New life for old PC

doberryfirkin

I have a old(ish) PC running windows XP on 500kb of RAM that is very slow. Instead of throwing it out I am thinking of keeping it simply to access the internet and use with an old 3in1 printer as a scanner / copier. Is there a more efficient or leaner OS is could get to load on the PC to do this and replace the XP? Are there any shareware OS that I can try? I don't mind trashing the thing since I have already bought a replacement and the old one would be a spare.

devizes18193

Linux , http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu

Browntoa

used this on an old PC

http://www.puppylinux.org/

Dennis99

For some real geekdom, how about using it as a firewall?

http://www.smoothwall.org/

Conor_3

devizes18193 wrote: »

Linux , http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu

God no...you'll have all hell on getting the 3-in-1 scanner working. In addition to that, modern Linux distros that use Gnome or KDE are as bloated as XP now and those that aren't have a desktop manager so stripped out of functionality , it'll drive you insane.

Stick another 512MB RAM in it.

amcluesent

Bump it up to 1Gb, then use Nlite to customise an XP install; you'd be amazed at how good XP can be when you remove all the nonsense.

MrBG

You need to get your PC working again as it was when it was new. De-frag the hard disk, run ad-checks, malware-checks, spy-checks, virus checks and clear out the page history and cookies etc using Window Washer.

I'd reinstall the operating system for good measure (do a custom install and avoid all the things you don't think you'll need).

What may be slowing it down (apart from the above) is TSRs - Terminate and Stay Resident applications that start up when you switch on, and then sit in the background - check your start up menu, but things like MSN Messenger, Skype, allsorts of auto-updaters slow systems down.

There are loads of free utilities to do all of this, but read up on some of the fora like avforums.com

512k RAM is fine for internet access, email, most word processing etc, acting as a hub for printing etc, but RAM is cheap so a 1gb upgrade wouldn't harm but no point spending money on an old PC if its not going to be your main one.

spud17

Try it with XP, what have you got to lose?

By sheer coincidence, as an experiment, I recently put XP on an ancient machine.

AMD K-3 500mhz, 416mb (256+128+32) pc100.

With Avira antivirus, once it's up and running, it surfs at a just about adequate speed.

It normally runs Win98se and I cannot see any real difference in speed.

Agree with Conor re Linux, for a decent distro to run properly, you are looking at XP equivalent system requirements.

I use Mint (based on Ubuntu) with Athlonxp2400 and 768mbRAM, works fine and the Ubuntu type distros generally have better printer support than some of the others.

fwor

Conor wrote: »

God no...you'll have all hell on getting the 3-in-1 scanner working.

Not true these days - it depends on make and model. Canon have started publishing driver packages for any Debian-based distro for some of their models. My MP610 prints and scans just fine with their driver package.

And the range of printers & scanners supported by CUPS and SANE is getting better too, though if it's an old one they may never get round to supporting it.

I'd agree with the suggestion to try several options. Like Spud I've been messing around with a similar ancient PC and it was terrible with Kubuntu - just running the System Monitor alone was taking 40% CPU. But that seemed to be just a very poor driver for that PCs graphics chipset. I've used Ubuntu and Kubuntu on similar ancient machines and had excellent performance.

spud17

Like Spud I've been messing around with a similar ancient PC

Hope you're not referring to the Athlon Xp, 'cos that's my Sunday best one.

If the OP wants something basic and is OK messing about, then try Browntoas suggestion of Puppy. It will fly.
I tried this with a 350mhz pentium and 192mb RAM, surfs fine using Seamonkey, IMAP for email, will even do basic printing with my Canon i560, that's using the inbuilt drivers.

2nd fwor,
re printers (can't comment on scanners), Mint detected and configured my Canon during installation.

Conor_3

fwor wrote: »

Not true these days - it depends on make and model. Canon have started publishing driver packages for any Debian-based distro for some of their models. My MP610 prints and scans just fine with their driver package.

My Epson SX400 doesn't. Prints fine using generic PPD but scanner is unsupported. My old CX5400 was supported fine for both print and scan. Scanner support, particularly in multifunctions, is crap for anything under a few years old.