Dear diehard XP peeps from a diehard 7 peep

S

Se7en

sup XP peeps?

I was a diehard XP OG who used XP from ages 11-24. I loved it from the day it came out, we were inseparable, I used it for practically my entire childhood. Vista disgusted me, I swore to never upgrade.

Windows 7 was alright but I hated how it wasn't as customizable as XP and how it still offered less control to the user, so I hung on tight. Then in 2014 I finally forced myself to upgrade because I just got my first SSD and XP did not support TRIM. I could live without a lot of things but I hated HDDs with a passion so I relented - but not without customizing my 7 box to look exactly like XP.

Now I am in the same situation with Windows 7 where I struggled to get it to work on the new, modern PC I bought. I don't want Windows 10 which is littered with spyware and all that bullshit telemetry. I have zero reason to use it, but my next upgrade might just force me to as drivers won't exist for 7.

That's what brings me here. I am wondering how are you diehard XP fans faring? Is your OS working on modern hardware? How do you get all the drivers? What keeps you holding onto your favorite OS so tenaciously? I'm curious to hear your stories and motivation for sticking to XP.

I have no idea where I'm at here, because among normies I am an oldschool out of touch laggard. So it feels awkward to now be on the other side of the fence. I'm the most tenacious fucker I know, so I'm curious how y'all perceive me. Am I a slightly more intelligent normie for sticking to 7 rather than the mess known as 10/11, but still a traitor for abandoning XP?
 
Well, Im still on XP (actually, 2003) because its last OS I can customize and even hack abit myself. I also have all my tools there too. I need control :)

New hardware? Impossible. Luicky, I dont need powerfull HW for what I do. My current
desktop is HP 8200 and 2003 works very well on it. If it will start dying, I have spare one.

Future doesnt look bright tho. We have retro movements, but they are niche.
New HW is shit, but as far I can buy old stuff from scrapyards its ok. Not sure what I will do 10 years into future tho. Im trying to not worry about it too much.
 
So none of you can make it work on modern hardware and you only hang on because you're too old to give a damn? Disappointing.

Cornermuse, my dad isn't close to 77 but he's so trapped in the past that he thinks CDs and walkmans are modern, why get stuck specifically with XP?
 
I also have mypal (portable) on my computer. It is setup so's saving stuff gets everything saved to the same place as where firefox saves it. A lot of times I must follow a link that some sites have determined they can't show, thanks to bILL Satan gATES, , ,
Anywayz, copy link from FF bar & paste to M-P & walla!
I have "7" & "10" on at least 2 comps & have not used either one for 'years'.
I use Linux Mint quite a bit.
Cars? I will stick with "eternal" combustion engines!! (they aint goin' away!)
 
Se7en said:
So none of you can make it work on modern hardware and you only hang on because you're too old to give a damn? Disappointing.
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Too busy. It was much easier to get Windows XP software/games working on modern Windows than to get new software/games working on Windows XP. I have way too many other hobbies and interests.
 
I've been wondering too about the hardware aspect, because no matter what it'll need to be compatible when that goes bust and needs replacements. [+ 64-bit is needed to go above 4GB RAM.]
But there is one way I know. Install WinXP [or 7] via a virtual machine. I tried VMware and some other, fumbled around and saw it could work. With access to the same drives, but it was a bit complicated to set up. Had to screenshoot the whole learning process.
As for my current spec - I have XP on my other (main) PC, running hardware mostly from last decade like GA-970-DS3 chipset, SB Live 24-Bit, 4 GB ram and NVIDIA GTX 560..
There's also the option to buy used gear. Replaced my graphic card with a similar unit and it worked well.
 
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The problem with VMs is they lag and don't feel smooth at all. I did hear of hypervisors which are basically bare-metal VMs but never tried one so not sure if those would run more smoothly with less overhead.

You can use PAE to have up to 64 GB of RAM on a 32-bit system, I don't even have half of that kind of RAM right now in 2024.

The latest hardware is a huge problem for Windows 7 right now, let alone XP. But even if it wasn't, the next problem becomes software compatibility. What if you wanna use the next best thing which only works on the latest OS?

The solution may indeed be a nifty Linux distro with an XP shell.

Actually, XP's source code was leaked a few years ago so someone could make an open-source Windows fork as a competitor to Linux, but I doubt it would go anywhere.
 
