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If we use the disk to reinstall Xp and strip the computer with it then put a windows 98 cd in to bring it back up again will this work?

My son's computer is very slow and should never have had XP installed on it. We thought it would speed it up to put Windows 98 on it instead. But we do not want to muck it up altogether trying to put it on.

How should we go about it if the above idea is no good?

It really depends on how old your PC is first off. If its 3 or 4 years old I would just recommend getting more RAM. My PC is now 4 years old and after 3 years I decided to bump the RAM to 1 GB which really helped me.

As for your solution, I would recommend you not do that. There are easier ways of reformatting your computer. Keep in mind the Operating System is not at fault if your PC is running slow (again depending on how old it is and what you mainly do on it). If you do not want to use Windows XP then Windows 2000 would be your next best thing if you dont want XP running on your machine or if not a Linux OS.

It is my 14 yr old sons computer. It has a physical memory of 128mb.
It takes forever to do the slightest thing. Sometimes I can get it to operate a bit faster and then he goes and downloads the latest version on msn etc. and then it goes slow again.
I don't want to spend any money that I don't have to on it as it is not used very much. Maybe because it is so slow....

That is why I wanted to put 98 on it as I have a windows 98 disc.

You will probably make things worse by installing Windows 98.

should I just reinstall xp and hopefully get rid of any other programs that are taking up too much room... Or wouldnt you suggest doing that either.

i say just uninstall the programs you guys don't really use. and don't put too much in your memory. try to partition the hard drive so you're get data file drives so the drive where you install the programs won't get clogged up.


don't uninstall it or anything like that. would probably just make things worse, if you don't want to upgrade your pc to 1gb ram.

Originally posted by Jaeh_JediPirate
i say just uninstall the programs you guys don't really use. and don't put too much in your memory. try to partition the hard drive so you're get data file drives so the drive where you install the programs won't get clogged up.


don't uninstall it or anything like that. would probably just make things worse, if you don't want to upgrade your pc to 1gb ram.

I agree... try reinstalling XP first then go from there.

128mb of Ram is really low for XP tho.

I bought the computer through work second hand. It had to have all the programs used at work taken off so the computer tech. wiped the computer and installed xp even though he was asked to put 98 on. We thought at the time xp was too big. But he did his own thing. My son has not been happy with the computer from the start and it is painfully slow to do anything. eg. if you click on the control panel you wait for at least 1minute for it to come up and if you then click on the add/remove programs buttton it then takes about 3 -4 minutes to open. If you click on anything you have to wait for it to do it before clicking on anything else or it will take twice as long. You have to get up and walk away and do something else whilst waiting for some things to work. You cry if you get a prompt that you have to restart the computer as it takes about 10 minutes for that to happen.
We regularly go through and uninstall any programs we can to make it go faster. We also defrag it regularly.

So as you can see this is why we want to speed it up. But at minimal cost.

i still say do what i suggested hehe.

but if it doesn't work, sorry. the only way probably if my suggestion didn't work is that you really need to upgrade it so it would work.

Originally posted by busters mum
If we use the disk to reinstall Xp and strip the computer with it then put a windows 98 cd in to bring it back up again will this work?

My son's computer is very slow and should never have had XP installed on it. We thought it would speed it up to put Windows 98 on it instead. But we do not want to muck it up altogether trying to put it on.

How should we go about it if the above idea is no good? I don't see why it shouldn't work.Originally posted by LinixCobra
It really depends on how old your PC is first off. If its 3 or 4 years old I would just recommend getting more RAM. My PC is now 4 years old and after 3 years I decided to bump the RAM to 1 GB which really helped me.

As for your solution, I would recommend you not do that. There are easier ways of reformatting your computer. Keep in mind the Operating System is not at fault if your PC is running slow (again depending on how old it is and what you mainly do on it). If you do not want to use Windows XP then Windows 2000 would be your next best thing if you dont want XP running on your machine or if not a Linux OS.

What are you talking about? Of course an operating system can be at fault when a computer runs slow.

You can do one of two things.

A) Buy a new computer

B) Get a new hard-drive, and some more RAM. You can get a 60 GB hard drive and about a GB of RAM for about $100 (American) Much cheaper than buying a new computer. Uninstalling programs won't work for very long,a nd putting Windows 98 will just make things worse.

Originally posted by Fire
128mb of Ram is really low for XP tho.

its really low for anything. You can put a gig of ram in a computer for less than $80 so there is really no reason to run on 128.