Windows XP...? In 2019!!!? Ideas?

[Magic Carpet]

This board has a legacy PCI slot for your needs if your building a cost efficient, modern computer today.

Possible PCI slot uses:
* Legacy but still quality sound cards with mic boosters
* Legacy video cards like 3dfx Voodoo 1/2/3/5 graphics series
* Cheap POST card for troubleshooting purposes
* Etc

 

[TwoWings]

What is your chipset? If it’s Intel, check this guide. Questions shoot later.

AMD Bolton chipset

I have seen that thread before, it's an epic 72 pages read
In short... I need to unpack my XP, put in drivers in a folder, pack to an iso and find an ancient CD-R and burn?

 

[Insert_Nickname]

So it's just a piece of software that refused to work in an XP VM?

Apparently. That's what you get for going custom, with the developer long out of business, and no access to source code. Unfortunately it was pretty common to do so back then here.

There is a 64 bit driver for the V2, no need to use “legacy” w10 32bit 😎

Right. Now I need to dig out my old Voodoo.

Windows XP was a beaut in customization, you could even assign/rename system folders to your liking and allocate them to different drives. A lot of that was taken away in newer os revisions, for the sake of security. I remember having lots of SIF files for that purpose alone on a floppy disk. That was handy, you could initiate custom/unattended installation at will. Nowadays, I have multiple usb pen drives instead. Not sure which method I have prefered more.

Indeed. But still liked 2000 better.

Banshee had amazing 2D output quality for its time, that rivaled Matrox and surpassed Nvidia in some cases, and that is worth something these days 😉

It really was a great 2D card, with more then acceptable 3D performance.

In my experience, the quality of VGA signal can greatly vary on higher resolutions. Even card to card implementation can vary greatly. Some of my older Kepler and GCN 1.0 cards didn’t have VGA signal done right (there was lots of interference even at 1280x1024). And it wasn’t the cable. With digital you get far more consistent results, so it’s always a good idea to upgrade your monitor to avoid running into those issues. Maxwell was the last nvidia series to support native VGA output.

RAMDAC quality matters quite a bit with regards to VGA signal quality. Hence the "Extreme" Graphics comment, a lot of manufacturers cheaped out on it, so output quality suffered.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

In short... I need to unpack my XP, put in drivers in a folder, pack to an iso and find an ancient CD-R and burn?

If you can still find it nLite speeds up slipstreaming considerably. Very user friendly too.

But yeah, you'll need some kind of burner and CD-R.

 

[mikeymikec]

Apparently. That's what you get for going custom, with the developer long out of business, and no access to source code. Unfortunately it was pretty common to do so back then here.

Weird, I wonder how badly a developer has to mess up before applications-level software won't work in a VM. I'm a little surprised that it ended up working on another PC, after all, just be glad they didn't do something completely crazy like tie their software to some one-manufacturer-only feature and so only one graphics card / driver version works with it.

 

[Ajay]

If you can still find it nLite speeds up slipstreaming considerably. Very user friendly too.

But yeah, you'll need some kind of burner and CD-R.

Man, that little program was a life saver!

 

[blckgrffn]

Until last year I was running Windows 98 in a VM for my Dad to keep his farm books on. Same bit, it was Farm Bureau software and when they found out we were still using it a decade after they stopped supporting it (this was like 2010?) they gave us all the installer files and all the possible license keys (there were five! lol) and told us good luck.

Finally (2 years ago?), we couldn't get anything to work on the Internet due to SSL changes and I figured out... virtual floppy disks. He'd print to Adobe 1.something for PDFs and put them on the floppies to get to the main system so he could email them.

Not that long ago he was pdf'ing them, emailing himself the PDF files, printing them, and then FAXING them to his accountant. I was like WHAT ARE YOU DOING and I guess the accountant was really happy to get the PDF files after that

Did you try to P2V the working XP instance ever? I mean, you are out nothing if it doesn't work.

I want to say that W98 SCREAMED on a 5930k, 128MB of memory and NVME storage. It's like it knew you were clicking before you clicked!

