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Throughout time, the number of processes to support my empty desktop, with my favorite tweaks and "to work" software: XP: High teens. 100 MB. Vista: 30 or so. 800 MB. Win 7: 34. 1 GB. Win 8.1: 42. 1.2 GB. Win 10: 120. 4 GB. 3x the processes prior versions had to rock, just to get anything done. Says it all right there. No wonder it really doesn't seem to run any better on modern hardware than prior versions did on the best hardware of 7 years ago. And you can't really trim it down any more, for several reasons. Back when we thought Vista, Win 7, and Win 8.1 were bloated, we simply didn't know what True Bloat was. -Noel

the nag can be disabled, according to https://forums.mydigitallife.net/threads/bypass-windows-7-extended-security-updates-eligibility.80606/page-7#post-1564680 , running 3 commands from cmd after installing update: schtasks /Change /TN "Microsoft\Windows\Setup\EOSNotify" /Disable schtasks /Change /TN "Microsoft\Windows\Setup\EOSNotify2" /Disable reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\EOSNotify" /v "DiscontinueEOS" /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Sadly, this came too late, but please try it. It's based on the same AMDXHC driver for Windows XP, but this required just a device check patch. Included are both 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) drivers, plus the "switch" driver. - The AMDXHC driver is safe to use and easily installed. - Supports all Intel USB 3.1 XHCI controllers (7, 8, 9, 100, 200 and 300 series, maybe even HEDT chipsets). - "Switch" driver may be needed if you don't get USB3 speeds on Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and Haswell (*) systems (7, 8 and 9 series chipsets). To use this, I'd recommend a backup. Open Device Manager -> System Devices -> PCI Bus Update driver -> Browse my computer for driver software -> Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer Have Disk -> open the folder containing the HCSwitch driver files PCI Bus will be displayed, continue the installation. When finished, just restart Vista. (*) Haswell should work with Vista 32-bit (x86) only. http://www.mediafire.com/file/1kjhhl0fq1ofc2m The original Intel XHCI driver can be modded to work on Vista, but as this one works so fine, I don't have any plans to do it.

Notice: These projects have no affiliation with any upstream community code sources or organizations. Please direct all support or related questions to here. "Serpent", "New Moon", "MailNews" are generic debranded names and they are subject to change in the future. Archive directory names and archive filenames will only be changed once generic debranded names are not used in the future. Latest changelog is available here as well: http://rtfreesoft.blogspot.com/search/label/browser for people who can't register here, there is another place you can create post for asking/help besides in github and blog: https://forum.eclipse.cx/viewforum.php?f=33 Serpent/UXP browser (MCP reforked 52ESR as new base), and NM28XP releases: Binaries are moved to here: (I'm lazy to edit all previous posts) https://o.rthost.win/palemoon/?sort=date&order=desc BOC and hyperbola related binaries: Binary list: https://o.rthost.win/boc-uxp/?sort=date&order=desc ------------------------------------- NewMoon 27 build: ------------------------------------- Serpent/moebius browser (deprecated by MCP, forked by me), and also 26.5 as playground : And NewMoon 26.5 and K-Meleon 74 with Goanna 2.2 (newmoon-26.5) for vanilla Win2000 build: ------------------------------------- K-Meleon browser with Goanna/Tycho engine: It has its own sub-forum in K-Meleon official forum! http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/list.php?19 Latest build: ------------------------------------- Firefox ESR 45 with TenFourFox fixes for IA32/SSE-only machines: ------------------------------------- K-Meleon Original cross-post is here: ------------------------------------- ArcticFox XP win32 test build: ----previous post----

Thank you again. This is the best option as the extension also imports cookies, very useful.

