Need advice for old laptop

L

littletechboy

n00b
Joined
Mar 12, 2013
Messages
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HI,I need advice for this old laptop. Just fixing for fun. Its a dell inspiron 3000.

The specs are

143 mb ram(Plan to upgrade to 512 mb or 1 gb)

Pentium with mmx @ 233 MHZ

8 GB hard drive(Plan to upgrade to 40 GB OR 60 GB)

Floppy drive.(Where can i get a cd rom?)

OS Had windows 95 now has none. (Will install windows xp home)
The minimum hardware requirements for Windows XP Home Edition are:

Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)
At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended)
At least 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available space on the hard disk
CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
Keyboard and a Microsoft Mouse or some other compatible pointing device
Video adapter and monitor with Super VGA (800 x 600)or higher resolution
Sound card
Speakers or headphones

MY issue is i can't boot from floppy cause i have no xp on floppy only on cd rom.

Also i can't get a flash drive with xp to boot. And i have no hard drive in it right now.

Ive got a flash drive to run it on. ( done this before on another pc) But plan to upgrade to a hard drive with 40 or 60 gigs.

THANKS! PLEASE LEAVE YOUR ADVICE/THOUGHTS!
 
I cannot recommend any upgrades on that ancient laptop because the upgrade parts are now either no longer available or are far more expensive than that entire laptop is currently worth. In addition, Microsoft support for Windows XP is set to end completely (except for archived updates and fixes) in 12 months (which means that there will be no more new bug or security fixes whatsoever for XP after April 8 of next year).

In other words, even a single minor upgrade will cost you tens to hundreds of times more money than the total depreciated value of that ENTIRE laptop (which, IMHO, is not worth even $20 combined).
 
I agree with above. Only do this if you are getting the parts for free.

A Core 2 Duo laptop these days in good condition is about $125. About $50 for P4 laptops.

Leave the above laptop alone and just install Windows 2000. Make a floppy disk bootdisk that works with USB.
 
hi, i am getting the hard drive for like $12 the most.Thats really all i want to upgrade.
Maybe also get a external cd-rom drive that i can use in any of my pc. I get the ram for free. Where can i get a windows 2000 disk? My friend has an msdn account.

Can you burn a iso to floppy?


thanks
 
XP is going to run like crap on that just FYI.

Pickup a cheap laptop on ebay if you just want cheap, there are tons for less than $100 that are better than that thing.

I also doubt you will be able to run 512mb or 1gb of RAM in that thing. There is a lot you have to take into consideration before doing upgrades like you are proposing.
 
littletechboy said:
HI,I need advice for this old laptop. Just fixing for fun. Its a dell inspiron 3000.

The specs are

143 mb ram(Plan to upgrade to 512 mb or 1 gb)

Pentium with mmx @ 233 MHZ

8 GB hard drive(Plan to upgrade to 40 GB OR 60 GB)

Floppy drive.(Where can i get a cd rom?)

OS Had windows 95 now has none. (Will install windows xp home)
The minimum hardware requirements for Windows XP Home Edition are:

Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)
At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended)
At least 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available space on the hard disk
CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
Keyboard and a Microsoft Mouse or some other compatible pointing device
Video adapter and monitor with Super VGA (800 x 600)or higher resolution
Sound card
Speakers or headphones

MY issue is i can't boot from floppy cause i have no xp on floppy only on cd rom.

Also i can't get a flash drive with xp to boot. And i have no hard drive in it right now.

Ive got a flash drive to run it on. ( done this before on another pc) But plan to upgrade to a hard drive with 40 or 60 gigs.

THANKS! PLEASE LEAVE YOUR ADVICE/THOUGHTS!
Click to expand...

I just looked at the specs of that old Dell, and found out that the system is already maxed out on RAM. 144MB is the most that it can support (16MB embedded on the system board plus memory modules up to a total of 128GB). Any more RAM and the system will not recognize the extra at all.
 
I've been noticing your other threads. I think you should reconsider what you are doing.

If you want to keep using that machine, install Windows 3.11. It's available on MSDN probably.

Go on eBay and look up the IBM Thinkpad T23. You can get a fully working one under $40 shipped with an OS. It'll be much better to work with.

Even 10-11 years ago, Pentium 1 laptops were a pain to work with.
 
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