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I found that the setting from TweakUI on WinXP still works, and mitigates the issue in applications like WinRAR and similar. The horizontal scrollbar was particularly lazy. This should be in Performance -> Visual Effects. REGEDIT4 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop] "SmoothScroll"=dword:00000000

Don't fix what isn't broken. Try it on a spare PC. Or plug in a spare HDD and disconnect the good one. I wouldn't even risk dual/tripple booting it, which in the end is probably a good idea to ease the transition. It's always good to have another OS to fix problems without a boot CD. Treat a new Windows like a virus. What's going to happen in 2025? I can't delete the Microsoft Reserved Partition from inside Windows either, and must use BootIce or Gdisk to set up a disk before installing Windows. When Windows 8 came out, it was the worst crap ever, and now people look fondly upon it in comparison. Lol. How so? You can compare any business application that came out at the time with what we can get new today and it will be smaller and faster. Back with Win98 we had to install our choice of applications to handle graphics and media, and Windows only did the core. Now they bundle everything but the kitchen sink into Windows, and those programs are rarely optimal.

In what situations would hardware accleration make a significant difference? Most normal, even rather complex webpages are rendered once and stay like that as they are scrolled. You'd have to have some elements overlayed onto one another with transparency and moving, or being constantly refreshed as if they were moving, or a video. There probably are such. But what are any concrete examples where h/w acceleration makes the CPU usage noticeably go down?

Are there any motherboards that can accept 128 GB of RAM and work satisfactory under Win NT 5?

I can drag the mouse, but it is not enjoyable. One core of Conroe is pegged at full. Of course a faster CPU solves many problems as with other growing applications. The screen is also upsampled from 800*600 and jaggy with no obvious way of setting the picture to 100%. I'm not complaining that a DosBox is be slow. But just like with playing videos, there is additional overhead from the browser. I don't see what is gained in this case by putting it inside the web browser. Every time I go to the website, it downloads the 45 MB package. They could give it to me directly, set it up with a batch command to run DosBox with the intended settings and it would be faster, save network traffic and independent of the server being up. It has many preinstalled applications and games, fit within that size. Nice perspective of software bloat that has occurred since. DRM in Palemoon is about as useful as a fifth wheel. I would put up with sluggish websites if they are free. But paying to watch protected films inside the browser makes no sense.

I found a website that runs Windows 3.11 inside the web browser. It seems to be a DosBox in JavaScript and not a remote desktop. Jesus. On my computer it is unusable in New Moon. pieter.com

The backround on my screen is almost black 18,18,18 in Opera (Opium). I think reduction of contrast on webpages is the result of people using new monitors set up to compete with the daytime sun. They won't turn them down at night. So webpages or browsers do it for them. The button that says "member" is white (247,250,249). Such stray elements make everything around hard to see and the dark mode a non-starter for me. The "member won the day" frame is almost unreadable. I can appreciate the limited viewing angle of a flat screen for cases like this. I tilt my head and can read it again, lol. I've adjusted my monitor all the way down, for the other monitor the backlight can't be modulated so it must be kept bright.

I think the limit is 64 GB which is more than everyone will ever need, lol. Windows 2003 works flawlessly with it, especially considering how web browsers today are broken up into multiple processes. Each process can use about 1.7 GB. That is not enough for giant, bloated games. With the /3GB switch they can use more, but that can cause instability when the system portion (1GB) is too small. A problem arises with direct memory access to the PCI bus, which have to be in the low memory. I recall that WinXP had one or two built-in drivers that were not safe.

I have 8 GB of RAM in my main computer. I've reached the limit only on a few occasions when I did something stupid like simultaneously opening a big game (3.5G), and a web browser (1.5G) with a long uptime, plus everything else. One of the programs just says that it is out of memory like in days before swap files, and you can correct the situation (close the web browser) and continue as normal. On WinXP/2003 you get an exclamation mark in the systray when memory is almost full. My other computer has 20 GB of RAM and I couldn't even figure out how to fill it up to fully test it. I paid for it maybe 25 or 30, so I decided how cool would it be just give win2003 so much. In the end I launched many copies of IrfanView. If there is something that Microsoft has added, it maybe is present in Windows 10 or 11 only. Usually people bring up debug information for a BSOD to justify the existence of a paging file. But most people can't read that or have anybody to ask to read it for them. They say that the paging file wouldn't be used if enough RAM was available, but it cleary is used.

