wil win95 run on 486 sx or dx????

[cmsmith]

heard win 95 wont run ,or will run even worse in one of the 486 mods either sx or dx any ideas

[Brushfire]

Well, chances are that it will run, but not well. Stick with win3.1, DOS or maybe a flavor of linux if you are living on the edge. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

Brushfire

[Nathan]

If you have at least 8 MB of memory, it should work ok, slow, but ok. When 95 came out, I installed it on a 486 DX2 with 8 MB of ram. I later put in another 8 MB and it did run better.

[MR COMPUTER]

I have run Win 95 on a 386-33 with 4 meg of ram.In the system performance tab,windows suggested that I add some more ram>But the system ran pretty good (Win 950).

[Bud]

I have a sx25 with a dx250 processor and 32 megs of ram and win 95 upgrade. Runs pretty fair for a old sys. Seemed really good until I built the one I am using. Go for it. Use the upgrade if it dont work to your satisfaction just delete it. It will go right back to your 3x you were using before.
Bud

[spdsk8r]

One of my older systems - a 486 33sx with 4MB RAM - is running win 95... It's really slow, but if you have atleast 16MB RAM it should be ok.

[DavidX]

I have Windows95 on my 486DX2/66 with 20Mb RAM. It not only works but it flies! It may seem strange to use the words '486' and 'fly' in the same sentence but it's absolutely true. The secret lies in the amount of RAM (16Mb is a realistic minimum for running Windows95 properly) and in hard disk optimisation. It loads faster and moves faster than Windows95 did on a Pentium 133 with only 8Mb RAM that I had a while back.

Whoever told you that Windows95 won't run on a 486 is talking total garbage! Remember that when Windows95 was first released the vast majority of people had only 486s or 386s. Microsoft was not stupid enough to introduce an OS that needed a Pentium to run it - at a time when Pentiums were still very new and very expensive.

Windows98 - now that's pushing it a bit. Microsoft say it will work on a 486DX2/66 but I imagine it would be very slow. 98 is a lot more demanding than 95.

[reboot]

I'm running Win98 on a 486-DX/33
Gave it 32 meg of RAM, and it's working great!
Cheers, Jim

[DavidX]

Wow! It just goes to show! 486s are a lot more capable than people give them credit for - especially with a decent amount of RAM.

[izzzy12k]

I installed Win98, on a 486 w/32MB. It was slow until I started removing alot of the uneeded **** that comes with it, that I do not use. Also you may want to use your old tweaked config.sys and autoexec.bat files to helpwith memory management. Also use Vcache in the system.ini and have a 100MB start swap file, also go ahead and use FAT32. With these tweaks, win will run as fast or slighlty faster than win95.

-Izzzy12k

[BC_1]

It should run. Maybe not a speed demon, but it'll be servicable. Had an old x486DX 75mhz laptop with 16mb of RAM running Win95 OSR2. Slow as hell, but it worked and did the job for the most part.

[Phloodpants]

May I suggest Win98 Lite?

I have a 486/DX50 that I use as an answering machine. I tried Win95, Win98 and 98lite on this machine, and 98Lite runs the best.

Basically, Win98 is about the same speed as Win95. This is despite the fact that IE4 is integrated. Take the IE4 out of Win98, and you unleash that speed!

www.98lite.net (http://www.98lite.net)

[Bazango]

I run Windows 95 on a 486DX66 with 20MB RAM and it runs fine. Memory is probably the choke point for this chip and software combination. And basically, you can never have too much memory. Other software problems can come from running on a "minimum system requirement" with insufficient RAM memory.

There is a maximum of memory your motherboard will take, maybe some jumpers to change and restricted memory slots too. Check it out.

[This message has been edited by Bazango (edited 04-30-99).]

[ENVY]

Absolute minimum requirements are:
386dx
4mb of ram(8mb for exchange)
3.5 floppy
55mb of disk space
vga vid card
Recommended Requirements are:
486dx-66mhz
16mb ram
cd drive
75mb of drive space
svga with 2mb of memory
This is the absolutes on both ends,performance increases as these specs go up.This is per the Microsoft MCSE and A+ standards.

[MadMax]

If your mobo has a ZIF socket and not a surface mount CPU, try to get an AMD 5X86/133. These little burners IMHO were the very best 486 type cpu. They will run Win9x just as well as any classic Pentium up to 133MHz, with a gob of RAM, of course.