VMs seemed smooth enough for me, but I didn't test/run much demanding stuff on it so maybe. [Though I remember you could allocate more memory and processing in the VM configs.]
PAE.. Never heard of it. Up to 64 GB, really? Sounds insane!

For using newer, next-best programs I prefer a secondary computer with newer OS, to spare the old machine from all that. I also use it for internet tasks.

Funny, I only read it at reddit just a few minutes ago about source code leak. Sounds kinda awesome, but that would also give shady people easier options to exploit more holes in it. And Windows pro'ly won't allow people to create user-made patches.
 
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What VM program do you use?

The logical conclusion of using the latest OS to run trendy programs is to abandon the older OS altogether. First you will need the latest Windows to run one thing, then two, then ten and then you'll end up with a laundry list of things you can't do on XP anymore.

Yeah, I don't see a Windows spinoff materializing, even without the legal obstacles. Linux still only has a 5% market share after 30 years of development.
 
There's lots of info on this site and MSFN about the latest versions of hardware and software to still work on XP. I'm using VMware 10.7 on my XP64 host OS, I have even run Android and Win10 AME as guest OSes. The last motherboard I bought was a Gigabyte that includes hardware drivers from XP (including x64) to Win11, I'm quite happy with them. I'm currently in the process of installing OneCoreAPI to run Firefox 115 (I used to run in a Tiny7 VM in Unity mode) alongside Mypal 68 that my bank is bitching about.
 
cleverscreenname said:
The last motherboard I bought was a Gigabyte that includes hardware drivers from XP (including x64)
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Which mobo is that?
I bought a gigabyte board a few years back which needed a 'usb floppy drive' to install XP drivers(?) (from install disk).
It worked allright but I lost interest, , ,
Dragged it out! its a gigabyte F2A88X-D3H
 
I still have a Windows 98 computer running ! LOL But just for the games. It's not connected to the internet at all.
 
Hilarious, I've got a Gigabyte F2A88XM-D3H too! But I was speaking of my more recently bought GigabyteAM1M-S2H.

Yeah, any computer in AHCI/SATA mode is going to fail an XP install unless you F6 floppy or slipstream the drivers into the cd, which is very easy to do with the program nLite. Or just change it to IDE mode in the bios and forget about it, it's really not much slower (just less efficient if you access multiple drives simultaneously).

To really get ya covered, download all the driverpacks and slipstream them into a Windows dvd, and never have to install drivers on any computer lol.
 
boss1968 said:
I still have a Windows 98 computer running ! LOL But just for the games. It's not connected to the internet at all.
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I saw some Retro Computing website where they're accomplishing pretty astonishing stuff with Win98! Such as running 98 on modern machines like my AMD APU quad core with 2gb memory and SATA/AHCI! They say Firefox 3.0 runs on it, and newer versions with the KernelEx addon (similar to OneCoreAPI for XP) Most of this is made possible by the late Rudolph Loew's patches.
 
cleverscreenname said:
I saw some Retro Computing website where they're accomplishing pretty astonishing stuff with Win98! Such as running 98 on modern machines like my AMD APU quad core with 2gb memory and SATA/AHCI! They say Firefox 3.0 runs on it, and newer versions with the KernelEx addon (similar to OneCoreAPI for XP) Most of this is made possible by the late Rudolph Loew's patches.
Click to expand...

The real funny thing is, many years ago, when I was having probs with my 98, my (at the time) tech guy said he could either fix my 98 setup, or upgrade me to XP. He said I would love XP better than 98 ! I said, 'No,no no ! I LOVE my 98 ! I would never part with it !' LOL So he fixed my 98. But, as a bonus, he also showed me how XP ran on his setup, and long story short : I have 98 on one computer and XP on another. I stayed true, and did not part with my 98, BUT I just had to get XP, too ! :) The 2 best OS' Windows ever had !
 
I mostly use 7/8, but I like to experiment. I've gotten XP to run on a 5950X natively.

XP 5950X NVMe.jpg


I think the only real big issues long term would be GPU limitations (980Ti/M6000, maybe 290X idk max for XP, 3090 Ti/A6000 or 6950X for 7) and maybe legacy boot potentially getting killed in the future. But otherwise it should still be doable to get booting and mostly working with current modded drivers.
 
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