How we Built a Basic Home Server with an ancient PC

7 days ago we were given an 11-year-old PC from a neighbour. We then were left thinking of the things that we could use this PC for. We ended up turning it into a Home Server for Family Media and Documents. Here's our story.

The Ancient PC we are referring to is a Compaq Presario SR1619UK. (the same PC as in the above image). Originally shipped with Windows XP and a 32-bit processor.

The first thing we tried to install on the PC was Linux. But no Linux distribution would seem to work. Ubuntu, Fedora or CentOS. Even if it did work, it was still slow and bearly usable.

FreeNAS was another option, however, it requires 8GB of Memory which we don't have so there goes that.

Our last option, trusty old Windows. We found that the highest OS it would run was Windows 7 so we installed that and shared out all the
relevant folders.

The only thing left to tackle is how we are going to manage it when we move it up to the loft. We couldn't use RDP because we were using Home Premium so we settled with RealVNC.

Software-wise, there's nothing much we could install because it doesn't like Plex or Kodi and doesn't like Antivirus software either. This also means that the machine has to stay offline when it's not needed for updates.