seem to have much problem. That time during the Firefox version 2 or 3 era. I think web pages at that time were not so resource hungry as well.

You're right. No hope for antivirus. I only settle for one very lightweight one, even that is causing unnecessary clog up of memory I believe.

Have already set to more than 1GB. Doesn't really help much. I think it's not the VM, the VM works like it should. It is always having GRR GRRR hard disk noise. I believe too much VM activity due to the RAM issue.

Thx

Will try to see about it.

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Oh btw, also just realized the system's CMOS battery must have kaput already as well. I guess 10 years is a good run for that battery life? The reason the clock time don't run anymore. If I shutdown at 3.10pm yesterday and switch on today, it is that time again. Probably will need to replace that.

---

So I believe if I could get my hands on a second hand DDR1 RAM to upgrade the existing, it should probably work like a monster again? I checked the mainboard manual, it can support up to 2GB DDR1. But only 2 slots available.


This post has been edited by filage: Oct 30 2014, 10:20 AM

just my 2 cent. u have 10 yrs old hardware (P4), equipped with 10 years old spec (256mb RAM) which installed with 10 years old OS (Windows XP). why u wanna use today browser? install those firefox 2/3 and give it a try.

Exact hardware specifications? Which CPU socket is that? Is it Socket-478 or LGA775 type? For Windows XP, you may want to use at least 512MB or more memory especially...

First you have to tell us the motherboard brand and model, or tell us how many memory slots available (and occupied) as well. For the CMOS battery issue, can simply replace the battery...

Alright, here are the info:

Mainboard: AOpen 45-533

CPU:
Socket 478
Support Intel Pentium 4 CPU
FSB 533MHz

Chipset: SiS 651, SIS 962L

Main Memory : DDR333 [PC2700]
DIMM : DDR DIMM
DIMM Type : 8/16/32/64/128/256/512MB & 1GB
Max Memory : 2G

OS: Win XP

Looks like its Socket-478, thus choices for upgrades are pretty limited especially for faster processor. Optionally can look/search for 2.8GHz to 3GHz processors with 533MHz FSB...

More RAM would be better when browsing "heavy" websites. Also if you are using integrated graphics then add a graphic card to speed things up (free up the main memory bandwidth used for sharing graphics and processor)...

This post has been edited by lex: Oct 31 2014, 12:19 AM

Look for cheap old generation SSD and set the virtual memory on it. It will help with the performance. Your motherboard must have SATA port though.

This post has been edited by TristanX: Oct 31 2014, 12:35 AM

If your OS is Windows XP and with old GPU, most browser wont works smoothly anyway since they're require newer gen GPU and OS to support hardware acceleration.

Features like Direct2D, DirectWrite, CSS3 and more of them which accelerating the web page rendering, only works with Windows Vista and newer, on newer GPU.

i have 2x 1gb ddr1 ram of what i believe is pc2700, u can have it for free if ur in kl/sel..

Does your motherboard looks like this?

http://www.zive.cz/Files/Soubory/manualy/A...5533u2-ol-e.pdf

Personally I wouldn't want the machine to run XP... Microsoft has ended support on XP months ago, which means any security vulnerability will not be fixed...
Attackers could exploit the vulnerability to inject malware...

I'd suggest TS to get a lightweight Linux distro such as Puppy Linux. There is little hardware upgrade needed, and it would be a far better approach than to use XP and performing expensive hardware upgrades.

I also have a P4 Northwood running winXP but change mobo to G31-M4, upgrade to 4GB ram and is doing fine.
Have run it 24/7 since 2009 with cleaning maintenance once in 6 months.

According to that manual, the highest processor is the Pentium 2.4GHz with Northwood core. Methinks its possible to use Pentium4 2.66GHz to 2.8GHz with the same Northwood core such as ARK | Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 2.66 GHz, 512K Cache, 533 MHz FSB and ARK | Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 2.80 GHz, 512K Cache, 533 MHz FSB. There's also the 3GHz one such as ARK | Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor supporting HT Technology 3.06 GHz, 512K Cache, 533 MHz FSB though considered strething things quite a bit as its possible that the board's VRM may not handle it (since it has much higher wattage)...

The discrete GPU can actually free up both the shared memory bandwidth and shared graphic memory space. His system uses 533MHz FSB thus every bit of memory performance can make a difference when it comes to memory intensive tasks (such as browsing heavy websites). See next paragraph...

I've ran Windows XP on an ancient Socket-478 board before, also with a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 (Northwood core) and just 512MB RAM only. Actually it runs fine for web browsing and minor stuff (including playing back videos up to 720p and some new games). The difference is that I had a discrete graphic card (had used a number of GPUs, highest was NVIDIA GeForce 6800GT) and motherboard was Intel 845E chipset (single channel memory controller). Sold off that machine already years time ago (replaced with LGA775 system)...

From the board model sounds like that processor is LGA775 type, which is easy to find boards (both brand new and used/secondhand) as well as processor upgrades (most Intel G31 chipset based boards can support up to Core 2 Quad)...