Compaq - what OS is best

[thewolfe]

Compaq - what OS is best

I have a friend and with a Compaq Presario Presario 5834. He is buying a new machine and since this was not running right we are going to redo it. It has an Intel Celeron processor with 191 MG.

It's running Windows 98 second edition. Evidently Compaq set up with a C drive and a D drive. The D drive stores the backup info to restore when necessary. However that no longer works.

I am thinking about wiping out both partitions and installing a new operating system. My question, which one.

This machine is going to be used for getting on the Internet and for the office software.

What's the best OS I can put on the system? Win98, Win98 SE, WinME, Win2K, WinXP. I think Win2K, WinXP would be too much for it. What do you think?

[deddard]

There's no reason why XP shouldn't work, but it does depend on what the machine is required for - the net and office doesn't require anything fancy. A quick look at the specs show that this machine can take 512MB RAM, this should be filled it possible, especially if XP is to be used.

Do not, even if you are given it free with a cuddly toy thrown in
:D use Me - it is a major pain in the butt; having it on a compaq is even worse!
One thing to think of is what the person is willing to pay - win 2000 is coming to the end of it's support life (should be next year I believe) and updates may not be availble much after that.
This doesn't imply 'support' for XP is available, just an endless stream of updates and patches:eek:

[Abbadon]

I agree: Xp should run fine and is (imho) a very good OS. Should you find it a bit slow running, there are numerous tweaks that can speed up things quiete a bit.

[Paul Komski]

The biggest problem may be getting the correct drivers from Compaq (or elsewhere) since most of the mobo components will be proprietary for Compaq.

In the last month I upgraded a Presario 7474 for someone - and just couldn't get all the drivers for WinME but eventually and after an awful lot of searching around got them for Win2K - so that is what got installled - after adding a bit or RAM I might add.

WinME ran just fine - but only in Standard VGA since I could just never find the drivers for the onboard video.

The other potential problem maybe the BIOS - which are not nearly as customisable as with most PCs. The OS you should use will, IMO, depend thus on the amount of RAM and whether you can get the drivers.

PS
You will see that not many drivers for WinXP/2K are listed at http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareCategory?product=93629&lc=en&cc=us&submit.y=6&submit.x=7&lang=en&cc=us though this may of course mean that WinXP/2K both inherently support everything without the need to search for anything else. Only trying it out will enable you to find the answer for sure.