TIL my old Pentium 4 PC boots faster with Windows 98 than XP ever did

I swapped XP for 98 on my 2002 Dell last month and it went from a 4 minute boot to under 90 seconds. Has anyone else found an older OS actually made ancient hardware feel snappier?

3 comments

3 Comments

ivan2113mo ago

Did the same thing with a Pentium III laptop from 1999. XP took over 5 minutes to get to a usable desktop. Dropped 98 SE on it and it boots in maybe 75 seconds tops. Everything just opens faster too like Notepad or Paint load instantly instead of hanging for a few seconds. People say 98 is unstable but on that old hardware it runs circles around XP.

the_luna2mo ago

Huh, I always figured XP would be better. Guess I was wrong.

the_seth1mo ago

My 2003 Compaq Presario with a 1.6GHz P4 also got way faster with 98 SE. The sound card driver took some hunting to find, but after that everything just snapped open. I know exactly what @ivan211 means about Notepad and Paint, I swear even solitaire felt smoother. It's like XP was just too bulky for the hardware of that era, even though it's supposed to be "better" in every way.