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Windows XP in 2022

I had an old HP Windows 7(10) PC (circa 2009/10) that had a dead hard drive. Put an SSD in and installed XP Pro because, well, it's better. It was decent with Win7, so-so with 10. But badass at XP. I looked into the virtual XP and ROMS, but nothing beats real hardware IMO. I just wish I kept my games from 20+ years ago. I have very few left.

Intel Pentium E5300 64-bit Dual Core CPU @ 2.6GHz
6GB RAM(3.5GB usable due to XP being 32-bit🫤)
500GB SATA SSD boot drive(Tweaks made to ensure longer SSD life)
1TB HDD internal storage drive
Nvidia 9600GT 512MB


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Dr.Morris79

Member
I had an old HP Windows 7(10) PC (circa 2009/10) that had a dead hard drive. Put an SSD in and installed XP Pro because, well, it's better. It was decent with Win7, so-so with 10. But badass at XP. I looked into the virtual XP and ROMS, but nothing beats real hardware IMO. I just wish I kept my games from 20+ years ago. I have very few left.

Intel Pentium E5300 64-bit Dual Core CPU @ 2.6GHz
6GB RAM(3.5GB usable due to XP being 32-bit🫤)
500GB SATA SSD boot drive(Tweaks made to ensure longer SSD life)
1TB HDD internal storage drive
Nvidia 9600GT 512MB


7pbgC7E.jpg
Jnvpsyt.jpg
08fRK00.jpg
tJVsQjV.jpg
rJGrVEO.jpg
3ZpQq8y.jpg
v6Ob6za.jpg
l4PJi9R.jpg
0YQOd7H.jpg
j4WkjAF.jpg
y1taNRS.jpg
XP was an excellent, a pain in the fucking arse but it pissed over the previous itetations of Windows, my best and worst days was on XP.

A blue screen nightmare of joy.
 

Laptop1991

Member
It was a great OS, i used it daily throughout the noughties until 2009 then win 7, keep using it, why not, many many games i played on XP.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
XP was better than 98. But XP still crashed a lot on my computers back then.

Windows 7 was rock solid. It looks dated and boring, but if my new laptop I got in 2019 still had Win 7 installed on it instead of Win 10, I'd have no problem with it. Win 10 took getting used to and works fine. But Win 7 was an awesome OS.
 

alf717

Member
I was on the fence about it. But I remembered there were a ton of compatibility issues with a lot of programs.
I used my XP x64 setup mainly for gaming. I don't remember having any issues with XP 64-bit. I suppose you could always dual boot. I always would grab the royale theme which was used with XP Media Center Edition and made it my main theme.
 
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Xp is cool, but all of these can be played on win11 and run even better.
Except for Dos games.
Nothing beats dos on og hardware.
Only because I've yet to get dos box to run games at good framerates.
Yeah. From XP onward Windows wasn't cut out for anything DOS, or to a lesser extent, pre-millennial Windows (up to 98).
 

marquimvfs

Member
I liked Vista, it was cool with proper Hardware. XP it's also a great system, but I imagine that nowadays it's more of a pain in the ass regarding software compatibility. Someday I'll try Vista to see if it's better in that matter, and if it's better in 64bit support.
 

Valedix

Member
I had an old HP Windows 7(10) PC (circa 2009/10) that had a dead hard drive. Put an SSD in and installed XP Pro because, well, it's better. It was decent with Win7, so-so with 10. But badass at XP. I looked into the virtual XP and ROMS, but nothing beats real hardware IMO. I just wish I kept my games from 20+ years ago. I have very few left.

Intel Pentium E5300 64-bit Dual Core CPU @ 2.6GHz
6GB RAM(3.5GB usable due to XP being 32-bit🫤)
500GB SATA SSD boot drive(Tweaks made to ensure longer SSD life)
1TB HDD internal storage drive
Nvidia 9600GT 512MB


7pbgC7E.jpg
Jnvpsyt.jpg
08fRK00.jpg
tJVsQjV.jpg
rJGrVEO.jpg
3ZpQq8y.jpg
v6Ob6za.jpg
l4PJi9R.jpg
0YQOd7H.jpg
j4WkjAF.jpg
y1taNRS.jpg
Now this is bringing back memories, can you play some Age of Empires and Halo Combat Evolved if possible?
 

nkarafo

Member
I use VMware and other Virtual PC apps for this kind of stuff. But even that it's hardly needed since 99% of games/apps you can run on XP also work on a modern PC.

Even older 80's/90's era PC games/apps can be run with something like DosBOX on a modern system.

