dencorso

Chipset and Sata drivers, even when there is no official one, can be found on Fernando's Win-RAID Forum. Now, in what regards Video drivers, that depends on the processor one selects, in the case of the intel Core i3/5/7. Some other drivers, like ACPI drivers and sound drivers are also know to be available, just as for most USB 3.0 controllers, except for intel (and via, IIRR). However, the problem is intel usb 3.0 rivers are integrated into the southbridge (or chipset, if you wish, because those processors dont use a northbridge), from the Panther Point (= B/H/Q/Z7x) and Patsburg (X79) onwards, so it's unavoidable to have a handful of those ports (controlled by the intel usb 3.0 controller) on any of those boards...

You, not me, are operating on a fallacy. Of course the intel ports operate at USB 2.0 speeds and aren't "dead" or "unusable". That's what I said: they operate lamely. If they don't operate as USB 3.0, IMO, they're unusable (for what they were intended). Of course one can sort of run XP SP3 very lamely even on Z5xx or X5xx. But one can enjoy the full potential of, at most, the Cougar Point chipsets. As I said before, until the ReactOS xhci driver is working, and well-tested, I'm out of using any later chipsets. No, they don't. The attached tests show they run much above USB 2.0 speeds. 2017 Pen Drive Performance Tests.pdf 2017 Pen Drive Performance Tests Xtra.pdf

Link? Of course. But from maybe the '90s, all manufacturers use to send out HDDs prepartitioned into one single partition and preformatted. So, in case any manufacturer did sell a 3MB, it would mean at least a transverse support for it, even if that manufaturer never documented it. Else it is an undocumented fact found by the users, like so many others we know of. Later edit: I found this report "The brave new world of 4Kn hard disks [...]". Is there anything newer and more reassuring?

Z77 has unusable intel USB 3.0. The Z68 board I suggested has supported for XP ASMedia controllers and known-good drivers available, besides being less expensive for the same overall performance, albeit somewhat less easy to find on eBay (but not that much). No, it's not. It has unusable intel USB 3.0, too. Until the ReactOS driver is working, and well-tested, I'm out of it. BTW, did you ever notice you can edit your posts and that successive posts (= bumping) by the same user are frowned upon at MSFN?

Because I can. I'm also considering setting up a X79/i7 4960X when I manage to get the parts at a decent price (up to now that processor's price, even used, can only be rightly described as obscene!). I'm no gamer, but I do serious math and image processing. @jaclaz: Are there any 3MB HDDs in the market (if so please name 'em) or do have I to get a 3GB HDD and convert it myself? You've got me interested (even more so if there are any 3MB WDC HDD...).

Well, that driver is good news! One actually can access a 4KiB sectored MBR HDD provided it's external and through USB, if I understood this right, without any special driver, isn't it? But can it be done on an internal SATA/SAS MBR HDDs? Can you provide more info about it? I had understood XP did have problems with internal HDDs having non 512-byte sectoring...

4TB HDDs internally connected on a XP machine are no-no, sorry. 4TB HDDs conneted through USB 3.0(2.0) to XP are OK, though. jaclaz is surely the best one here to explain to you why, so I'll defer to him.

Well, now that we've beaten the poor dead horse into beef tartar, let me give one more unrelated sugestion: @Tomcat76: give the machine a smallish, fast SSD (a 120GB OCZ Vertex, or any other SATA III OCZ from before takeover by Toshiba would be great, but do avoid the older Octane series) for OSes and one bigger HDD (I suggest a WD2002FAEX or any WDX *FAEX, which is the last 512-byte sectored series from WDC and was findable new/used on eBay till quite recently) for data, and you're all set, IMHO.

I) Provided one sets "DisablePagingExecutive"=dword:00000001, in my experience, the chance of failure for any reason changes very little due to this setup. In fact, XP is really hard to crash, unless one runs experimental or undebugged programs or uses a program deliberately written to cause a crash (the most common was written by Matt Pietrek, IIRR, but there are many others... and other ways, but that's beside the point). II) Suposedly, when a program is first loaded and converted into a process image able to actually run, if there is a pagefile, that should be done directly on the page file, and then just some pages are brought into the actual frames of the real memory and let run or a quantum... at least that's the theory of virtual memory, IIRR... In case I'm right, then the pagefile is always hit, in a way, provided it exists. Then again, even if I'm wrong, setting a pagefile in such a Ramdisk should be harmless at worst and beneficial at best (quod abundat non nocet). Remember there are some programs that do require a pagefile to run (although I cannot provide an example of such a program from the top of my head, at this moment).

