TrevMUN

MyPal still seems to be supported according to @wyxchari's thread: I checked the GitHub link there, and the most recent release is July 19. I see Feodor2 was doing monthly updates, but I'd wait to see an official announcement (or enough time passing without an update ...) before writing the browser off.

Just relaying my own experiences here; I happened to have a copy of the Steam client just before Valve introduced the overhaul which, I believe, is the reason they are putting an end to XP and Vista support. (Steam's new Discord-like messaging system and adoption of Chrome.) Even when launching this copy with -noverifyfiles, Steam still attempted to update itself. You'll want to check your package subdirectory before launching Steam each time, because Steam will download updates to that directory and try to install them even if you try to circumvent that step. I hope that we'll still be able to do this come 2019, but for now I'm still able to log in, download, and play games. I even get time and achievements logged. If we can continue to do this next year, I'll be happy. I can do without Steam's new messaging system: most my buddies don't even use it anymore simply because they don't know people are messaging them.

Hey folks, I've been looking at @apreese16's thread from January, "IE 8 in 2018?" in which @WinClient5270 mentioned that Windows XP 2009POSReady received support for TLS 1.1 and 1.2. @dencorso describes how to get it to work for Vista. Is it possible to get this update working for XP64? I ask because I've found myself in a rather frustrating situation. I've been playing Final Fantasy XIV in recent years. The game does not launch directly, but has a web browser-based launcher client that then launches the game. After an update this month, I was met with multiple errors. I've tried to remedy them, but it seems I've come to a dead end based on what Enkidoh says in this thread, which perfectly describes the dead-end situation in which I've found myself. Notably, that situation Enkidoh describes happens even if you try the workaround she described in an earlier thread. I suspect an XP32 machine using the 2009POSReady trick would be able to continue playing FFXIV by way of the TLS 1.1/1.2 update.

Offhand I can't think of any. I was surprised Wayback even caught XP-x64-Lover's post! Lucky break for us. If anyone's got confirmation of an AMD DDR4 rig working with XP (or XP64) let me know, though. I'd be very interested.

As for me, I'm interested in finding out what the most recent XP and XP64-friendly AMD hardware is, ideally something with DDR4. Last August there was some discussion on Guru3D about Ryzen's compatiblity with XP. Don't know about XP64 yet, though, and wading through the thread there means dealing with the irritating "XP? Why would you want to run that pathetic obsolete piece of junk?" smuggery. Best part is someone pointing out VM is not an option for some older games, then getting told "Just use a VM" in reply. https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/installing-windows-xp-on-am4-ryzen-7.414683/page-2 I'll highlight the interesting bits so you don't have to deal with the FUD and BS: "ASRock X370 Killer SLI, Ryzen5 1600, and the EVGA 980Ti SC+/Xtreme IV qualify for the necessary components for a good chance to install XP natively." "Drivers exist for 900 series. It has been tested on an Intel Z270 chipset. The most important would be video and audio. Even on the High end you could use GeForce GTX 980 Ti or GeForce GTX Titan X. For other hardware a USB card could be installed to support any USB device." "I've installed XP on a KabyLake it's a no brainer. Fully working video, audio, network, and USB. But for laptops I'd avoid since you can't install your own graphics card internally. Chipset drivers aren't necessary to install XP. What is important is a proper SATA driver which can be modified to work to get the installation to start." "I can confirm that XP are running even on Z370 - at least my Gigabyte MB z370 has ACPI compatible problem, so you need install it in no ACPI mode (MPS multiprocessor PC HAL) and USB and PS2 not working after 1st reboot - you need enable remote desktop for 1st login and detect network card running setup - nlite is your friend." Unrelated to the "Will it support XP/XP64" question, this amuses me to no end: "I managed to get Windows98Se on X99, maybe it will work even on Z370.." We got some kindred spirits there!

Awesome! Definitely grabbing those drivers while I can. Thanks for recovering it!