But there is a gap in backwards compatibility, between the late 1996 DOS era and XP. It's the late 90's Windows 95/98 era. Here you will find a lot of 16bit Windows only games that have a hard time working on a modern system. And even virtual PC apps have limited support for Windows 95/98 because AFAIK, they don't support 3D accelerated graphics for these OSes. There are some PC hardware emulators like PCem, but these are too slow in some case. So a Windows 98SE PC would be much more interesting. I do have the hardware parts to make one but i'm too lazy, Windows 98 can take a lot of time searching for drivers and stuff.
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Yeah, dug out an old Dell dimension desktop a few months back as needed a floppy drive that could write disks for the Atari ST so went with XP as you can install custom drivers.

Had to activate it over the phone typing in the codes as internet activation didn’t work but love / loved XP.
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
I can't count the times I had to reinstall XP for one reason or another. I had even memorized the serial number.
Still, it was the first good Windows I remember using. I believe my old tower PC still has XP on it.
 

TLZ

Banned
Nice one OP.

I enjoyed XP a lot, but for me 2000 was the best. I think it was the only system that never gave me errors and always just worked. Especially coming from the horror that was Windows Me.
 
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Drew1440

Member
Nice, still have an Windows XP rig - a Dell XPS Gen 5 with a GeForce 6800 and a Sound Blaster Audidgy running the Media Center Edition of XP. But some of the capacitors have started leaking so iv'e had to put it in storage until I find a way to replace them.
 

Kenpachii

Member
XP after service pack 1 was nice, also as computers moved forwards on the ram solution. I still remember the absolute horrorfest xp was when it launched. So much bloat and eating ram like nothing else. At service pack 2 it was great however.

I personally used windows 2000 as until service pack 1 hit.

After that i think windows 7 was the best one they created, 10 is fine at the end and 8.1 was also fine. But nothing special.
 

BlackTron

Member
I still have the mobo from my first 2004 PC build with the Athlon 64 in it just in case I ever want to go back and do this for an XP system. On this combo with XP, I did hundreds (maybe thousands) of hours of gaming, plus general use web browsing and music playing, it was on 24/7 even at night, even when it became dated I decided to use it at work, the thing kept going forever and would not die.
 

V1LÆM

Gold Member
that's cool as fuck but i wouldn't be using it on my main machine or connecting it to the internet lol. if it's just for gaming offline i suppose there is no harm in it.
 

PhaseJump

Banned
The 64-bit growing pains around Vista were something else. 2000 and XP were stable but getting ripped apart by malware, the push to Vista was all about security and an excuse to have the new Aero design.

The hardware peripheral companies like HP wanted to force an upgrade cycle on their own customers, released new devices, and refused to release 64-bit drivers for Microsoft to sign or software suites to support the older products. Customers would be buying older stock still on the store shelves for their "Vista capable" XP machines. They would upgrade the OS, and lose functionality. The peripheral companies would blame Microsoft.

The media would shit headlines about how awful Vista was without knowing what they're talking about. They all loved 7 though, which was just Vista all over again with some refinement like a service pack and a leaner install process without embedded multimedia crap.

Apple marketing thrived on demonizing the UAC prompting and it kept their Mac lineup going, while everybody would jump on that bandwagon and obliviously bleed out insecure personal information to the internet. People would laugh and say "MaCs DoN't GeT vIrUsEs" - No, they wouldn't have to. They just leaked your information via broken protocols or standards that have been patched already everywhere else, because Apple doesn't respond fast to a crisis and actually believes their own bullshit security marketing.
 

V1LÆM

Gold Member
But Windows 11 is crap! Full of bloat and spyware.
Not defending MS, i literally ditched W11 as my main OS recently and I'm typing this on Linux, but you can uninstall most of the preinstalled programs like tiktok, disney+, instagram, etc and disable the telemetry.

I have a bare minimum installation of W11 with only the stuff I need installed and all the telemetry/privacy invasive shit disabled. For gaming Windows 11 is definitely the best place to play games. Even if you stayed on Windows 10 or 7 you will still need to deal with telemetry. Running 7 is not secure and 10 lacks some really important gaming features. Yeah you could play games on Linux but you'll have nowhere near the same experience as on Windows. That's why I'm keeping a Windows installation around purely for gaming.
 
that's cool as fuck but i wouldn't be using it on my main machine or connecting it to the internet lol. if it's just for gaming offline i suppose there is no harm in it.
Of course I keep it offline. I have two Windows 10 PCs. I downloaded all drivers straight from HP/MS/Nvidia and put them on a thumb drive.
 
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