It is with sadness I have to report my favourite Bit Torrent client of close to 6 years now, qBittorrent, has dropped Vista (and probably XP) support! I was running the portable PAF version and just found out the hard way, after accepting a prompt to upgrade to the recently released new version 4.2.0: Inspection of the main x86 executable with Dependency Walker reveals further missing function calls in Vista's system files: in SHELL32.DLL Shell_NotifyIconGetRect in MFPLAT.DLL MFCreateMFByteStreamOnStream in USER32.DLL ChangeWindowMessageFilterEx CloseTouchInputHandle GetTouchInputInfo IsTouchWindow RegisterTouchWindow UnregisterTouchWindow The application is compiled with the Qt Framework, last version of which to be compatible with Vista+XP is 5.6.x (I think 5.6.3 was the last release of the 5.6 branch); the app's code is open-source, published on GitHub: https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent Browsing that repo, it becomes evident that the team of devs willingly moved past NT6.0 support, e.g. https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/commit/5d0d8a0b7b032ed6f850325921eddc2f7303d9a8 https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/commit/a4b9a4d9da9c9479eb1e63c8b8157aa4209c627c https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/commit/7276a79cefe00f3e82fec8760ec876aa8a276df0 https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/commit/2f0ae7a7d8c53d8c1d1bee08d61e5dcb28cfd61b https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/commit/3ab2fe907f9519a9a90e072576ba6cfbbd52857d https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/commit/74fc86e2ab2896bff9e90ab710b722027f2b9678 where the last commit dates from March 17th (!) 2019 and contains the changelog lines: - WINDOWS: Drop support for < Windows 7 (snip) - OTHER: Raise minimum Qt version to 5.9.0 (sledgehammer999) Another reason I did not see that coming was the fact the pre-release alpha builds, v4.2.0alpha, had been available only in the x64 architecture (on their site: "For Windows, only the 64-bit build is available for the alpha release."), so I couldn't test them prior to the official 4.2.0 x86 release... Had I been more cautious, I could have 1. spotted, between the lengthy release notes of 4.2.0, and in the downloads page itself So, I guess I'm stuck at the last version of qbittorrent that's Vista SP2 compatible, which is v4.1.9.1 https://www.fosshub.com/qBittorrent-old.html?dwl=qbittorrent_4.1.9.1_setup.exe https://sourceforge.net/projects/qbittorrent/files/qbittorrent-win32/qbittorrent-4.1.9.1/ Portable version, in PAF format: https://portableapps.com/downloading/?a=qBittorrentPortable&n=qBittorrent Portable&s=s&p=&d=pa&f=qBittorrentPortable_4.1.9.1.paf.exe Many years ago, I'd be using Shareaza (remember that?) as my P2P client, for both ed2k and bittorrent shares, but when emule went out of fashion, I switched to μTorrent for the BT network... But when that turned into a horrible adware , I gladly switched to qbt, which offers pretty much the same GUI (minus the adds...); plus, its Python powered search feature is not to be missed... Other BT clients I had also tried in the past, showing a preference to Tixati ; but I stayed with qbt ; I don't want to derail this thread, but should I be considering switching to another BT client for the duration I'm still on Vista SP2? What is your personal experience with the other choices?

The screenshot in that blog is of a prerelease version, and was apparently borrowed from their 2014 blog post pertaining to Windows XP. There has been no prerelease version since 4.10 in 2016. The bad news in that blog is the link to FAQ about Extended Security Updates for Windows 7, where the following question and answer can be found under ESU coverage:

requires NET 4.5 but it's compatible with XP. LOL https://nvglabs.com/#download

@caliber: The way I interpreted @genieautravail's comment, was that the Russian patch was not 100% stable with Chromium based browsers, I assume that meant the Chinese 360 Extreme, but that it did work with it. The patch has also worked to his overall satisfaction, since he has continued to use it for over a year. He is willing to overlook things like not being able to use CHKDSK with certain drives, and the occasional BSOD. If the software he uses can take advantage of the extra memory the patch provides access to, then he apparently feels that benefit outweighs the infrequent, to him, inconvenience of being forced to restart his machine and other small aggravations. And that's great. Others, like @dencorso, believe that one BSOD is too many. The PAE patches by @daniel_k (especially when used to access more that 4GB) and @Dibya, of which I believe the Russian patch is one implementation, and probably the future patch by @Dibya and any other PAE patches, all suffer from the same weakness: the potential occasional instability for some people on some hardware using some software in some circumstances. Some folks might not have any problems whatsoever, while others can't get their system to last an hour without a BSOD. There is no way to predict with certainty how it will behave for anyone, and no guarantee. That's why MS pulled the feature from XP. They didn't want to deal with the complaints with no way to 100% fix the problem for all users in all situations. (Well, that and they're lazy, and greedy, and... LOL) Most of us at MSFN are 100% behind the idea that ANY user should have the right to use ANY software, including ANY OS, on THEIR machine if it meets THEIR needs, and we should not criticize them for it. We are here to talk about their, and our, experiences and help others as we can. But I emphasize that we are here to HELP, not do it for them or talk someone through every step, every single time. The general rule is we want someone to give it their best effort to do it themselves, preferably more than once, then come to us and tell us EXACTLY what they are trying to accomplish, EXACTLY why, EXACTLY which steps they took, with EXACTLY which tools, on EXACTLY which hardware, and EXACTLY what the results were compared to EXACTLY what they expected. [ Not just "I tried this program I read about and it didn't work"] At that point someone here might be able to help them thanks to the information they provided. The what they want to do and why are important because we might be able to suggest alternative solutions they hadn't thought of depending on what their need really is. If they are unable, or unwilling, to do the work themselves, then we will probably suggest that they try a different approach, or go do some more research before they try again. After all, as you surmised, and @dencorso and @daniel_k confirmed, much of the software for older OS, and the PAE patches in particular, "was made by geek minds for nerds only....." If the software you use can really benefit from the extra memory, and IF you are willing to do a lot of the work mostly yourself, and IF you are willing to live with the potential instability, and IF you feel you are capable of getting yourself out of trouble or are willing to just reformat and start over at the worst case, then by all means try the PAE patches and see if one of them works for you. But don't do it just because it's annoying that the OS won't use all of the memory in your machine, as much as I truly understand that motivation. In that case you might find that "using the Gavotte Ramdisk (using RAM above 4 GiB) for a pagefile, TEMP, and the temporary internet files from every browser", as @dencorso suggested, might better meet your needs. I sincerely wish you the best of luck and hope you are able to get your implementation of XP to work the way you want it to. Cheers and Regards