Chrome on Windows 2000

More than once I’ve noted that the main issue with using older hardware is trying to use modern browsers. And yeah, that usually comes up when I’m writing about my ThinkPad 600E with its Pentium 2.

Earlier this week I wrote about how well Puppy Linux ran on it. Then I put Windows 2000 Pro on it (again!). And as always, everything I loaded and ran was just fine until I tried Firefox and Web 2.0 sites.

If you use Twitter’s web site, you know that it counts down from 140 characters as you type. Boy, that just kills performance – and makes it take forever to type a sentence! Other Javascript heavy sites had similar issues. Things just crawled. I decided to find a different browser.

How about Google’s Chrome? I’ve been impressed at how fast it runs on my other machines. I visited the site and learned that Windows 2000 isn’t supported… Fortunately, a web search turned up a few options. I had the most luck with this “works with my method” site.

Initially it didn’t work with his method, but an uninstall and re-try seemed to get it going. Well mostly. First launch everything was cool. Browser ran fast and I was elated. Hit all the Web 2.0 sites and chortled with glee at the performance. Then I closed the browser. Next time I re-opened Chrome it crashed. Repeatedly.

Uninstalled and re-ran the “method” but same problem. Uninstalled, visited:
C:\Documents and Settings\myname\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data
and deleted everything. Next install worked, but closing and relaunching caused same issue. So I didn’t uninstall, just cleared the User Data again. Started back up and has worked since through many stops and starts. Weird, I know… but there ya go.

[and now while writing this article it started crashing on launch again. Clearing User Data hasn’t worked yet… rebooting while I write…]

Only other issue I’ve seen is a couple times I’ve had a purple address bar when first starting. Disconcerting, to say the least. However, a close and re-launch and everything is fine.

If I can stabilize this a bit it will be just the ticket. Remember my twitter example from above? Total non-issue when running Chrome on the same machine. It really makes a huge difference in usability.

If I can just stabilize it a bit…

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