I think I installed it via the device manager (add new hardware) where it can also be uninstalled. With the parameter UsePAE, a disk of 5 gigs was automatically created (/MAXMEM=3072 out of 8G), disregarding the value DiskSizeM. The rdutil.exe didn't work right. That is supposed to create a compressed disk image and restore it on boot, but my disk was always corrupted when I tried that. I was able to add swap file to this disk later without "building" it into the image. If your sofware relies on a directory T:\TEMP being there, you can create it somehow. The builder and the CMD file that adds it is some additional service that is not strictly needed. It was absent from the package I got.

More like when you throw a fast processor at the problem. On a slow computer many websites go into an infinite loop until the prompt to stop the script comes up.

More like when you throw a fast processor at the problem. On a slow computer many websites go into an infinite loop until the prompt to stop the script comes up.

You need a swap file if your memory gets close to being full, which with modern bloated applications it probably will. I'd say with 8 GB you might not. But it depends on what you do with the PC. I belong to the school of thought that the paging file belongs in the past when memory was scarce. I would never put a paging file on an SSD to save it from wear. There is a Gavotte RamDisk that can be put in high PAE RAM. I had some experience trying to use it. The option to load a formatted partition from the registry would become corrupted after shutdown. I could only use it in the default mode where it automaticaly fills with a FAT32 file system. It seems that Windows likes to use the swap file a lot when minimizing big applications. There was a pause and mechanical squeal. File copy speed to the ram disk was not as fast as expected. There seemed to be a considerable overhead. I would try to install Server 2003 with normal PAE memory. There are only a few older drivers that don't work, most notably from Creative Labs and likely some older multimedia cards. If you have bad drivers, you can revert to the crippled behaviour of WinXP with the /MAXMEM switch in boot-ini.

What are good software products for editing keyboard layouts? I am currently looking for one that can make them for Windows 64-bit. Microsoft in its infinite wisdom has made keyboard layout in NT a DLL, which has some implications. An old layout for x86 does not work anymore. It can actually include program code, which can do anything, or refuse to load if it checks a license. Programs are usually limited in what formats they can load and output. They may have a native project format that is neither KBD nor DLL. I have the following candidates: "Tastatūras Pianists" part of localization packages "Tildes Birojs" or "WinLogs". Works under Windows 98 and Windows 2000/XP. Produces layouts only for the active system (either in KBD or DLL format). Can import layouts from a file to set up a new system. Can visually edit a dead key layer and, with some trickery, separate layers for Shift and Caps Lock simply by dragging symbols onto keys. The interface language can be set to English when the application is installed. Does not need to be kept running. Does not work under x64. "KbdEdit" requires an expensive license. Works under Windows NT x86 and x64. Has a steeper learning curve. The dead key layer is apparently only editable in a list format. Opens more advanced options. Without a license, produces a bloated, crippled DLL, which requires the service to be kept running and displays a nag screen. The layout does not work under the System login on the welcome screen. EDIT: I have found "Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator" This program is free. It can take an existing DLL from NT x86 or x64 as a base and generate new DLLs for three architectures at the same time: x86, x64 and ia64 (Itanium). This can be used to strip down KbdEdit created DLLs and make them freely usable, or transfer them between architectures. The dead key editor is still in a list format. Symbols can be typed or pasted from an external character map, which this program doesn't include. The installation can be done with the following registry entries: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layouts\b0020426] "Layout File"="kbdx1062.dll" "Layout Text"="Normal" "Layout Id"="00e0" Where 0426 is the language, b002 is a unique ID within the language, and 00e0 is a unique ID within all available layouts. (around 0xcd on Windows 2022, and around 0xaf on Windows 2008 R2). Windows 2022 requires a reboot to show new layouts. I've read reports about them being unusable for others.

"Speaking Clock". It featured two assistants called Checkers and Max. It also included a speaking calculator. If you dragged the assistants they said, "I kinda liked it. Please do it again."

Old is not synonymous with retro. Retro is something made today in the style of the past. The word is usually associated with motion backwards. Maybe if Reactos actually got released, you could call that retro.

