Compaq Presario Adventure!

Yesterday, I got a free Compaq Presario SR2032X. It has a Athlon 64 3500+, 512MB of RAM, 200GB hard drive, Geforce 6150LE graphics, and Windows XP Media Center Edition with lots of crap installed.

After getting the computer home. I immediately cleaned it. Then I turned it on and was surprised at how much crap was installed. Windows XP seemed surprisingly ok and not too slow.

I then turned the computer off,added 1.5GB of DDR2 of ram and wiped the hard drive. I initially tried installing Windows 10. It however failed to boot, likely because of the processor. Then I installed Ubuntu Gnome. It worked pretty well, and everything worked like sound, graphics, but I kept encountering an error, with the system updater or something.

This computer back then was like lower-mid range computer. The Athlon 64 had an advantage over other processors, especially in that is has the 64 bit extension. The computer has a DVD Litescribe drive, which is very nice, and there are 5 USB ports in total on the computer. There is one headphone jack in the front. There is a media card reader in front, which is very useful. The case has lots of ventilation. Getting into the case is very simple, with one screw. The case overall is pretty well built, with durable plastics.

I finally decided to install Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit, using a old product key. What a chore it was! Rather than installing and forgetting, like with Windows 10. I had to install a series of updates, in order for Windows 7 to actually update. Without this, Windows 7 will hang and never update for hours. For instance, I had to install a prerequisite patch, then the convenience rollup, and then the update client.

After getting Windows 7 fully set up. For a 12 year old computer, it runs surprisingly well, albeit a bit slow. Internet browsing is decent, doing office work is fine and doing simple tasks are without a hitch.  

Overall, for a 12 year old Windows XP computer. The Compaq Presario SR2032X, is not a bad computer, for back then, and even now, with the right amount of upgrades!

Conversation 1 comments

  • moruobai

    05 July, 2017 - 5:46 pm

    <p>Beautiful! You are so right about this vintage machine being capable with the right amount of upgrades. </p><p><br></p><p>I've got a 12 year old Gateway running Win7 with a Core2Duo, 8GB ram (4x 2gb sticks), a 256gb ssd, and 2x 1tb hdd, NVidia GT 710, blu ray burner, and … a floppy disk drive! lol</p><p><br></p><p>It's showing it's age a little. Bottleneck these days is always the Core2Duo, but this thing can still sort of hold it's own! Core2Duo was such a rock star in it's day! </p>

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