Hardware problems when installing XP ..
Window 8 has been another huge dud for Microsoft so it appears they are leaning on hardware manufacturers to indicate that their new products will not support XP – which isn’t true in a lot of cases. Example: I just built a new system using AMD’s latest FM2 CPU (very fast with great graphics included). When I started the system I was surprised to find that XP would not install on the hard drive, but would start an installation from the DVD drive but would display a blue screen trying to access the hard drive; even though the disk was recognized as being there by the motherboard’s BIOS. I have literally built over 400 systems over the last 30 years and this was my first time when a functioning system would not complete an OS installation.
The board was produced by ASRock and is a new ITX sized motherboard. To make a very long story short, this is what I found out from an industry source: In the BIOS, the SATA settings are being set at the factory so that a hard drive will not be readily accessed by XP. However, by changing the SATA setting to “IDE” in the BIOS the board will function correctly. Also, he stated that if you look hard enough in the board manufacturer’s specification list you will see that Vista, Win7 and Win 8 are listed as being supported – no XP shown. And this information will normally not be seen on a reseller’s website for a lot of new boards.
When Vista came out, I tried a couple versions and quickly found it was far worse than XP. Win7 and XP are fairly close but changing key settings under Win7 is nearly impossible in some areas. All Win7 gives you in reality is a better desktop – and that’s about all. I’ve built gaming systems for people that used Win7 originally; but all users have asked to have XP installed instead. Windows 8: Another Microsoft disaster; with 8.1 seemingly a desktop tweaking of 8.0 only.
I realize that at some point Microsoft will squeeze manufactures hard enough that I will have to leave XP behind. But where to go? I do a lot of video conversions (both to DVD and to Blu-Ray) and have a LOT of expensive software that runs under my modified versions of XP (thankfully all software runs great with zero problems). Unless there is some form of concentrated effort by users to keep XP alive I guess the future holds some form of Linux for me. I have friends that also do video work using Linux and their results (speed especially) is far better than Windows. Apple video software is in the dark ages yet so that avenue is out. What to do???????????
Window 8 has been another huge dud for Microsoft so it appears they are leaning on hardware manufacturers to indicate that their new products will not support XP – which isn’t true in a lot of cases. Example: I just built a new system using AMD’s latest FM2 CPU (very fast with great graphics included). When I started the system I was surprised to find that XP would not install on the hard drive, but would start an installation from the DVD drive but would display a blue screen trying to access the hard drive; even though the disk was recognized as being there by the motherboard’s BIOS. I have literally built over 400 systems over the last 30 years and this was my first time when a functioning system would not complete an OS installation.
The board was produced by ASRock and is a new ITX sized motherboard. To make a very long story short, this is what I found out from an industry source: In the BIOS, the SATA settings are being set at the factory so that a hard drive will not be readily accessed by XP. However, by changing the SATA setting to “IDE” in the BIOS the board will function correctly. Also, he stated that if you look hard enough in the board manufacturer’s specification list you will see that Vista, Win7 and Win 8 are listed as being supported – no XP shown. And this information will normally not be seen on a reseller’s website for a lot of new boards.
When Vista came out, I tried a couple versions and quickly found it was far worse than XP. Win7 and XP are fairly close but changing key settings under Win7 is nearly impossible in some areas. All Win7 gives you in reality is a better desktop – and that’s about all. I’ve built gaming systems for people that used Win7 originally; but all users have asked to have XP installed instead. Windows 8: Another Microsoft disaster; with 8.1 seemingly a desktop tweaking of 8.0 only.
I realize that at some point Microsoft will squeeze manufactures hard enough that I will have to leave XP behind. But where to go? I do a lot of video conversions (both to DVD and to Blu-Ray) and have a LOT of expensive software that runs under my modified versions of XP (thankfully all software runs great with zero problems). Unless there is some form of concentrated effort by users to keep XP alive I guess the future holds some form of Linux for me. I have friends that also do video work using Linux and their results (speed especially) is far better than Windows. Apple video software is in the dark ages yet so that avenue is out. What to do???????????