Question Can/Should I install Win10 on this old Dell D505 laptop?

[mikehende]

Hey guys, I got this old dell which has XP on it and is a Pentium 1.6Ghz, 256 Ram and 30gb HDD. Can this run on Windows10 and if not and I should need to reinstall XP, where might I find that nowadays please?

 

[USAFRet]

Hey guys, I got this old dell which has XP on it and is a Pentium 1.6Ghz, 256 Ram and 30gb HDD. Can this run on Windows10 and if not and I should need to reinstall XP, where might I find that nowadays please?

Please recheck the RAM amount.
256MB??

 

[USAFRet]

What do you plan to use this for, no matter what OS is on it?

 

[mikehende]

What do you plan to use this for, no matter what OS is on it?

Yes it's 256mb. I figure I can put any OS on it which can work and somebody should be able to use it.

 

[artk2219]

Yes it's 256mb. I figure I can put any OS on it which can work and somebody should be able to use it.

Linux is your best bet for a system like this, 256mb is not very much memory, it wasn't even a ton of memory when this laptop was new. That said if you have a couple of old 512MB or 1GB DDR SODIMMS you can pop in there, and it works with them, it would help out. If you cant find a use for it otherwise (alarm clock? music player? photo player? something simple?), it would probably be best to recycle it. You could also use it as a windows xp retro pc.

16 Best Linux Distributions for Older Computers

In this guide, we feature some of the best Linux distributions that you can install on your old PC and breathe some life into it.

www.tecmint.com

Windows XP SP3 from archive.org

https://archive.org/details/WinXPProSP3x86

 

[USAFRet]

No, you can't put Win 10 on it.

That was marginal with XP when it was new.

I give it 2 options...
1. A Linux variant for someone to experiment with
2. The Great Recycle Bin in the Sky.

 

[BFG-9000]

It doesn't have XD/NX-bit required for 32-bit Win8 or later.

256MB really wasn't enough to run XP SP3 back in the day, because even sitting at the desktop with nothing running but Microsoft Security Essentials updating its definitions temporarily pushed memory used over 600MB. So unless you wanted the system to be unusable for half an hour each day while it was paging away to IDE HDD, you put at least 768MB of RAM into it (it's single-channel-only so this was fine).

With the maximum 2GB of RAM installed, even 32-bit Windows 7 ran fine, but keep in mind the latest Intel IGP driver was for Win2k (and latest Sigmatel STAC 9750 sound driver was for Vista) so you aren't going to see any nice Aero effects.

The biggest problem is no 400MHz FSB Banias or Dothan CPU supports PAE, and the Ubuntu kernel has dropped support for non-PAE so you can't just run any 32-bit distro. I'll suggest 32-bit antiX which is based off a Debian kernel which still supports non-PAE, but note its suggested minimum memory is 1GB of RAM.

If you really don't want to upgrade the memory, then I'll suggest 32-bit Slacko Puppy non-PAE. You have to install it, because its default live-boot behavior is to load all of Puppy into memory so it is blazing fast--but also requires 512MB RAM.

 

[mikehende]

If you really don't want to upgrade the memory, then I'll suggest 32-bit Slacko Puppy non-PAE. You have to install it, because its default live-boot behavior is to load all of Puppy into memory so it is blazing fast--but also requires 512MB RAM.

Thanks, so to be sure, you are saying this would be the best Linux OS [Slacko Puppy 7.0 ] I should install on this machine as it is?

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=192

If yes, why the 32-bit instead of the 64 bit please?

 

[BFG-9000]

Yep, give it a try.

It has to be 32-bit because your Pentium M 725 CPU isn't 64-bit capable, so the 64-bit version can't run and won't install. While Intel did have a few 64-bit capable Pentium 4 CPUs in 2004, no CPU that fits in your laptop motherboard has it (although it is socketed so you could switch to a faster 20yo socket 479 CPU, up to the 2.1GHz Pentium M 765).

Don't expect a lot though, as with only 256MB the latest Windows that would run well is Windows ME, ideally with the Win95 shell to disable memory hogs like the Active Desktop. While the OS may run just fine, the problem comes when you try to run a memory-intensive program like a browser and it has to page.

Funny thing is nowadays Win9x may be safer on the internet than XP.

 

[mikehende]

Thank you. Would it run youtube videos on whatever it's default browser should be you think? Just thinking ahead for whoever I should find who can possibly make use of this machine.

 

[USAFRet]

Just thinking ahead for whoever I should find who can possibly make use of this machine.

For that machine, I would leave it with no OS.

Whoever gets it is very likely to be a retro enthusiast, and will want to put whatever Linux variant they want on it.

A regular non-enthusiast will NOT be satisfied with its performance, no matter what OS is on it or how it is configured.

 

[mikehende]

Ok then, what's the easiest disk wiping utility you guys can recommend for me to wipe the drive please? I am seeing:

You can create a bootable USB drive or CD/DVD with a disk wiping utility like DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) or use installation media for a new operating system.

Since I already have a win10 bootable flash drive, work that work to effectively wipe the drive please?

 

[USAFRet]

You can boot directly from a DBAN USB.

Darik's Boot and Nuke

Download Darik's Boot and Nuke for free. A hard drive disk wipe and data clearing utility. Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot image that securely wipes hard disk drives (HDDs). DBAN is appropriate for personal use, bulk data destruction, or emergency data destruction for...

sourceforge.net

 

[BFG-9000]

Thank you. Would it run youtube videos on whatever it's default browser should be you think? Just thinking ahead for whoever I should find who can possibly make use of this machine.

The 21 year old GPU obviously features no hardware acceleration for decoding Youtube's AV1 compression (the former VP10 project), VP9 or H.265. H.264ify won't help much either as it also cannot hardware decode H.264. So everything has to be done in software, and the CPU isn't fast.

For general use, a 1.6GHz Dothan Pentium M is about as fast as a Northwood Pentium 4 at 2.4GHz. However a particular strength of Pentium 4 was in streaming workloads where its limited L2 cache just didn't matter (Dothan had 2MB L2 just like the unicorn-rare Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, while Northwood only had 512kB) such as for unzipping or decoding videos. So where a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 may play online 480p videos at 100% CPU load with only a few dropped frames, the 1.6GHz Pentium M would only be able to manage the same for 360p videos. So it would be suitable for watching modern Youtube videos in 240p or 360p resolution, assuming it doesn't run out of physical memory and start paging, in which case the videos would become a stuttery mess.

A retro enthusiast would certainly find a use for a laptop like that with both serial and parallel ports. Even back then such a thing wasn't exactly common except in business-class laptops like that Latitude. But they would much rather you had the floppy drive sled in the modular bay than that CD drive, which was the least desirable option. The single-layer DVD burner would've been better too.

Trying out Linux distros is free, and after trying a bunch of them you'd certainly find out what you like and what you don't. Plus after installing all of them the original disk contents would likely be unrecoverable anyway. But you'd have a more pleasant time at it with more memory.

 

[mikehende]

Hey guys, I am trying to install DBAN on a flash drive following this video's instructions here:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHT-9ZUJYqg


but not seeing the same thing on my end. I have downloaded DBAN and Rufus, can anyone guide me from here please?

https://i.postimg.cc/W3dKdyBw/test.png