[800XL]

My first experience with win95 was a 386DX 20Mhz with 16MB of RAM. I ran it for quite a while with a 486DX2/66Mhz and 8MB of RAM. My last 486 system had an AMD X5 133Mhz overclocked to 160mhz with 40MB RAM. It ran quite well actually. Benchmarks placed it right in line with a 100Mhz Pentium.

You can still get upgrade cpus based on the AMD X5 chip that will work in place of a 486 if your chip is socketed or you have an overdrive socket. My personal pick would be the Evergreen 586 upgrade.

[cobain1crt]

I don't know if anyone will even believe me, but I ran Win95 in my 486SX/20, with 4 megs of ram, the only thing that let it run I think was that it had an on mobo video card with 4 megs of ram, and some special bios ram, totaling all together about 9 megs, but about 500k was always in use by video.

[Mntsnow]

cmsmith,

You bet you can run Win95 on a 486! Until I built my computer and wifes..that is what we both were running. Mine had 64 megs and wife's had 24 megs. But now my daughter is running Win95 osr2 on her 486 DX with 24megs and it runs just fine for what she is wanting it to do. (until she wanted to play my mechwarror) and then she plays on my machine. but for surfing the net and school stuff (word processesing ect) it does the job just fine!

Enjoy :0
Mntsnow

[reboot]

Just for fun, I swapped out the 586 board in another computer with Win98, and put in a 486 DX-33 with only 8 meg of RAM.
It works!
REEEEeeeeely slowly, but it boots, and plays solitaire good! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif
Cheers, Jim

[augidog]

of course, when i put '95 on my 486/33 w/4M, i didn't know it was slow & it ran fine.

using it on a 273M Hdd, however, is something i hope i never have to do again http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[tylerrud]

I installed Win98 on my 486DX2 with 40mb of ram, it was really slow at first untill I took out the sound card and now it runs how it should. so win98 will run on a 486 but you need to work on it!

[Hellmund]

I had win95 running on a DX/4/100 with 8meg ram for about 2 years when I was younger. Things won't load rapidly at all, ever, but it's not like the desktop runs jumpy.I used to play Mech2:Mercenarys and Darkreign.

[Variable]

When I bought Win95 Upgrade I installed it on my 486 DLC (yeah right!!! that's the 486 that goes on a 386 mainboard!) 40MHz with 4 MB RAM! and it worked! not fast but it worked! of course i soon upgraded to 8MB (boy THAT cost BIG BUCKS at that time 4x1MB!!). and my machine seemed to fly (I didn't know of course at that time that I wasn't flying more than 1 inch above the ground...)

[NDC]

I used to have a 486DX-2 66Mhz, 64MB RAM TwinHead laptop that came preinstalled with Windows 95. Believe it or not, I used to run Photoshop 3.0 on this laptop when I used to go to beach picnics. This thing would take forever to render a filter for an image above 2000 x 2000. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/biggrin.gif

[darkmallard]

I STILL use my 486DX4/100 today as a backup DNS, DHCP, and WINS server running NT4.0 SERVER. It's got a 5.1GB hard drive to substantially speed up access time.

Don't throw out those 486's just yet!

I had a 486SX/25MHz running 95 for over 2 years on 20MB of RAM. I also had a 486DX2/66 with 32MB running with 32MB for over 2 years, until I upgraded the processor to a 486DX4/100. It ran Office 97, Internet, and some pretty decent games without any problems.

[GroundZero3]

LOL NDC yeah it will run but don't expect wonderful preformace because its slow as heck on my 486 with 64 mb of RAM!!!

Jason

[Eli]

Who keeps digging up these old threads? This one is nearly two years old. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[falcompsx]

i've actually seen windows running one of the every so rare intel 186 machines....not sure what version, I think 3.0, but maybe 2.x i don't remember...still it was pretty cool...monochrome monitor too....

[Praetorian]

That was one of the first computers that I had. It was a 486 Dx, Win95, with 32mb of RAM and 1.19gb HDD. I was only 11yrs when I got it. Someone gave it to me for free. That was about 4 years ago. It was the first time I had ever gone inside a computer and I kinda shocked the motherboard. Had to get a new mobo and just upgraded to Pentium 100mhz.

Anyway It should work jsut fine. I never had any problems until I upgraded to Win98 using the Pentium processor.

[araaraara]

My friend has a 486 with 12mb of ram and ms plus! Runs really slowly, but that's probably because it has over 20mb of swap file in use. 64megs of ram and it would probably fly!