[There's a reason that Yoda is the unofficial mascot of SBS. Size indeed matters not.] Fixing a bit of computers - THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA
Sat, Jun 12 2010 23:45 bradley

Fixing a bit of computers

I was fixing a computer for a friend and was considering using a boot disk to clean the machine and several of them have easy ways to update the boot disk with latest a/v signatures.  The avast bart cd/iso is probably the easiest - http://www.avast.com/bart-cd but it's also not free.

http://thepcsecurity.com/clean-malware-from-unbootable-pc-with-ultimate-boot-cd/ There are other offerings that are free.

However given that in chatting with the computer user we opted for the reinstall from fresh and this time use Microsoft security essentials.  What was probably slowing her system down, in addition to the rogue antivirus software that was obviously on the system, was that the computer only has 256 of RAM.  I haven't seen 256 of RAM on a system in ages.  Even with Microsoft Security Essentials the MSE doesn't turn on right away and takes a bit of time to load up.

Needless to say I'm going to see if I can scrounge up some RAM before sending this computer back to it's home.

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# Minimum RAM for Windows XP

Monday, June 14, 2010 10:03 AM by Joe Raby

It should be a minimum of 512MB.  With *any* antivirus, and XP updates, 256MB just isn't enough.

Remember that when XP came out, the minimum RAM requirement was only 64MB.  That's been increased over the years.  512MB is the "safe" amount to make it usable on light tasks.

I would say that XP's minimum "safe" RAM requirements are half of Windows 7's.  That is, 512MB for light tasks, 1GB for modest computing and office productivity and multitasking, and 2GB for gaming and higher-end tasks (users that are doing higher-end stuff should have moved to 64-bit Windows a while ago).  Windows Vista's minimum requirements should've been scrapped.  What they called the recommended system specs (or "Vista Premium specs") should've really been the minimum specs, and I see that those specs are the same as what they've dubbed the Windows 7 "minimum recommended" specs, which is totally accurate.

# re: Fixing a bit of computers

Monday, June 14, 2010 11:56 AM by Teckset

I have seen a pre SP1 version of XP "running" with 128 MB. It didn't run well and the HDD was swapping like crazy. That being said, if you're running SP3, I don't believe even 512 MB is sufficient any longer. These days, I'd say 640 MB or (512 + 128) is the bare minimum for a usable computer. YMMV.