My man Karl over at Ask The Admin read my article about putting Linux on older systems, and decided to fire back with his own article on getting Windows XP to run in minimalistic mode. My only concern with this would be security, but if you don’t care about that, then this is for you:
So we heard about one way to get a slow computer up and running but it involved making the jump to Linux. Now lets say for arguments sake you can’t go the way of el di pablo and Push Ubuntu on your Woman?
We couldn’t get her to use that Pentium 3 with XP because it runs like a snail. And of course she wont run 2000 because “that’s an outdated operating system” (this she knows! lol)!
It turns out we can stop a bunch of services and make some mods to get down to running a minimalistic version of Windows XP (pro or home). These instructions are for a machine that will not be on a domain! Will not use internet connection sharing, Will not use the windows firewall.Windows update will not work until you turn back on two services. Instructions below.

This will create a decent machine for you or your significant other to browse the web and work on office documents. Who would have thought Windows XP was so bloated!
Read More