[romansoft]

Hi guys,

I'd like to revive an old Mini 1010 laptop (PP19S), with an empty (=no recovery partitions) hard disk.

I do not have a CD or similar in order to reinstall the OS and Dell says the laptop is out of warranty and that XP is end-of-life (obvious). So basically I'm unsupported and have no means of getting a recovery disk or .iso.

But I'd still like to load the original XP (Home ULCPC, afaik), since I remember XP was the only Windows version which ran smoothly when I used the Mini, and the intended use is only for my kids.

Please, anyone could share the .iso or an image of recovery partition that I could use in order to re-install my Mini?

Thanks in advance.
-Román

[holmes4]

My advice to you is to buy a copy of Windows 10 Home Edition. It should work fine. At most you will need to download some drivers from the Dell site. It would not be legal for someone to share a copy of XP with you, and it would be a terrible idea in any case.

An alternative would be a Linux distribution (Mint is popular) and whatever tools your kids will be using.

[romansoft]

Hi holmes,

Thx for your response. I finally managed to find the original CDs (2 CDs: one with Xp and the other one with Dell drivers) and did a new XP + drivers install. All went ok.

So laptop was revived

Now my new problem is that laptop is extremely slow, or at least, for the usage I wanted to give, which basically is that my kids can watch some youtube videos. I installed an old firefox version (newer versions are unsupported in XP) which is very slow (XP's IExplorer was basically incompatible with current www) and in practice, it's unusable.

I know laptop has low-hardware capabilities and current www is more demanding than years ago. I'm wondering if any mini10 owners are presently using the laptop and what's your experience with it. I think now the laptop is only valid for opening notepad and take some raw notes :-))).

I'm not sure if Mint (or other Linux distro) is going to solve the problem. I guess it can make things worse since mini10 has a crappy gfx card that (I think) was unsopported in Linux (no acceleration). I'd be delighted if someone prove me wrong.

Cheers,
-r

[holmes4]

My opinion is that you're just setting yourself up for more problems down the road. Give away the Mini10 to someone who needs a basic computer and get your kids an inexpensive tablet (many available for under $100) that will play YouTube videos just fine and not be riddled with (as many) security bugs.

[darknessblade]

I would not suggest to use windows 10 anymore, It is no longer a usable system.

even when you strip away all APP functionality, and other useless stuff you still cannot use it at all, even a single video of 360P will take a long time to load.

[holmes4]

I don't agree - I find it is usable within the limits of a 12-year-old low-end system. But I certainly would not recommend it to anyone other than a toy.