I don't know what happened to XP64 Lover, it seems that when MSFN went down all my recent correspondence I had including a number of topics and recent posts vanished. However, when I asked XP64 Lover about hardware known to work with XP64, I was linked to this one: https://www.amazon.com/Asus-SABERTOOTH-X99-LGA2011-V3-Motherboard/dp/B00VUK54F0 Asus TUF SABERTOOTH X99 LGA2011-V3 DDR4 M.2 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 Type A Intel X99 ATX Motherboard, 2015 vintage. Unfortunately, because all my private messages with XP64 Lover are gone, any information on what to do in order to get the system running on one of these has vanished. I'd be interested in finding an AMD-based motherboard though, since it's been said that AMD-based hardware is immune to two of the three variants of the Meltdown/Spectre exploits. This seems rather unhelpful. Like showing someone a haystack that might have a needle in it and saying "go look for yourself." I think knowing what hardware supports XP and XP64 is at least as important as knowing what latest versions of software support them, and we've certainly got threads dedicated to that.

Hey Sampei, in another thread regarding Meltdown and Spectre you recommended combining this with MalwareBytes Anti-Exploit to protect against any possible attacks. What's the latest version of MBAE that works with XP and XP64? I tried grabbing a copy of MBAE after installing OSArmor and (despite temporarily disabling OSArmor to prevent interference when installing) the program doesn't want to work; I get errors telling me MBAE "is taking too long to load" when I boot to Windows.

Internal drive, right? I looked up delayed write failed errors to see if I could find any solutions, but most of the things I'm seeing involve external drives. You might want to try the solution described here, disabling write caching on the drive in question, to see if that fixes things. How long has the error been happening for you?

This is strange. Last month due to some loose RAM chips potentially corrupting my hard drive's file system (and in the interest of preserving the data on those drives until I have a chance to inspect them thoroughly) I wound up having to reinstall my copy of XP64 on a new WD BLUE 1 TB drive. I had feared Microsoft would have disabled the ability to activate Windows XP to further force people to abandon the OS, but the activation went without a hitch. It took only five minutes. In my case, they don't use the old automated phone service anymore; they have a smartphone-friendly system now, and it accepted my key no problem. Maybe XP64 isn't affected by this (yet)? I'm not keen on finding out the hard way; my laptop uses XP32.

I still think there should be an option for XP and Vista users to play their Steam library without Steam running, within reason. Especially if we're talking about single player games. Losing Steam's community functions/achievements isn't as big a deal for me as losing access to the games for which I paid. Makes me wish I had bought them on Good Old Games instead; so far I've not encountered a game there which is tied to a GoG DRM client. You can download the installers for the games directly.

For those of us who have bought games through Steam, I still don't like the idea of having products I purchased to own, not rent, effectively taken away like this. Had someone told me in the past that Steam would be doing things like preventing people from running games usable with older OSes, I would have found other ways to buy those games. This is the reason why, when I had the money to spare, I bought Adobe Illustrator CS6 and not Creative Cloud. This was back when CC was just rolling out. I want to spend my money knowing that it's going toward a program that will run on the machines I own, not suddenly become unusable in the future.

I remember many years ago when Steam was new, people were concerned about the DRM angle. Well, more like livid than anything else. Much criticism bandied about over how Steam gives Valve the ultimate say over who owns the product by requiring you to run the games through their distribution platform. Valve's announcement puts new weight to those arguments. If all you've got is an XP machine (which is the case for me, as I do not have the money or spare living space right now to build a separate, dedicated gaming PC like I've wanted) then any games you've bought on Steam will no longer be yours to play. Blizzard announced their intent to do this to XP users last year, using Battle.net updates to revoke access to games which supported XP at launch. Heroes of the Storm and Starcraft II, games which XP can run no problem, now unplayable. Given that XP users receive a megaton of ridicule wherever they pop up, I doubt anyone outside of the XP enthusiast community is going to care enough to back us up on that. The people playing games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein, games which do not run well (or at all) on OSes newer than XP, might back us up, but I think most of them just jury rig solutions to get those games running in Windows 10 or somesuch. There is a wiki list of games you can buy on Steam which do not actually require Steam to run, but many games will still launch the Steam app if you try to play them without Steam anyway. Still nice to know what you can still play even if Valve won't let you use Steam anymore. I recommend e-mailing Gabe Newell and proposing this to him. He keeps his e-mail address public, and in dev commentaries from Valve games he almost always mentions it: gaben AT valvesoftware DOT com. I'm going to be writing him an e-mail myself. Sure, the chances of him seeing the e-mails are slim, much less actually acting on our behalf. However, it doesn't hurt to try. The more he hears from people who will be affected by this, the more he might be inclined to throw XP (and Vista) users a bone.

