What is the minimum Ram and Hard Disk Space for Windows XP?

[MasterMichael88]

Hello, everyone, I decided to make a Virtual Machine and test what are the minimum requirements to install Windows XP and get past the welcome screen.

As for my findings, here's everything I can knowingly confirm at this time:

48 MB Ram + 640 MB Hard Disk - There won't be enough ram to load the files in memory, and the partitioning menu will not open up.
56 MB Ram + 640 MB Hard Disk - You can load the partitioning menu, but as the setup requires 1183 MB of Hard Disk Space to get past this.
56 MB Ram + 1183 MB Hard Disk - It'll say you need 1371 MB of Hard Disk Space, but, if you press the c key and make a raw partition of 1183, you can format as NTFS/FAT and get to the installer,
however, It'll give an error message when the approximate time remaining hits 13 Minutes and freeze.
56 MB Ram + 1.5 GB Hard Disk - Won't give an error message, but will freeze at 13 Minutes remaining for over 30 minutes, then actually finishes and boots into the user setup info, although the direct animation will not work and will instead just change to Welcome to Windows XP thing, Wifi will work, and the system will get past the welcome screen, there will be no background, but the Luna theme WILL load, which is shocking, and the system will have 242 MB left on it.

As for issues with this, I wasn't able to modify the Proccessor Speed, so it's still 3.80 Ghz Quad-core AMD.

What did I prove? I was able to prove that the minimum ram for the installer isn't 64 MB, but rather 56 MB.

As for my future plans with this project, I'll be looking into seeing if there's a way to make these requirements smaller via a method like Windows 2000 to Windows XP SP3.

As for why I'm testing this, I was wondering whether or not the minimum requirements of any windows version are accurate, and if they aren't, what is the true minimum for these systems.

If anyone else has any lesser minimum requirements, I'd love to hear, for I always know that no answer is definitive, in other words, not one answer is perfect.

Lastly, here are the specs for the host computer and my VM software:

Windows 10 Home 64-bit
4 GB Ram (3.75 GB usable)
3.80 Ghz AMD Processor
1 TB Solid State Drive
Virtualbox 5.2.1

Thank you for taking the time to look at this article:

Sincerely,
MasterMichael88/MichaelTech

[TheDosProgrammer]

There is an article on Winhistory.de about that: https://www.winhistory.de/more/386/xpmini.htm
You can run XP even on 8Mghz Pentium Overdrive with 20MB RAM (maybe this works only on a real machine).

[oscareczek]

Some BA user managed to run XP on 86box with Intel Pentium 4… MHz, so you can repeat that glorious score.

[BF10]

Some BA user managed to run XP on 86box with Intel Pentium 4… MHz, so you can repeat that glorious score.

ovctvct got it to run on a 2MHz Pentium 1 as well. Knowing it takes 2.5 hours just to boot at that speed (he also said the mouse is laggy and the system is unstable), it's going to be a long day if you get it to run on 1MHz.

[MasterMichael88]

Thank you for all the replies, what I'm referring to is getting through the installer (partitioning, network setup, etc) and getting past the welcome screen.

I do believe these suggestions would work for getting past the welcome screen, but what about getting past the installer, while I do believe the Processor stuff (besides, I don't actually know how to test lower processor power on Virtualbox.) Not to mention, they said the minimum of installing was 64 MB, however, I was able to successfully get through the installer with 56 MB, and I don't know what the world record for lowest ram during a Windows XP Professional SP3 install would be?

Well, if the minimum for upgrading from 2000 is 64 MB, then trying to do an upgrade from 2000 would be pointless.

Guess this means it's time for Windows 2000 testing.

[Zv45Beta]

Thank you for all the replies, what I'm referring to is getting through the installer (partitioning, network setup, etc) and getting past the welcome screen.

I do believe these suggestions would work for getting past the welcome screen, but what about getting past the installer, while I do believe the Processor stuff (besides, I don't actually know how to test lower processor power on Virtualbox.) Not to mention, they said the minimum of installing was 64 MB, however, I was able to successfully get through the installer with 56 MB, and I don't know what the world record for lowest ram during a Windows XP Professional SP3 install would be?

Well, if the minimum for upgrading from 2000 is 64 MB, then trying to do an upgrade from 2000 would be pointless.

Guess this means it's time for Windows 2000 testing.

XP (of any service pack) will refuse to start with less than 18MB of RAM (due to insufficient RAM for the kernel etc.) so you'll need at least 18MB of RAM. The Gold RTM XP (no SP) will take up around 650MB (without the pagefile, hiberfil or anything else, only the Windows folder).

To modify the CPU speed, you'll have to use an emulator instead of a hypervisor. 86Box will do the job fine

[MasterMichael88]

To modify the CPU speed, you'll have to use an emulator instead of a hypervisor. 86Box will do the job fine

Thank you for that suggestion, I'm trying to get 86box to work, but it's saying that png.h isn't being found when I'm trying to compile it, which crashes the thing, I've tried both mingw32_shell.bat and mingw64_shell.bat, and that hasn't worked.

Anyways, on terms of my previous post, it seems that Windows 2000 will only upgrade if it has 64 MB of ram and more. Not to mention, it only seemed to allow me to install with a minimum of 32 MB Ram + 800 MB Disk Space. Well, guess that kills off an attempt to upgrade 2000 to XP for smaller requirements.

Also, I happen to have two old computers, one running Windows ME (32 MB Ram/4.3 GB Storage) and another running Windows XP (384 MB Ram/20 GB Storage) Which makes me wonder if I can emulate 56 MB of ram on my XP computer with the older proccessor if 86box doesn't work.

Thank you for your time.

[Battler]

Download a pre-compiled 86Box binary from http://ci.86box.net .

[Zv45Beta]

...it seems that Windows 2000 will only upgrade if it has 64 MB of ram and more...

I remember nLite has an appliable tweak that can bypass the RAM and hard drive check...

...which makes me wonder if I can emulate 56 MB of ram on my XP computer with the older proccessor if 86box doesn't work.

You can limit the maximum memory in msconfig.exe: here's how it looks on 8.1 (note the Maximum memory option)



(should be the same on XP)
This only applies for a preinstalled copy of XP; another option would be setting maximum shared video RAM for the integrated GPU (if present)

[MCpillager12]

I know this is a one year bump, but Windows FLP (with SP3) works with 32MB RAM!


I used VMware Player 3.1.4.

[Winins]

I know this is a one year bump, but Windows FLP (with SP3) works with 32MB RAM!


I used VMware Player 3.1.4.

That is not unusual.