Windows XP running on 22mb RAM...

pcgeek

Recently, I have been seeing alot of youtube videos where XP is running on 32mb RAM. My original idea was to replicate that. I made a custom WinXP install disk with nLite. The installer is stripped down to a simple black-background installer that doesn't need a product key (yes, you can this way get XP for free without needing to get a pirated product key). The whole install process was done with 192mb RAM. After the initial boot and a few test boots (this nLited version is damn fast in VirtualBox), I decreased the RAM to 32mb. Works, but sluggishly. After a little experimentation, I figured out that it needs at least 22mb RAM. At that level, the system works but is super sluggish .Too bad I don't have an old 1990's PC to test this on...

haroldas.velioniskis

Which virtualization solution are you using? Because If it's VirtualBox or something similar, everything runs way faster than on real old hardware, because it doesn't emulate full system (still uses host's cpu)

pcgeek

I am using VirtualBox. My idea was just to get it running on that little RAM. I can't imagine how crappy the speed would be if I had a legacy CPU (pentium 2, pentium 75,etc...). I tested this all WITHOUT installing guest additions. If you want to try this yourself on a legacy PC, download nLite and a WinXP SP3 iso , extract the iso to a folder and proceed to nLite it and create a bootable CD of the nLited version (nLite can create the iso). Burn the iso to a CD and install.

Blank

How big was your nLite copy of windows xp because i got mine down to only 52mb without deleting anything in the WINDOWS folder. XP can run on 17mb of ram at the lowest (There is a way to get it to run on only 16mb of ram which i don't know how)
I have emulated a Pentium 133 with only 17mb of ram and it could still boot up (BSOD if you do 16mb of ram normally), but i haven't tested it out on real hardware yet.

Constance

I remember seeing it run… or I guess"crawl" would be a more accurate term… on real hardware with only 32 MB of RAM back in 2002 during an internship. That was painful to watch ^^'

Bry89

Pretty interesting to see that an OS able to run with RAM much lower than what it requires. I bet start-up time or even just accessing a file would take ages to do. Also, I wonder how 7 can perform the similar way... like 512MB or something.

sl1fka

Windows 7's minimum RAM requirement is 512MB of RAM. Although really I'd say 1GB should be.

WindowsXPUSER

Oh! Well, back in 2006, I was using Windows XP with 5gb ram and it was homemade...but 22mb? Where did you find that ram extension?

pcgeek

Not a physical PC with 22mb RAM, but rather a VM with 22mb RAM. I actually had to confirm that VirtualBox was giving me 22mb RAM using CPU-Z because XP won't read less than 24mb. I will also see if it is possible to nLite whistler 2419.

Bry89

WindowsXPUSER wrote:

Oh! Well, back in 2006, I was using Windows XP with 5gb ram and it was homemade...but 22mb? Where did you find that ram extension?

That's rather high for its time... when I had an XP computer with a measly 256MB RAM back then. Wasn't until 2009 I had one with 4GB RAM.

AwesomeWindowsTV

sl1fka wrote:

Windows 7's minimum RAM requirement is 512MB of RAM. Although really I'd say 1GB should be.

I use Windows XP because my dad gave me an old Jan 2006 Dell with 768MB of RAM, but my dad has Windows 7 and says I can't get Windows 7 because it requires 1GB, but I will tell him it's 512MB like Longhorn.