There is a freeware program called Infinite Screen that allows you to do that on any XP/Win7 computer regardless of GPU
http://ynea.futureware.at/cgi-bin/infinite_screen.pl

I have a Samsung N150 that has similar specs and it has limited uses, but they still exist.

CPU: Intel Atom N450 1.66GHz 1/2 core/thread
Memory: 2GB DDR2-667
SSD: Crucial MX100 256GB SATA
OS: Windows 10 Home 64-bit

It originally had a regular old 250GB SATA hard drive, but I figured an SSD couldn't hurt. Well, it didn't hurt, but it didn't help much either. I don't know WHY it's still as slow trying to access files on the system, but it is. But benchmarks show SATAII speeds (~240MB/s reads).

It originally had 1 GB. But even with Windows XP that's simply not enough. So it got upgraded within a month of my purchase in 2009.

It originally had Windows 7 Starter (32-bit). After the SSD upgrade and during the free Windows 10 upgrade period, I cloned the HHD to the SSD, then upgraded Windows, then wiped the drive and did a clean install with 64-bit.

Brightness controls don't work within the Windows interface, but the keyboard buttons DO work thanks to a registry work-around I researched. But plugging in the AC adapter won't suddenly shift the screen to full brightness like it did with Windows 7. You have to manually key the changes in.

This is also the ONLY computer I have with Windows 10 on it where automatic updates are a problem. Because of the nature of the single-core ATOM, background updates bring the whole PC to a virtual grinding halt almost every time I turn it on and am connected to the internet in some way. Once the system has been allowed to fully update, eventually the CPU usage will drop from 99% to fluxuate around 15% and you can suddenly do something with the system other than wait.

I used the system for taking notes in college classes. It's actually WONDERFUL for this purpose. Plenty of storage, enough screen size to be useful and small enough to fit into even cramped bookbags. I wouldn't run Microsoft Office, though. I run LibreOffice or the like. They're smaller and more streamlined for use on a system with limited resources.

Granted, I've gone over the system with a fine-toothed comb in order to trim otherwise unnecessary processes down. I used to use Google Chrome, as it was lighter than IE. Now... even Chrome is heavy on system resources compared to Edge. Hate to say it, but with Windows 10, Edge is pretty much the only web browser that works decently now.

The 1.6 GHz on the CPU doesn't even really bother me. It's the fact that it only has ONE CORE that bothers me. If I could somehow swap out the CPU in this system for one of the much newer quad-core ATOMs. Hell, even the dual-core N570 would have been nicer for anything Post-XP.

Never been impressed with Atom/N series pocessors, I had a 4 core Celeron N I think in one of those really small PC's, had a SSD in it, and all that. Was experimenting with using it as a linux box and gaming on steam from windows "server" type box.

no matter the OS I stuck on there it just seemed god awful slow, like the CPU would just spike every once in a while and hang up for a bit.. I sent it all back. I have used netbooks in the past also and they were awfully slow too. I'm just not a fan of portables except maybe a high end laptop.

Well it's arrived and after a quick alcohol clean its looking good and runs great. However, it won't boot from USB. I made a bootable 2000 (and XP) USB drive and it spends a long time (20 seconds) with a blank screen thinking about something before moving onto the next boot device, the SSD I put in there. If I manually say "boot to USB" from the Post screen it does it too. It does for both XP and 2000 and on two separate sticks (1GB and 8GB). Any idea how I can persuade it to boot from USB?

As an aside I am pleasantly surprised how well it runs Windows 7, which was left on the SSD from an AMD APU build. A minute or two of it installing relevant chipset drivers automatically and it's ready to go, no crashing or anything. It's also relatively snappy in Windows 7 (with nothing really installed). I might clean it of old drivers, disable as much start up stuff I can and see how this dirty W7 goes unless someone clever knows what's up with the USB booting...

Final question - what's the maximum RAM for W2k pro?

Hmmm, which one did you purchase?

It's an emachine 250, one of the older ones - Atom N270 1.6GHz single core w/ HT, 1GB RAM, put an SSD in there...

Also it has one of those mini PCI-E slots in there, is there anything cool I can put in there?

Coincidentally I just spent the day benchmarking one of these things. (1.6 GHz Atom N270 / 1 GB DDR2-533 SDRAM / 5400 RPM HDD / 4 GB ReadyBoost / Intel 945 Express video with external monitor / Windows 8.1)

Cinebench 2003: 85 (1 CPU) / 129 (x CPU)
3DMark03: 575
PCMark05: 1331
PCMark Vantage: 1074
PCMark 7: 447

Update: I put in a SSD and removed the ReadyBoost card and re-ran some of these tests:

PCMark05: 1758
PCMark Vantage: 1354
PCMark 7: 716

Almoststew1990 wrote:

As an aside I am pleasantly surprised how well it runs Windows 7, which was left on the SSD from an AMD APU build. A minute or two of it installing relevant chipset drivers automatically and it's ready to go, no crashing or anything. It's also relatively snappy in Windows 7 (with nothing really installed). I might clean it of old drivers, disable as much start up stuff I can and see how this dirty W7 goes unless someone clever knows what's up with the USB booting...

