Bringing a Pentium Pc Back From The Dead

[AshBattersea]

So I'm rebuilding an old PC that I got for free and I have all the hardware that I need, but I'm still not sure what os I should put on it. It has a dual core 3ghz Pentium 4 processor and 384 MB of ram and a SF2/661FX (V2.2) motherboard.

I don't really want to have to spend money on the system as that would defeat the point of trying to get a PC, all be it a rubbish one, for free.

 

Thanks for your help, Ash

 

 

[comicsansms]

There is no dual core Pentium 4's. There is P4's with HT and there are Pentiums that are not P4's that have 2 cores like the Pentium D, Pentium Dual Core and Core Series Pentium.

[Zoompz]

XP would probably be best for it 

[AshBattersea]

2 minutes ago, Comic_Sans_MS said:

There is no dual core Pentium 4's. There is P4's with HT and there are Pentiums that are not P4's that have 2 cores like the Pentium D, Pentium Dual Core and Core Series Pentium.

 

I came to the conclusion it was a Pentium 4 because the bios said it was and my test os I use to see if a PC is dead or not showed the CPU as beeing a dual core so???

[comicsansms]

1 minute ago, AshBattersea said:

I came to the conclusion it was a Pentium 4 because the bios said it was and my test os I use to see if a PC is dead or not showed the CPU as beeing a dual core so???

It could be a P4 w/ Hyperthreading or it could be miss identifying the CPU. I was testing a VM with windows 95 and it thought my A10 5750m was an "authentic intel Pentium".

[AshBattersea]

3 minutes ago, Zoompz said:

XP would probably be best for it 

I did think about XP, but the system doesn't even meet the minimum requirements to run it and even if it did I don't have a copy of XP to put on it.

 

Any ideas on obtaining a copy?

[AshBattersea]

Just now, Comic_Sans_MS said:

It could be a P4 w/ Hyperthreading or it could be miss identifying the CPU. I was testing a VM with windows 95 and it thought my A10 5750m was an "authentic intel Pentium".

 

Posible. Though it was using both the cores to 100% in the mem test so I don't think it is beeing misidentified.

[Zoompz]

6 minutes ago, AshBattersea said:

I would call any computer stores and ask, ask anyone selling a P C with Windows XP if they still have the original copy

Edited September 2, 2016 by Zoompz
Spelling is not very good

[AshBattersea]

3 minutes ago, Zoompz said:

 

Thanks for the help I'll see if the tech department at school have a copy I could borrow.

[ObilvionNizer]

Maybe Linux, Or a pre-2000 version of windows like 98.

[AshBattersea]

Just now, deansmylie1993 said:

Maybe Linux, Or a pre-2000 version of windows like 98.

I have tried putting Linux on it before but the only distro I could think of that would work with so little ram is Arch and that is a pain to install. If I was going to go pre-2000 I would probably go 95 as it's based of dos and i could play all my old dos games on it.

[comicsansms]

12 minutes ago, AshBattersea said:

Posible. Though it was using both the cores to 100% in the mem test so I don't think it is beeing misidentified.

There ARE NO dual core Pentium 4's.

I repeat, the computer could think it is a Pentium 4, but instead it is some dual core, or it is a Pentium 4, single core CPU with hyper threading.

 

There is no dual core CPUs on the desktop PGA 478 Platform, it is definitely a single core.

[AshBattersea]

2 minutes ago, Comic_Sans_MS said:

There ARE NO dual core Pentium 4's.

I repeat, the computer could think it is a Pentium 4, but instead it is some dual core, or it is a Pentium 4, single core CPU with hyper threading.

 

There is no dual core CPUs on the desktop PGA 478 Platform, it is definitely a single core.

 

I didn't think that there was hyperthreading on Pentium CPUs. guess you learn something every day.

[TRENX]

I wouldn't put windows XP on a machine like that, A light linux distro would be best for general usage, just off the top of my head a distro like Lubuntu, Puppy Linux or Slitaz would probably be more suitable they don't need more than 250mb of ram to run without any problems. You could like you said put on windows 95 and play some dos games its up to you.

[Space Reptile]

why win xp when you can go w2k , its better in my opinion and has lots of fan patches making it run most modern things while still being INCREDIBLY lightweight (i ran it on a 133 p1 w/ 128megs and it was snappy) 

[TassieTim]

i pulled an old pc out of a cupboard doing a cleanup , found out it stills works and is running windows 2000 pro on it lol