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I have an old desktop, laptop and a wireless router (Belkin).

My desktop's specifications are

  1. 512 MB RAM :p
  2. 320 GB Harddisk
  3. OS: Windows XP

I would like to use my desktop as a home server and use it to

  1. Host my web page (local)
  2. Store some files on it

Can that be done on Windows XP Home edition?

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to those voting to close: this is about consumer-end setups, home networking, and home server setups. please do not migrate this to Server Fault. – quack quixote Jun 21 '10 at 4:59
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Is there any reason not to use Linux instead of Windows XP? – BloodPhilia Jun 21 '10 at 18:58
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is think XP is more user friendly :p – blackjack Jun 22 '10 at 6:07
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XP is not a Server OS tho. Plus using linux the user could learn a bit more, and have less headaches like with a windows server (hotfixes/reboots, fragmentation, etc and so on). – Jakub Jul 30 '10 at 17:48
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4 Answers

up vote 5 down vote

Apache is your best bet. Any reason why you wouldn't want to try Ubuntu Linux? It is very simple and there are tons of step-by-step instructions online for setting up a web server with Ubuntu.

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+agreed... I really think Ubuntu would be a better way to go. Especially with the 512MB of RAM. And for the love of all that is holy, do not even think about using IIS :) – Robert S Ciaccio Jul 30 '10 at 15:27
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up vote 3 down vote

Yes, you can use Apache as a web server (or may be wampserver if you need mysql/php) and you can store file and share them with windows sharing

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up vote 1 down vote

I have a similar setup w/ XP Pro sharing a printer and a USB drive, which are accessed from 2 laptops. I have lots of problems with XP "forgetting" which IDs can access those shared resources. I'm getting tired of rebuilding the shares because of XP's idiosyncrasies. I will be replacing XP with Linux soon (probably Ubuntu.)

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up vote 0 down vote

try nginx, lighter than apache

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