Pale Moon on legacy hardware

[L Bell]

This topic might be of value to those of you who happen to be running Pale Moon on a 'legacy' machine. Further tips will be posted as replies to this thead, as I discover them. In my posts, PM = Pale Moon, & FF = well, that other one.

The main test PC I'm using is:

2005 HP Pavilion, AMD Sempron 3000+ processor @ 1.81 GHz, and 1GB of RAM. Operating system is WinXP SP3, with net Framework 1.1.
(you see, I really mean Legacy!). Many of these are in landfills.

The connection is a USRobotics 28.8Kbps dial-up modem, another throwback from over a decade ago. Sometimes I use a 3G tether when absolutely necessary, because it costs ~ 3 cents per megabyte.

Pale Moon runs pleasantly fast, even after importing settings and (substantial) bookmarks from FF. Totally useable!

With the tight memory mentioned, running too many hungry programs at the same time can slow or apparently freeze the browser, but closing and re-running PM seems to free up memory, allowing you to complete tasks that were bogged down.

This technique also works when running PM under Tahrpup Linux, which I'll post about in the appropriate forum.

The Flash plugins are apparently too intensive for this hardware config, but I haven't given up yet!

To sum up, Pale Moon is substantially faster than FF on this old system, and nice features like the progress bar (as in the old Netscape, and IBrowse on Amiga) lets you see how much of a page is loaded, and whether it has stalled, etc.

"The criterion of true beauty is that it increases on examination"

LBB

[L Bell]

This post concerns methods for running PM smoothly on old systems, which otherwise might be discarded, or recycled.

Some suggestions will be valuable on ANY system, including 'state of the art'.

The OS in my testbeds are WinXP Professional, SP3, WinXP Home, and if possible, MiniXP. 1GB Ram, Processor speeds ~ 2 GHz.

A couple tips for those running legacy hardware, as described in the initial post:

1. Keep your internal bookmarks to a minimum.

1a. Open an HTML export of bookmarks from PM or other browser, instead of using the internal bookmark interface. Use "control/o" or the pull-down menu.

2. Don't open too many separate tabs. (will take extra memory, but PM handles it much better that FF)

(to export bookmarks in most Mozilla based browsers, select the pulldown option 'History' from the toolbar, choose 'Show All History', then 'import and backup', and finally 'export bookmarks to html'.

Choose a unique filename so you can find it later, Example: 'bookmarks-15-6-3' . (year, month, day) I just saved mine using this.

If you can find a utility to 'merge' HTML files, you can combine bookmarks from your old browsers into a single file. Or you simply load them individually as needed. Is there a 'smart' utility that identifies duplicate locations and lets you selectively delete them? Please post if you know of one.

Advantages: The HTML bookmarks are searchable using the standard "control/f" (find string) .

The HTML file exported by browsers generally includes extended text which aren't accessible in the internal bookmark interface, and are organized with date separators, and other extended information, as provided by the original pages.

---
Changes

Soon, I may not be able to test the 'dialup' method of internet connection using a hardwired 'copper' telephone line plus external serial modem. (as in POTS. aka Plain Old Telephone Service) The phone company is going pure digital, which is not that great using modems or Fax machines.

"That which challenges the thinking level of one generation becomes the acceptance level of the next"

LBB

[L Bell]

Additional machine being tested, specifications similar to the original post, with the exception that it has a Pentium 4 running at the base rate of 2.2 GHz. It's supposed to run up to 3GHz, but it keeps reverting to a 'balanced profile' instead of 'performance', which is supposed to run warmer, take more power. and not downshift automatically.

Pale Moon for XP x86 runs very well at the base settings, however I can't go online with it, or other network accessing programs for that matter!

As soon as PM or other programs begins to access the net, I get a blue screen of death (NDIS.sys). This started a few weeks ago after installing a nice looking load sharing program called 'nat32'. The author doesn't think the installer changed anything which would cause the problem, and even after uninstalling it, the problem remains.

To cement the deal, my restore points shortly before the nat32 install won't load. And I have no backup of this hard drive

I went to Dells site, but the driver download links for a Dimension 2400 (like this), just sit there. In case this has any effect, I recently updated this machine to XP SP3, which went smoothly.