 

[TwoWings]

videocards

Magic, do you think i at least can run the XP-setup on the RX 460 with the default win driver? So can i do a videocard swap if the AHCI seems to work.

 

[mxnerd]

Some old XP program probably can run on Linux + WINE

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=linux+%2B+wine

 

[blckgrffn]

Pascal isn’t supported in Windows XP. See if you can find GeForce 750 Ti 2GB, that card is quite power efficient and should be quiet in most cases. GeForce 950/960 are also suitable but likely more expensive, but some of the models have a stop fan feature, which gives you silence in low demanding tasks like browsing.

What is your chipset? If it’s Intel, check this guide. Questions shoot later.

Heck, get any older Quadro video card. A K420 is like $30 even now and has DP and DVI and came out long ago. It would really well in a dual boot scenario as well.

Splurge on K4000 and get a 3GB beast card that was $1,200 new. Wooo! A savvy buyer can get one under/around $70.

Given the current insanity I just shipped a K4000 (Kepler, like GTX 650 Ti) that was well tested in my main PC in my sisters refresh - she basically uses Adobe apps, does the web and maybe plays a rare game. It's basically perfect for that scenario.

Of course to replace it I tried to order a K2200 (first gen Maxwell, like 750 Ti, 4GB) for ~$120, seller shipped me a K2000 (Back to Kepler, 2GB, value $60). Huge difference. I just had an offer accepted for an M2000 (Maxwell 2nd gen, GTX 950) so I am moving up to even newer Maxwell.

Too late I realized a P620 (Pascal, GTX 1050) might be nearly the same performance wise and be $40 cheaper. Also, newer in every sense.

Oops. It's hard to navigate the Quadro maze, I am constantly looking to Wikipedia.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Did you try to P2V the working XP instance ever? I mean, you are out nothing if it doesn't work.

That's where I started. Tried both VirtualBox and VMware. I don't have any idea why it wouldn't work in a VM, it's not as if an application that old would know it's being virtualized. I think.

I can only assume there is some sort of hardcoded check or assumption somewhere that's interfering, but why I have no idea.

Obligatory xkcd:

 

[CP5670]

I used to dual-boot XP until just a few years ago for a few old games. It worked nicely on a Z97/4790K/GTX 980 setup, but I wasn't using it much and removed it eventually. I used the "XP black edition" package with AHCI and some other drivers preloaded. I still keep a VMware XP VM around and it's occasionally useful.

 

[blckgrffn]

Thinking on this, and I am sure you can get around it somehow, but I needed to be running IE6 or whatever for the old PBX system out our Church that I migrated us away from. I needed IE6 as it was the only browser that would work with the control panel to verify the number of extensions, call routing, etc. so I could get it all ported to the new system.

On topic:

XP can't be activated anymore because they took down the activation servers. So I spent all this time getting a VM up and running and doing some network shenanigans to get it on the right vlan and stuff then it died. I was fairly frustrated at the time, but the PBX is permanently powered off now so I triumphed in the end

And off topic:

I went live on the cloud PBX last March, replacing all the phones on a Wednesday night during a Lent service just days before lockdown. This helped the Church staff because our vendor was able to ship them phones to their houses that logged into the PBX to make it seamless for them to take calls at home or use softphones and that let them keep working and interacting with the congregation "like normal" when it was anything but normal.

I was extremely lucky. They give me a lot of credit, but I'd taken months to get the project from inception to completion so I was super relieved that despite my slow walking I had beat some deadline I didn't know existed.

About the VM:

Super weird. I probably would have started adding every legacy device under the sun that VMware would let me add - passing through motherboard resources, etc. But when you've got zero developer support and some arbitrary issue not allowing it to work I completely understand when the easier path is really to bypass that. VM's are just so elegant, they are a huge part of my IT background and I always default to them. I don't think across hundreds of servers I've P2V'd I've ever had a real failure - yet all my efforts were with commercially supported apps. We never did virtualize those Novell servers

 

[Insert_Nickname]

XP can't be activated anymore because they took down the activation servers. So I spent all this time getting a VM up and running and doing some network shenanigans to get it on the right vlan and stuff then it died. I was fairly frustrated at the time, but the PBX is permanently powered off now so I triumphed in the end

I think I heard MS phone activation is still up?

