Help needed with an old OS (2000) and an older laptop (micron)

A friend bought an inexpensive Micron GX Transport off EBAY several months ago. It was running XP Home and had only 256mb RAM. The hard drive died and he asked me to install a new one he bought off EBAY. It is only 10G so I told him at best, I would install Windows 2000. It loaded just fine but I have a lot of missing drivers. Micron is no longer around. Is there a software I can use to determine what is installed beyond the description network, multimedia, video, etc. Is there a site that deals with really old laptops?

 

XP should be ok on a 10 gb hard drive.

 

I had XP installed on an 8GB HDD in an IBM from 1999, and while slow, it still ran, so you should be okay.

 

you could try everest home edition; use that to generate a report of your system (it should list what kind of hardware you have), and then go manually hunt down the drivers online.

For 256 MB of ram and a 10gb hard drive, i'd stick with 2000. Its still a fine OS and will do most basic things pretty well.

 

+1. Try also

http://members.driverguide.com/index.php?companyid=663&action=getinfo

cheers ...

 

i am with qhn , know ur drivers and then go hunt for them at www.driverguide.com

 

This. Install from a CD with SP3 integrated, turn off disk space hogs like System Restore, and you'll have quite some space left for apps.

Also make sure you tell/show him (how) to backup his data. I don't even want to think about how reliable a (probably used?) 10 GB drive off Ebay would be.

Keep in mind that even Extended Support ends in July 2010 - no more security updates after that.

 

Also belarc will tell you the hardware specs and give links for drivers

 

I ran Belarc but it just came up with None under display, multimedia, etc. I'll try Evererst to see if I can pick up more info. Once I have a name I can use driverguide. I did try to load XP Home but as soon as I tried to add the service packs, that low space error message repeatedly pops up. Also the lack of memory is hard on any drive with all that swapping.

 

Thanks Everest found all the info I needed. roblem now is with driverguide. It won't let me download without agreeing to buy their special on premium content. It accepts my email and password but stops when I get to the download page. Any other driver sites out there?

 

Once you find the names of the drivers in Everest, afaik you'll have to hunt down the drivers individually on google (a tedious process). There might be a program out there that links you to all the relevant sites to grab drivers, but i haven't heard of any such program yet.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. But given the specs, I think a plain Windows 2000 Pro install would be much better than XP. But you are right about support; 2000's dries up in less than a year. Still, if it were me, I'd rather take better performance over looming non-support (assuming you don't n-lite your xp install or anything).

 

Is it possible for you to try win7? Im not sure how much space it takes up though.

 

If I remember right, a Win 7 install will take anywhere from 7-9 gb (think its closer to 9 I think) after install, before programs and what not. It'd fit on the 10gb drive, but it'd be a tight squeeze. The 256 Mb ram wouldn't sit well with Win 7 either.

 

Bare minimum Win7 Ultimate 32-bit is just a shade under 5 GB right after install - 4.85 GB IIRC - with no page file. A bare minimum XP SP2 install is approximately 1 GB. XP SP3 would add more, but so would the larger page file you'd need for Windows 7. And 256 MB really isn't much memory for Windows 7. It'll be using the page file a lot. XP will be using it too, but not quite as much. With the hard drive and memory limitations I'd definitely go for XP over Windows 7.

Windows 2000 probably will be better than XP with that low of resources. The laptop appears to have shipped with Windows 98 originally, but you probably don't want to go that far back.

This webpage has a bit about the specs of the machine - at the least it tells you what the video card is, so you can (hopefully) get that working properly, and likely the modem. Unfortunately the detail is sparse on the audio/Ethernet, but it's a start.

 

The webpage made interesting reading. Thank You Still no links to 2000 drivers though. As an experiment, I tried loading XP Home. It will load but not the updates without the low resources error message. I need the dumpsite location of the old Micron company; all those cd's hidden away! ;-)

 

Integrate SP3 into your XP installation CD, that way you don't have to install it manually and you'll save disk space as well. This is often called "slipstreaming" and there are tutorials for it all over the net (probably even here in this forum).

You could also dig around here and here if you're really bored.

 

I am a member there and never had the need to buy any special offer or content.

cheers ...

 

If the problem is low memory, the website I linked to mentioned that the maximum is 512 MB, so you could upgrade the memory. I think this is the sort you'd need, although you should check first and make sure the laptop does have two memory slots (if it only has one, you'll need a 512 MB module). Also check elsewhere for lower prices - the going rate for a new module probably isn't much lower than what the laptop cost on e B a y.