Any suggestions to get the drivers back in order so I can test PM on this config?

Also, what is a good free standing virus scanner which doesn't need to access the net. I have DaRT from within the FalconFour ultimate boot disk, but can't figure out how to use it yet.

LB

[Moonchild]

You may want to ask the nat32 author exactly what it changes. You can also try resetting your TCP/IP stack and winsock:

Code: Select all

netsh int ip reset resettcpip.txt

Code: Select all

netsh winsock reset

[L Bell]

You may want to ask the nat32 author exactly what it changes. You can also try resetting your TCP/IP stack and winsock:

Thanks for those commands. I'll try them tonight and report back.

The author sent some suggestions a few months ago but it didn't fix the problem. Maybe now with SP3 installed, these will work.

> Where do I uninstall the WinPkFilter from ?

You can use the command "driverx uninstall" from within NAT32 or you can view the Properties of any network connection in Control Panel and you will then be able to uninstall the driver.

Something is bound to work!

[L Bell]

Update:

(Why does this concern Pale Moon XP or main release users? See about seven paragraphs below)

The author of nat32 believes he has found the problem.

It is an conflict between the older version of WinpkFilter, (3.2.2) and WinXP.

I am preparing to d/l and install the 3.2.3 version. (of winpkfilter)

He has also released a custom version of his Nat32V2 software with XP compatibility. ( I was under the impression that the main release was XP compatible )

I think he did this release just for me, so I hope it doesn't format my hard drives!

Kidding aside, he is aware of how many people are running XP still, and it would be advantageous to sell his product to them.

Why some Pale Moon users might be interested in Nat32?

Nat32 is a sophisticated software program to balance and regulate network connections (load balancing) on a single machine, or network of machines. Unlike the fairly primitive hardware units which perform the same functions (setting maximum speeds on selected nodes), it is software, which is quickly re-configurable.

As a generally 'single' machine user, I was interested in sharing two different internet connections, for increased speed, and 'fallback', if a network connection goes down.

A common example would be:

1. A broadband connection and
2. Any other internet connection.

They could also both be dial-up (as in my case), offering close to old ISDN speeds.

Although one could use the registry entry 'RandomAdapter' (qv on internet) and get a pretty good speed increase (around 37% of the combined speeds) from two connections, this type of software is supposed to give you much more, depending on the number of files being accessed.

In effect, this should make using Pale Moon an even more pleasant experience for those with several internet connections. And redundancy if a connection is down or slow, for other reasons.

Will report the results, if my drives are still alive! LB

[L Bell]

Update:

Success !

The author of NAT32 was correct. Installing the newer version of WinpkFilter solved the 'crash on i/o activity' issue under WinXP .

This is the informational page which includes the link for the 3.2.3 vs of WinpkFilter.

http://ntkernel.com/?Products:Developme ... Filter_Kit.

Am now proudly running Pale Moon 25.5 XP/Atom on this old legacy Dell Dimension 2400, specs as described earlier in the thread.

Will post details and tips on this version and running it under Linux via the Win compatibility layer 'Wine'. That will be in the PM Linux forum. There are minor differences which can be addressed.

LB

[LimboSlam]

Yes hi, I have a Dell Latitude D430 series laptop with Windows Vista (made for XP, compatible w/Vista) ULT SP2 x86 platform; other specs would be a processor of Intel (R) Core(TM)2 CPU U7600 @ 1.20GHz 1.20 GHz, and 200GB installed. So would this be considered legacy hardware?? Would like to know because I'm thinking of trying out PM4XP on this old laptop to see if PM runs better/smoother.

More about my PC: http://www.dell.com/us/dfb/p/latitude-d430/pd

[ikar-us]

Not at all! RAM might be limiting.

You should try the regular PM, I think.

[trava90]

I agree with ikar-us, unless you're running Windows XP (or another NT5 OS), you'd be better off with the mainline Pale Moon.

[L Bell]

Yes hi, I have a Dell Latitude D430 series laptop with Windows Vista (text removed) So would this be considered legacy hardware??

I would not consider this a 'Legacy' machine; it looks like it is about 4 years old. (?)