That's impossible... unless one forgoes using MS Update/Windows Update entirely. Not if your machine has 8 GiB RAM and is running XP x86... you either use the Ramdisk (and then there's no reason not to put a system managed pagefile inside it) or let ca. 4.7 GiB RAM otiose, to use a word jaclaz likes...

But you'd still be able to use the Gavotte as a place to dump things you'd like to disappear, like the "Temporary Internet Files". However, with a smallish Ramdisk, you'd have one possible issue: if you download a file bigger than the Ramdisk size, it'll fail silently. So that you'd have to remember to move the "Temporary Internet Files" before using IE to download a file bigger than the Ramdisk or, much better, never to download such a big file using IE (other browsers and wget allow one to decide where the download should go, without 1st bringing it forcibly to the "Temporary Internet Files", then moving it to some indicated destination, like IE does).

I doubt anyone could really notice the difference but, then again, I can see no reason not to populate all available slots, so I'd go with 4x 2GiB. The Asus BIOS has a quite reliable memory hoist, so that all the memory not seen by XP (my XP actually sees 3.22GiB RAM) will be moved by the hoit above the 4 GiB address, where it can be accessed using PAE. Now, instead of going for the unreliable kernel PAE patch, the best thing to do is to create a 4.78 GiB Ramdisk with that memory, which can reliably be used for a pagefile and a dumping place for "Temporary Internet Files" and other browsers caches (as well as for cookies, too, if desired). Of course this is just my 2¢...

I have an Asus P8Z68-V LX motherboard (made in 2011) with an i7-3770k on it. There are drivers for everything on it for XP, and the ASMedia USB 3.0 also has drivers for XP and all works great. I use a ginormous Zalman CNPS9900DF cooler and 3 Noctua fans (2x NF-B9 [92mm] + 1x NF-P12 [120mm]) and an OCZ ModXstream Pro 600 power source (600W), and one can barely hear the machine at all, when switched on (and the cores run below 35°C, on idle and below 50°C, upon heavy use). I'm fully satisfied with the onboard video, but that may not be of much help for you, because I'm no gamer. However I think the onboard video is good enough to do what you require satisfactorily. In general, Asus is a better hardware line than Asrock. In any case, the standard disclaimer applies: it works great for me, but YMMV. Warning: The board I bought came with the original BIOS version, so I had to borrow a very basic Sandy Bridge chip just to get it to boot (it was no go with the i7-3770k, at that point), then I updated the BIOS to the latest version available, and then I was able to switch the processor to the i7-3770k and it has been working great since then.

Way to go! That's how it's done!

Yeah. Read this thead. There are working links for all you need already collected here. You said the last time the machine did update was February 2017, right? So go back in the thread up to that time and start reading from there. Usually, all the links you need are collected in a post by Bersaglio. Then again, you'd actually know that already had you tried this exercise. The reason threads are not Twitter is that they do preserve the memory of what happened. So make good use of that.

Well, since my crystal ball is again in the shop for tuning, I did my best by interpreting the flight of the birds... although the only birds visible from where I am right now are a bunch of vultures, which usually are not very reliable, as you know.

Or there is more than one unhidden partition having an io.sys... Then, instead of "find --set-root /io.sys", "root (hd0,0)" at the same point should work.

No idea. But this <link> still works all right, so the file itself was not removed from MS servers.

@jaclaz: Sorry, this is not directed at you. The post that caused it has already been split into the proper thread. @Everybody: Just a friendly warning. I'm tiring of spliting off-topic posts from this thread. Hence, the next off-topic post here will award its author a 2-day suspension to muse about what on-topic means. Y'all have been warned.

what did you expect? What part of EXACT info did you fail to understand?

That also works!

Done!

Done!

Not at all! I do like it, too. But I'd take a 1976 Aston Martin Lagonda instead any time, hands down! Moreover, since here in S. Paulo driving above 50 km/h (except for two expressways that allow 90 km/h and one rapid crosstown avenue that allows 60 km/h) will get one a ticket (and 5 points which expire after one full year), and when one gets 21 ticket-points one loses the drivers-licence for up to two years and has to undergo an ultra-PITA process to get it back after that time, I now favor going slow, listening to music, immersed in a cool air conditioning and having a diet-coke on top of it, while everybody else curses, blares the horn and sweats in minuscle 1.0 cars and swarms of decrepit 125cc motorcicles zip by.

Provided Jody agrees to it, I'd be pleased to split the thread. Then again, I think we should call it: "Windows XP - Deepest Impressions", because of the tradition already established here at MSFN by similarly named threads...