Welp. Now Homestar Runner is right, Flash IS dying. This is somber news for a lot of places that had been founded on Flash-based media. Myself included; over the years I produced my share of animations and interactive media in Flash. This might actually pose a problem for internet archivists, if there is no legacy support for old media created in Flash; how's anyone going to view the old stuff? I'm still not confident in HTML5's ability to replicate everything Flash could do. Particularly in terms of vector animation and interactivity. I say this as a guy who's been experimenting with HTML5 to make web-based games, as well as incorporating some of HTML5's animation features in web design. In time, perhaps, we'll see a true Flash equivalent in those fields.

To think, I made this picture as commentary on Microsoft's campaign to put XP in the grave three years ago. I put a big ol' rant in the commentary (with a shoutout to MSFN!) for that picture that delves into my personal reasons for sticking with XP and my frustration with contemporary events, but really my views align with @sdfox7 on this matter: "I believe an OS can only truly said to be dead when there is no longer any practical use for it." I'm still running XP64 on my desktop, and XP32 (utilizing POSReady updates) on my laptop and, aside from gaming, I've not yet felt seriously disadvantaged from doing so. I've not run into any real crises, but I take precautions as best I can.

Fully agreed. For my resume and portfolio site, I focused on using HTML5 and CSS3 with a responsive, mobile-friendly layout, but I also tried to design it in such a way that the site remains usable in older browsers. I tested it as far back as IE6 and it remained usable, albeit looking and behaving quite differently.

Interesting. I've been starting to run into this issue on certain sites while using Firefox, and some even go as far as to deny access to the site entirely. This is an excellent workaround!

I don't think Microsoft would have needed to release a goodwill patch to do that, though. Like I'd mentioned earlier the media's been having a field day in reporting how Windows XP was especially vulnerable to WannaCry due to most versions not having access to the update that fixes the issue. "Windows XP" was trending on Twitter during all the havoc, before Microsoft released those patches. All of it was talk about how many companies/hospitals rely on the OS, and how they fell victim because XP's no longer supported. That's why I think Microsoft released the patches, in fact. With the far-reaching effects of WannaCry, the media shining a spotlight on XP's state might've made them squirm a bit, given that lives were potentially at risk this time around. Which would be ironic, given that in 2014 the tech news sites practically acted like a wing of Microsoft's PR machine, pumping out thinkpiece after thinkpiece about how awful and terrible it is to use XP, shaming XP users and enthusiasts and predicting doom and gloom the moment Microsoft pulls the plug.

I've been out and about all day, so I haven't had a chance to see responses to me until just now. First, @JodyT, my remarks were not meant as a personal slight toward you. When I spoke of "the FUD crowd," I mean the sort of people who badger XP users with snide condescension or even outright vein-bulging malice. You didn't do or say anything like that in this thread, and no, I don't consider you saying you feel vindicated in your concerns as something "the FUD crowd" would say. "The FUD crowd" is liable to treat this whole incident as a smug "I told you so." I didn't get that feeling from your comments. That being said, the FUD narrative around XP is that there is nothing XP users can do to protect themselves ... except by upgrading to 10. Here at MSFN we know this to be false, partly because we know Microsoft is still supporting XP after a fashion, and partly because this is a community of experts and hobbyists who will jury-rig solutions to make older OSes as viable as possible. What's been demonstrated here is not quite the fulfillment of the FUD narrative. Nevertheless, it will convince many corporate users of XP to upgrade. Indeed. This is one of the things I was thinking of when I'd mentioned that IT departments who know about the POSReady trick can't do it for executive/managerial reasons. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think I or anyone else in this thread said that Microsoft was obligated to plug this leak for the unsupported OSes. I already commented in another thread that I was completely taken by surprise by Microsoft's decision to provide this patch for XP and Vista. I still think what I said there plays a major role in why they chose to release updates: choosing not to do so and simply saying "We warned you, you should have upgraded to Windows 10 when you had the chance" would have meant taking a serious hit in the company's reputation with potential financial repercussions. As the developer of the OSes as well as the one who decides when to stop providing updates for them, Microsoft was in a unique position to help stop WannaCry's rampage. This was not simply affecting home users, but major businesses and especially hospitals, which is a bit more serious considering it potentially puts lives at risk. Doing nothing in the face of that might have made Microsoft seem callous, and discourage current or prospective clients from using Microsoft services or products in the future. That's the only reason why I think Microsoft didn't play the "we told you so, now pay the price" card: because they saw a risk of losing more money by doing nothing than by doing something. This might be the only thing you've said which actually approaches the attitude I described as characteristic of "the FUD crowd," @JodyT, but only because it's reminiscent of the smug sort of Agent Smith-like talk to which I've been accustomed to hearing from them. Suffice it to say, I don't agree that "it's just progress." It's more just a business model that Microsoft didn't have to follow, but continued to do so until they got to Windows 10.

