CUstomer Machine XP Pro Memory Lag

[KnowlesTech]

Ughhhhh! I hate it when people want more than they can handle. Here is the current issue.
A customer purchased XP Pro offline and wanted me to upgrade him to it. The customer machine is as follows.
733MHz Celeron A
128MB SDRAM running at 66
20GB HD @ 5400RPM
Integrated Video max share memory of 16MB

I upgraded him to XP machine crashes all the time. He was upgraded from windows ME. Ok, I format the drive and install Win2k then upgrade to XP no problems. Once Office and some other programs are installed the machine runs like a slug.
I went a head and purchased Tweak XP Pro to see if it would help him. It does a good job but he is still super sluggish. WHen the pc starts and is finally finished loading the drivers he has 8-9MB of free RAM. I use TweakXP and it frees him up to 80MB. This 80MB gets used up rather quickly when you do anything at all. His machine is one of those ultra cheapo miniATX Gateway machines. This customer did not want to spend a lot of money since he just bought XP Pro Upgrade and TweakXP Pro.

I made his Swap file 0minimum and 1024max. Can someone tell me for his cheapo configuration what swap would be best for him with his limited memory?
Or someone who has dealt with a machine of this small caliber, know how to make it run a whole lot better? I was hoping NOT to use reg hacks on a customers pc but I am fearful that I might have to resort to that and unloading just about all the services that he will never use.

Please let me know soon. I will be finishing his pc by tomorrow and right now I am going to tweaktown and some other sites in a few minutes.

 

[stan03]

if it has two sockets why is it limited to 128?

 

[penetrecion]

I would say put it to no maximum... he's gonna need all he can get... XP takes at least 256 RAM to run half-way decent (I'm sure you know that). That is the way I used to run my old K6-2 550 MHz computer.

There's probably a bunch of junk that could be deleted or disabled.. BTW, how much junk is standing by in his system tray? His resources must be pretty low...

 

[-=TriX-R4-KidS=]

w/ some tweaking and disabling of services i have got xp pro to use up only ~80-85 mb of 160mb on 3 machines at my mom's bizness.

youll want to disable sounds since its probably integrated as well as all fancy visual BS. no desktop BG, fancy GUI effects, etc...and use the classic theme. also disable the indexing service of xp and sytem restore/automatic updates if possible. after that find a good tweak guide (i use the guide found at http://www.tweaktown.com). be sure to run cacheman.

but you really need more than 128mb for xp.

-TriX

 

[KnowlesTech]

Thanks for all the replies. I found the problem. One of the 64MB chips went south. I replaced the OS and it crashed regardless so I got suspicious of hardware. I tested the HD since the machine was very slow and it passed but then I received mem error after mem error and I pulled one and then the other a found the bad one and replaced it. Thanks

 

[Schroinx]

BTW: I'm running XP pro on a Sony VAIO PCG-Z505S with a 300 MHz Celeron and 192MB of RAM. Takes a h*** of a time to boot, but runs okay otherwise....