As long as it is clean it will run Windows 7 relatively fine, but after a few weeks of use and after installing a couple of programs it will be a lot slower. Though still usable, I really prefer Windows XP on these netbooks. 😊

Almoststew1990 wrote:

Final question - what's the maximum RAM for W2k pro?

The maximum amount of supported RAM for Windows 2000 is 4GB. However, your netbook (like most netbooks) only supports up to 2GB of RAM. I'd really recommend you to use Windows XP Service Pack 2 instead though! 😜

I'll get a 2GB stick of RAM then, it's only £3.99 but with Make an offer! Currently playing Half Life 1 😁

I would ideally like to install XP but I can't. A last resort is I dig out my USB CD drive, which requires 2x USB cable connections (one of which will probably have to be connected to a USB power socket thing rather than the netbook). But I am hoping to avoid that.

Almoststew1990 wrote:

Also it has one of those mini PCI-E slots in there, is there anything cool I can put in there?

If it's not a half-length slot, you can look for a Broadcom Crystal HD decoder card, which should help out the IGP with various HD video formats but won't do anything for 3D performance.

If it's a half-length slot... I dunno. ;p

EDIT: correction... some of those Crystal HD cards can be made into half-length cards by unscrewing the metal bracket, so you should be good to go with one of those.

Almoststew1990 wrote:

I'll get a 2GB stick of RAM then, it's only £3.99 but with Make an offer! Currently playing Half Life 1 😁

That's a nice deal; I'd say don't hesitate and go for it and have fun on Half Life! 😀

Almoststew1990 wrote:

I would ideally like to install XP but I can't. A last resort is I dig out my USB CD drive, which requires 2x USB cable connections (one of which will probably have to be connected to a USB power socket thing rather than the netbook). But I am hoping to avoid that.

My USB-CD drive is usually detected by the BIOS as a regular CD-drive, so I don't think you should have any issues with the CD-drive. 😀

Strahssis wrote:

My USB-CD drive is usually detected by the BIOS as a regular CD-drive, so I don't think you should have any issues with the CD-drive. 😀

Yeah I'm sure it will work but I need to dig it out from the back of my cupboard and find a usb power adapter etc. Also I only have a disk of Sp3.

My current plan is booting from an SD card in its SD card reader slot! No idea if the BIOS even sees it as a bootable device, we'll see.

Why should I only go for SP2 not SP3?

SW-SSG wrote:

If it's not a half-length slot, you can look for a Broadcom Crystal HD decoder card, which should help out the IGP with various HD video formats but won't do anything for 3D performance.

If it's a half-length slot... I dunno. ;p

EDIT: correction... some of those Crystal HD cards can be made into half-length cards by unscrewing the metal bracket, so you should be good to go with one of those.

That looks interesting, I'm pretty sure it'sthis size. This is full size right?

I'm wondering what file system you used on the USB sticks. Firstly, to be able to boot from the USB stick, it really should be set to FAT32. Anything else (like NTFS) might cause it to hang like you describe. Also, make absolutely sure it was formatted to BOOT from it, not just a blank format. The file system would include pointers to boot files that way.

I was able to create a bootable USB installer for Windows 10 and it works fine, though it was a few years ago and I don't exactly remember every detail of how I got it to work. Because for a while there, it would boot into the Windows 10 install program, then it quite literally couldn't find the very USB it just booted from and would fail to install Windows 10.

Almoststew1990 wrote:

Yeah I'm sure it will work but I need to dig it out from the back of my cupboard and find a usb power adapter etc. Also I only h […]
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Strahssis wrote:

My USB-CD drive is usually detected by the BIOS as a regular CD-drive, so I don't think you should have any issues with the CD-drive. 😀

Yeah I'm sure it will work but I need to dig it out from the back of my cupboard and find a usb power adapter etc. Also I only have a disk of Sp3.

My current plan is booting from an SD card in its SD card reader slot! No idea if the BIOS even sees it as a bootable device, we'll see.

Why should I only go for SP2 not SP3?

Service Pack 2 offers better compatibility with older software and games for as far as I know. If you like you can easily find a clean Windows XP ISO online and if you really can't find it, I can always rip my CD and send it to you via WeTransfer, just let me know. I'm not 100% sure if my CD is in English or Dutch though. 😜

Almoststew1990 wrote:

That looks interesting, I'm pretty sure it'sthis size. This is full size right?

Correct, and there are these ones that can be converted to half-length. I don't know if your netbook has the full- or half-length slot (I can't find any photos...).

Btw, I've personally never needed to attach an AC adapter to a USB optical drive when using one with a netbook... as long as the netbook's AC adapter and both of the drive's USB connectors are in, there shouldn't be any problems.

I nabbed a USB stick from work and used a different flashing tool, and finally, it is booting from USB. I suspect the culprit was Rufus using NTFS (regardless of USB stick size). Now I can put XP on it 😀

I'm happy to hear that; good luck and let us know if everything installed fine! 😀