A lot of news sites are making hay over the fact that many companies/organizations still run XP, and outside of 2009POSReady the XP family did not receive the SMBv1 patch until WannaCry hit. You can expect a lot of smug "I told you so" from the FUD crowd, and I'm sure this ransomware will convince a lot of those companies/organizations that had been using XP will now jump ship because of this. In spite of Microsoft actually going the extra mile here, the lesson a lot of people are going to take from this is that there's got to be other vulnerabilities that Microsoft won't patch (or at least won't patch until it becomes a crisis) which wouldn't have been an issue if they'd been using 10. The 2009POSReady trick probably isn't well known outside of these parts, or IT techs in those organizations using XP know about it but were unable to apply it for executive/managerial reasons. This is really only a concern for XP64 users and not XP32 users here at MSFN, given XP32 users are still technically covered until 2019. However, when the SMBv1 vulnerability was announced and Microsoft offered no patches for XP/Vista, I looked into the seriousness of the vulnerability. The techie friends I know came to the same conclusion you did; if you've got a decent router, you're good. The only effective way the vulnerability could be exploited in that case is if your machine was on a larger network, and someone used another machine on that network to hit yours. I've no intentions to put XP in my rear-view mirror, not even after this. Running unsupported products just means you need to be on the lookout for potential threats, and figure out what precautions you need to take.

This is awesome. I wasn't expecting Microsoft to do that. I guess they see goodwill as a higher weighted objective compared to using this incident to push more people into abandoning XP (or Vista for that matter).

And yet it's implied from the story that WannaCry will infect documents and attachments sent by infected computers. That could mean that the initial infection isn't from a source most savvy people would identify as an obvious malware attempt, but could come in the form of attachments from people they know, already infected with the ransomware. However, WannaCry is exploiting the SMBv1 vulnerability of which I posted a thread a month or two ago. From what was said to me elsewhere, and what observations were made in that thread, that exploitation only helps WannaCry infect a network using SMBv1 protocol without any need to transmit infected files via e-mail or document sharing. So what's the deal here? Will plugging the SMBv1 leak stop WannaCry entirely, or just keep your machine safe on a network until you happen to touch an infected file? EDIT: McAffee has some information about how WannaCry works, including how it infects machines, which I found just now. I edited my latest post in that other thread to reflect this.

Recently found some news that appears to be directly related to this vulnerability. "The Ransomware Meltdown Experts Warned About Is Here" The exploit is, in fact, the very same SMBv1 vulnerability I discussed in the OP. EDIT: McAfee has a dossier on how WannaCry works and what to expect if you get infected.

Although I've heard much about what Vista and 8 got wrong, the consensus I've always heard is that 7 is/was "the new XP" in terms of everything. I'm curious; in your opinion, what did 10 get right that 7 didn't?

They're both the 32-bit version. One is Firefox proper, the other is Pale Moon. That depends. Until a few years ago I thought the only issue I'd run into with sticking with XP is that I wouldn't be able to play newer games due to their requiring more recent versions of DirectX. However, since then I've learned that the newer Windows OSes have some different APIs than XP does. So when a developer makes a program that doesn't support XP, it's likely that the program is calling APIs used in Vista or newer, and so the program won't run in XP. That's not always the case, though, and sometimes there's programs which don't support XP that still run because they don't call any APIs exclusive to the newer OSes. Even so, the API issue is going to be a hurdle going forward. I imagine @Dibya and the rest of the code-savvy gang here at MSFN will be working around that, though. MSFN found a way to get Windows 9X and Me to run XP-era apps with DLL modding, I imagine they can do it for XP and post-XP programs. I linked to it before, but just such a workaround exists for XCOM: Enemy Unknown.