If you need XP again, you could try to track down a volume licence key and install media. Volume installs don't require activation. I don't think MS cares too much about proper XP licencing anymore, and you have a valid key after all.

 

[mxnerd]

If all you need is IE

And you probably can run on Windows 10 Linux Subsystem, did not try it though.

Wine on Windows lets you run Windows apps... on Windows (through Windows Subsystem for Linux) - Liliputing

Wine on Windows lets you run Windows apps... on Windows (through Windows Subsystem for Linux)

liliputing.com

==

OK, I tried it myself on my Linux Mint VM. Installed IE 6.0.

Install WINE (4, 5 or 6) first. https://www.winehq.org

Then PlayonLinux.

PlayonLinux will download the package, fonts, dll files for you. Might take a while.

PlayonLinux let you install non-listed apps too. Whether it will work is another story.

 

[7beauties]

Hi all.

Lets just say I've managed to land myself in a pickle. A rather unusual requirement has cropped up (see title), so I thought to ask on the forum. No, this isn't a joke thread.

Unfortunately, I can't really provide too many specifics due to outside factors. Think old custom program can't run on newer and can't be updated/replaced economically (at least not yet), and you're not far off. At least there is an installer, that works. So that's something.

I need a box that can run XP on as modern a platform as possible. A VM is unfortunately out of the question in this case. The application doesn't need tremendous performance, mostly raw CPU performance. More would be better of course, but within limits. As in small core AMD/Intel CPUs are likely out of the question.

From what I can find out, the AMD A68H chipset still has XP drivers, so I'm thinking along those lines coupled with an Athlon 845 or similar. With that I'm going to need some sort of external GPU for graphics, something like the GT710 / 730 still has XP drivers available from what I can find on NVs website. Kaveri might be an option? Graphics performance is completely unimportant.

It will properbly have to be a custom box, since the requirement includes some reliability. Or at least so I can at least use a high quality PSU replacement.

Does anyone have practical experience with the FM2(+) platform with XP? Or any other ideas?

I should mention it wont be connected at all to any sort of network (more-or-less obviously)...

Friend, in no way am I an expert, but Microsoft discontinued support for XP years ago. XP hasn't had updates available for it in all that time and could be vulnerable to hacks. The people you're doing this for probably could afford a barebones Win 10 system if they don't play games. Oh, btw, every IT person I know disparaged Win Millennial and Vista. I wish I knew more to answer expertly but it seems like you're trying to outfit a vintage Volkswagon Beetle with a catalytic converter, and why the heck for?

 

[Insert_Nickname]

If all you need is IE

And you probably can run on Windows 10 Linux Subsystem, did not try it though.

It's somewhat ironic that you can get better backwards compatibility using WINE under Linux then using newer Windows, isn't it? (where is the penguin emoji when you need it?)

Friend, in no way am I an expert, but Microsoft discontinued support for XP years ago. XP hasn't had updates available for it in all that time and could be vulnerable to hacks. The people you're doing this for probably could afford a barebones Win 10 system if they don't play games. Oh, btw, every IT person I know disparaged Win Millennial and Vista. I wish I knew more to answer expertly but it seems like you're trying to outfit a vintage Volkswagon Beetle with a catalytic converter, and why the heck for?

This was two years ago.

Affording was never the problem. I mean, they could both afford my services, and a custom built box. Which isn't cheap when I do it BTW, since I'm on the hook for support.

The problem is when you have a business that rely on such old software, which you just can't easily replace with an off-the-shelf system. Data migration and developer time isn't free either. This was actually the cheapest option available.

-------

...and you can say that double for Windows ME. Vista isn't half bad when patched to SP2 w/ platform update. SP3 was known as "Windows 7"...