Since the minimum internal RAM in that D430 is 1MB, you could use the Atom/XP version, which appears to have less memory usage. (This is what I run on all my 1 MB machines)

If your RAM is 1.5 MB or more, the mainline should be fine. I also have run this with no problems at 1MB, but you might have to browse 'lightly', i.e. not too many tabs open, avoid memory hogging websites, etc.

The other factor affecting the speed of Pale Moon's operation is the processor speed. 1.2 GHz is a little slow, but not unusual for laptops and tablets from that era. I have a cheap tablet that has a 1.33 - 1.86 GHz processor, and it is a little sluggish with any version of PM, but not annoyingly so.

Would like to know because I'm thinking of trying out PM4XP on this old laptop to see if PM runs better/smoother.

It is likely any form of PM will run better than the alternatives.

[LimboSlam]

Thanks for the help!

Actually it's 7 years old, said my bro I bought it from, but I've gotten 9-10 years old on some results. Nothing official though. I have just disabled visual effects/styles in Vista for better performance and less memory usage, disabled some of PM animations (as an earlier post suggested), removed or disabled hardcore/feature rich add-ons and replaced them with lighter ones to reduce more memory in PM. I'm also keeping a minim of 5 tops open and I'm using this cool extension to free up unused memory. You can find it here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/free-memory-button/?src=ss.

[L Bell]

Thanks for the help!

You're welcome, and thanks for pointing out the free-memory-button extenson!

And you're right, the Latitude D430 is up to 8 + years old, as Vista Business and the others were released on 30 Jan, 2007. That laptop is a pretty tough machine!

[LimboSlam]

No problem.

Ok, so in your opinion would I benefit from PM4XP or regular PM? You know considering I'm low on memory, I have an aging laptop/software built in the XP era and was naturally made for XP first, is slow than newer laptops (by standards now), and wifi is generally slow/fair connection speed. Plus I disabled all the animations/visual effects in Vista so I won't be able to enjoy any cool effects the regular PM benefits from/uses. Or would I still; does it run in the background???

Oh, something else that I'm confused about is this, "specifically optimized for Intel Atom processors...... not recommended for regular Intel or AMD..... for Vista or higher..... little slower than the normal version of Pale Moon on a non-Atom processor," but it also says this, "you will likely not notice much difference if run on a non-Atom processor..... otherwise it will run just fine" So which is it?

[L Bell]

Ok, so in your opinion would I benefit from PM4XP or regular PM? You know considering I'm low on memory, I have an aging laptop/software built in the XP era and was naturally made for XP first, is slow than newer laptops (by standards now), and wifi is generally slow/fair connection speed.

If you have 1.5 GB or less ram, I would recommend the atom/winxp version, just because it has been posted that it takes less resources. (i.e., it is designed for low ram, low processor speed laptops and netbooks)

The optimization for Atom doesn't seem to slow it down perceptibly on my 1 GB Pentium and AMD systems. (@ 1.8 GHz) It might be running maybe 3 % slower.

The real difference on browsing is the internet connection and server speed, and not necessarily the browser's operational speed. Things like download / upload rate seem to be pretty much independent.

All x86 versions (not 64 bit) run fine on my different platforms. Test the installs and see which works best for your purposes.

[LimboSlam]

Alright, I'm now using PM4XP as it's memory efficient and feels snappier altogether. Hmmmm, I wonder if Windows XP would be a better fit for this old, yet strong laptop?

Once again thanks for the help dude!! Awesome job!

[New Tobin Paradigm]

I wouldn't rely on PM4XP as it is discontinued in 14 days.

[L Bell]

I wouldn't rely on PM4XP as it is discontinued in 14 days.

Does this include the Atom enhanced version?

[New Tobin Paradigm]

I wouldn't rely on PM4XP as it is discontinued in 14 days.

Does this include the Atom enhanced version?

No, the Atom version will remain supported and built indefinitely.

Also before someone else comments about PM4XP ending on the 14th.. It has always been stated on the page since day one..

[...] how long will you provide PM4XP?

As long as it is deemed advantageous to do so we will continue this effort until July 14th, 2015 (Windows Server 2003's End of Life date and the final end to ALL retail NT 5.x era Operating Systems) [...]

[L Bell]

No it will remain supported and built indefinitely.

I should have been more definitive in my question.

Is the Atom / WinXP build going to be continued? (for clarity)