First of all I would like to apologize if this becomes a lengthy or confusing post but I do have 2 very important questions. My goal is to get an ancient pc setup for all of the old school games and emulation.
The specs of this pc are as follows.
800mhz Celeron Processor
256mb sdram
16mb VooDoo 3 2000
Windows XP Pro SP2
I just recently bought the computer for $50 and it already had Windows XP Pro installed. The motherboard is not capable of upgrading over 256mb of ram and Windows XP seems to be using somewhere around 160mb of that just at a stand still after bootup.
Now my thoughts were to reformat and install Windows 98 as to hopefully increase the amount of ram available. Games like Baldur's Gate 2 on this system seem to run very choppy and slow even though I am well above the system requirements. Diablo 2 runs flawlessly but most games that should run well seem to be choppy or slower then they should be.
Now my two questions!!!
1.) Now I actually have two copies of 98se but both copies were so scratched that I could not use them to install the OS. I did however manage to get alot of the files copied into a folder on my desktop off one of the cd's and the missing files off the other cd so I have the full directory of the 98se install in a folder. The problem is I have to reformat before I can downgrade to 98se. I was thinking since I cant use the cd's to install 98se that it may be possible to copy the folder with the 98se install directory to my secondary harddrive and after I reformat the primary drive with xp on it I could boot into DOS and execute the install from the secondary harddrive. My question is if I do that will the 98se install automatically choose my primary harddrive for installation?
2.) Is it going to make enough of a significant difference in games that rely on ram like Baldur's Gate 2 to downgrade and go through all of the trouble of downgrading to 98se?
ALSO: One of the reasons for downgrading is my Voodoo card is not actually built to be run on XP obviously and downgrading would allow me to use the original drivers instead of third party drivers which would bring more compatibility.
The specs of this pc are as follows.
800mhz Celeron Processor
256mb sdram
16mb VooDoo 3 2000
Windows XP Pro SP2
I just recently bought the computer for $50 and it already had Windows XP Pro installed. The motherboard is not capable of upgrading over 256mb of ram and Windows XP seems to be using somewhere around 160mb of that just at a stand still after bootup.
Now my thoughts were to reformat and install Windows 98 as to hopefully increase the amount of ram available. Games like Baldur's Gate 2 on this system seem to run very choppy and slow even though I am well above the system requirements. Diablo 2 runs flawlessly but most games that should run well seem to be choppy or slower then they should be.
Now my two questions!!!
1.) Now I actually have two copies of 98se but both copies were so scratched that I could not use them to install the OS. I did however manage to get alot of the files copied into a folder on my desktop off one of the cd's and the missing files off the other cd so I have the full directory of the 98se install in a folder. The problem is I have to reformat before I can downgrade to 98se. I was thinking since I cant use the cd's to install 98se that it may be possible to copy the folder with the 98se install directory to my secondary harddrive and after I reformat the primary drive with xp on it I could boot into DOS and execute the install from the secondary harddrive. My question is if I do that will the 98se install automatically choose my primary harddrive for installation?
2.) Is it going to make enough of a significant difference in games that rely on ram like Baldur's Gate 2 to downgrade and go through all of the trouble of downgrading to 98se?
ALSO: One of the reasons for downgrading is my Voodoo card is not actually built to be run on XP obviously and downgrading would allow me to use the original drivers instead of third party drivers which would bring more compatibility.