 

[Magic Carpet]

Magic, do you think i at least can run the XP-setup on the RX 460 with the default win driver?

Of course, you can. You will get a picture, but its going to have a generic VGA driver without any acceleration. It's going to be slow, but you can do basic things. RX 460 doesn't have a Windows XP driver, unfortunately. But you can have Windows XP set up and ready while you wait for a different card.

So can i do a videocard swap if the AHCI seems to work.

This driver will likely work in your setup. I'd try the 6.1.3.35 version first.

If you want to get XP installed with one of the attached drivers, there is no need to import the Win-RAID CA Certificate. Just integrate the related driver into the XP image by using a tool like nLite.

It's probably possible to install Windows XP from a usb pen drive, but that's not common, should be a great amount of pain, and I've never done it. I'd rather get a cheap CD/DVD burner just for that purpose. But, you can of course totally ignore my advice, go ahead and try. Impossible is nothing.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

It's probably possible to install Windows XP from a usb pen drive, but that's not common, should be a great amount of pain, and I've never done it.

It's possible, but there are a lot of hoops to jump through, since XP can't handle USB storage during install. Unlike Vista+ install here is literal. You're not just putting a prepared image onto disk like later windows.

I wonder if it's possible to setup an image in a virtual machine, and move it to a "real" machine? Should be easy to add required drivers. Now I got a fun little project to try out on my XPBOX, when I have time to spare...

 

[TwoWings]

Hi Guys!

Is this driver for Asus P7P55D-EVO a AHCI-driver? It says only SATA

"JMicron JMB36X(JMB363.JMB322) Controller Driver V1.17.50.2 for Windows 32/64bit XP & 32/64bit Vista.(WHQL) "

P7P55D EVO - Support

www.asus.com

Thank's!

 

[Magic Carpet]

Yes. Point nLite to this folder below.

JMB36X_V117502_XpVistaWin7.zip\JMB36X_V117502_XpVistaWin7\Driver\AHCI\Disk\Floppy32

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Sorry for the thread necromancy. Just to let people know.

Guess what. I was just in touch with the client. They've managed to replace the system. I guess miracles still happen on occasion.

The built system has worked flawlessly.

 

[tcsenter]

Totally would have given them Grade A/B refurbed business desktop from Lenovo, HP, Dell (from reputable seller). e.g.

Lenovo ThinkCentre M82/M92 (Intel LGA 1155 up to 80W Sandy and Ivy Bridge, w/2 PCI slots)
Dell Optiplex 3010 (Intel LGA 1155 up to 80W Sandy and Ivy Bridge, NO PCI slot)

Most business desktops from major OEMs up to 2013 were offered with and officially supported XP, have drivers available for download. Heck, at the prices for Grade A/B refurbs, I would get them TWO, prepare them identically, so they can stow one away as a spare/backup.

Things you really need to watch out for with refurbs are CMOS battery, original cooling fans and spinny hard disks (and outdated firmware/BIOS). Replacing CMOS batt and fans is not costly. And re-apply TIM to the CPU heatspreader, it will be dried out/dessicated on any system older than a few years. But to each his own....

 

[TwoWings]

Hi Guys!
What do you think of this solution?

PC with Amd motherboard:
XP HDD, HD7000 internal GPU, dvi cable ---> monitor
Win 10 SSD, 1660s PCI-e GPU, hdmi cable ---> same monitor

Will it work or does the double cables from one PC starts trouble?
Thank's for any help!

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Hi Guys!
What do you think of this solution?

PC with Amd motherboard:
XP HDD, HD7000 internal GPU, dvi cable ---> monitor
Win 10 SSD, 1660s PCI-e GPU, hdmi cable ---> same monitor

Will it work or does the double cables from one PC starts trouble?
Thank's for any help!

It should work. At worst, you might have to manually switch between onboard and PCIE being initialized in the UEFI. Provided there are no other compatibility issues with XP on your hardware.