The process count is around 90. But memory use is a proxy for the process count. This is where the memory goes. It's quite annoying to open the normal Task Manager and see the long list. I frequently look through that list to unalive a program and notice any new processes to investigate. But now it is full of services that are each in a separate process. It is true that you need to needed to tweak past OS's too. Then computers became faster and we stopped most of the debloating. The situation gets progressively worse with bloat and privacy. There is some new smart Unicode sorting algorithm. I thought I had lost a file beginning with the letter Y. Turns out it was sorted with the letter I (capital eye). I think it is associated with the locale "Latvia". We don't have the letter "Y" in the alphabet. So someone had the smart idea to put it in there. I think this didn't exist in Windows Seven. In a technical context this is nonsense. This reminds me of the numerical sorting from WinXP. There is also the restriction on creation on file associations simply in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. It doesn't work and an Open With dialog always pops up. Has a workaround been found to restore the previous behavior? It is sometimes necessary to put multiple programs on the context menu, a viewer, and editor, a CLI converter. I was able to add Take Ownership the normal way on the * extension (all files) and Directory.

Can't you use Shift-Delete or right-click on the recycling bin and disable it? I always put My Computer in the corner and the recycle bin, even though I don't use the latter.

7+ Taskbar Tweaker is essential. I've now configured the taskbar to look like Windows 2000. I have muscle memory to go for the Show Desktop button on the toolbar to the left instead of near the clock. Disabled all button dragging, and disabled pinning. Dragging is too easy to do accidentally. Somehow on my Windows 2008 computer a window somehow rarely still gets pinned. Once a week or so. Well, I installed Server, which is clean of the main Apps by default. No Cortana, etc. But there are still unnecessary SystemApps that have augmented the shell. If I hide the search bar to give more room, SearchApp still runs. There is a new tiny character map (WinKey+Period), which is always running. And of course Settings, the analogue of which have been deleted from the Control Panel. For the Settings alone, I need to keep Metro-enabling services. Now RAM use is down to 900 MB.

Is there a gentle way of stopping background Metro apps other than removing the exe file? Like is there a service responsible for launching them? I took ownership and renamed StartMenuExperienceHost.exe and SearchApp.exe. I think whoever launches them is now trying to find those files again and again. The Start menu is a pathetic shadow of the real thing and takes a few dozen MB of RAM. There is no need for it with Classic Shell. A fresh install is not so bad speed-wise. Still starts up with 1 GB of RAM used. Now there are no proceses of Edge, of which there were half a dozen or more on the existing installation. The first message I got was that "the administrator" had enabled required disagnostics sent to Microsoft. I wonder how they have disabled control over certain services such as Windows Defender Firewall. They seem to still be stoppable in the registry. Some things cannot be taken ownership of by the Administrator.

I don't see how this offer provides value to an individual consumer. To him it might look similar to the technical support scams. I wouldn't install their updates or Defender if I was paid $30. They take up disk space, are known to sometimes bring anti-features. The exception being something that is actually useful for interoperability, like new SSL certificates (forced upon us by other companies) or a new USB generation, or another technology that happens to be refinement stage about now like the Vulkan thing. But these probably won't be made as part of "security" support.

What is the different purpose for daniel_fix vs 3_USB3x_fix ? I don't know the history. The Daniel_fix driver works. To install it on Windows 2003, the section labeled NTx86.5.1.1 must be renamed to 5.1. The last digit indicates workstation, and server finds no drivers in it.

I see some talk about USB3 in this thread. Is there now a working driver for Intel USB3.0 for Windows 2003?

Yes, I switched to another cable to get an L-connector. It works fine in AHCI mode, which I would try to use anyway. Something is very suboptimal in the "translation" stage. I opened the disk in WinHex and it was obviously laggy when dragging the scrollbar, and the read speed in HDTune was only 3 MB/s. I've since put 3 Windows on it.

I resist installing NET Framework, and only use at most version 2, which comes with NT6. More and more software is built in NET these days. In the past it was mostly enthusiast programs like nLite, CueTools or gaming mods. This is the driver that came up first in my search and is about the same size as another from 2013, so nothing is lost to bloat. I see that there is nothing of value in that control panel. I do not believe that driver upgrades are necessary and don't do them in general. Usually older drivers are smaller. No need for such language. Many people on this forum seek answers about old computers and software. Look, there is an XP and Win98 section. I have two PCs on Intel 7 series and they work fine without bloated software.