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I got myself a router from the States today. Unfortunately, the seller shipped it to my house in the UK with the American charger, so I went to a local shop here in Queensway. As soon as the guy went behind to look for the adapter I asked, I quickly took a picture of the computer of the shop: a dusty machine running Windows XP Professional.

I know many people are complaining about the recent updates, but luckily nothing happened to my machine. I think it really depends on our hardware. With my 1TB Seagate HSSD, my Intel i7 6700HQ 4c/8th 2.60GHz and 16 GB DDR4 (8x2), I didn't have any issues. My system is running just fine. I think that these updates might have screwed up a few things in systems with older hardware. Perhaps Microsoft engineers tested these updates on virtual machine with recent hardware? Who knows. By the way, NHS just signed an agreement with Microsoft to get Microsoft's Enterprise Threat Detection Service which provides an antivirus service as well as updates for their systems, including Windows XP and Server 2003 until this summer, so it's very likely that their 30'000 XP machines will get the same updates we get, which is a good thing. (This actually reminds me that it's been two years since the last time I had a blood test. I think it's time to ask NHS for a new one).

I have an AVX and AVX2 capable CPU, although XP only supports SSE4.2, that's why I compiled everything in SSE4.2. Anyway, I accidentally tried to run an AVX-compiled program once and it didn't run: it got stuck at launch-time, executing only partially the code (the asm part of it), thus complaining about non monotonic function once it passed the result to the encoder. In other word, AVX, AVX2, AVX512, FMA don't work in XP, AFAIK.

I'm not facing issues either on my NTFS SSHD nor on my Synology racks network drives formatted in ext4. It's mainly a computer I use for work and an encoding running since I installed the latest updates and rebooted, so I didn't have the chance to test it properly. (It's a 4K Remaster of a movie that implies using many filters during post processing, thus using 6 GB of RAM for Fourier calculations, Karhunen-Loève Transform, Discrete Cosine Transform calculations, motion vectors calculations and so on, so the system it's stressed, but so far so good. People generally don't believe that some of the detailed 4K they see on air are processed using Windows XP). It's probably going to finish in the next few hours after days of encode, so I'll soon have the chance to install the .NET Framework, the "latest and greatest" Avast beta update and perhaps reboot and make it rest for a while. It deserves it after days at 100% CPU usage. My only concern is that I'll never get the patch for my CPU... and I'm definitely affected by Meltdown and Spectre, 'cause I'm running an i7 6700HQ, 4c/8th with 16 GB DDR4 (8x2) and an NVIDIA GTX 950M. Well... I hope Avast will prevent threats from stealing data, but still...

I strongly suggest you not to crack an antivirus; they could stop providing new defitions anytime without bothering to tell you, or worse.

I sent a message to Microsoft, trying to sensibilise them on the issue: "According to the Microsoft statement about the Spectre and Meltdown issue, Windows XP and XP-Based systems like POSReady 2009 won't get the patch, despite the latter is supported 'till 2019. Many manufacturers providing recent hardware don't even support XP and many old CPU are not affected by the issue, but many businesses are running VMs on recent hardware, that's why I think it would be extremely useful to have the patches available for XP and XP based OS, considering it's still the third most used OS." They'll probably just ignore my email, but at least I tried.

Installed both from the yellow shield that popped up; rebooted successfully and no issues found. Nice and quick. It seems that the latest Avast beta works fine. (I have Avast Premier, though).

A new security flaw has been discovered; it affects CPUs and it's bad... like, really bad... "Details of the flaw and how it might be exploited are being kept strictly under wraps while programmers rush to redesign operating systems including Windows and Linux to work around the bug. Calcs executed by the CPU may not necessarily remain hidden between the Kernel, the HAL and the CPU itself and an attacker might be able to steal passwords or other key information from the kernel. Operating system vendors are making fairly significant changes to work around this issue. This is going to be one of the most complex security updates any OS vendor has ever had to deliver."

Old deprecated build by @VistaLover: http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/get_iplayer/2017-May/010711.html New Build (by @CoRoNe @Reino): https://rwijnsma.home.xs4all.nl/files/ffmpeg/?C=M;O=D Please use the build made by @CoRoNe / @Reino which are updated. Official Doom9 (international Encoding Forum) discussion: https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=181802

Hi, I'd like to replace the default login background image with a solid color one (grey) for all users and I would also like to change the default picture of every account with the company logo. The problem is that I don't know how to do it with Windows Server 2016 (group policy). I already set up a bunch of things that were consistent with the 2008 R2 version. We recently upgraded from Windows Server 2008 R2 to Windows Server 2016, but I've been hating it since day 1. Although all the new stuff available with PowerShell are lot of fun, it doesn't seem to match my idea of server: too much graphic design that is absolutely unnecessary for a server. Thank you in advance.

Thanks Mixit!

You know, I didn't have any issues, but when you pointed that out, I checked my winlogon.exe and I found out I had the old version: 5.1.2600.5512. I've just donwloaded the Italian version and updated. Thanks ^_^ As to the KB955704 (exFAT), I tried to google it but I didn't find it. Dencorso, your version is the English one, but my XP install needs the Italian one. I found a user who uploaded it on his dropbox in 2016, but that link expired too. It seems that only the one for Windows Server 2003 is available, which is a shame. Many people complained in the Italian Microsoft forum, but didn't get any useful answer from Microsoft MVPs. Perhaps @jaclaz has an Italian XP install and KB955704?

Rather than Alky for applications - which is quite outdated - give XomPie a shot. Hopefully it will patch it correctly and you'll be able to run it.

October 2017. Stats by Verizon.

Thanks everyone, especially jaclaz. I have a backup copy; last time I updated it was in early 2017, so I guess I'm just gonna update my backup copy again and stick with my SSHD. Thank you

Hi, I bought an SSHD drive in 2015. It has been running Windows flawlessly since then. Now I'm kinda concerned about the drive, 'cause Fedora (Linux) is reporting me that "Disk is OK" but "one attribute failed in the past". The attribute that failed the S.M.A.R.T test is the airflow temperature, which is fine, 'cause it has been stressed before and it reached temperatures like 55°C for a short amount of time. I then checked the other S.M.A.R.T attributes out of curiosity and I found out that Fedora is reporting some values as "Pre-Fail" and "Old-Age". Should I be worried about it? Should I change my drive as soon as possible?

A new vulnerability has been found. "A spoofing vulnerability exists in the Windows implementation of wireless networking. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could potentially replay broadcast and/or multicast traffic to hosts on a WPA or WPA 2-protected wireless network", Microsoft explains. This Wi-Fi WPA2 vulnerability affects all devices with Wi-Fi regardless of the operating system. I also use Fedora (Linux) and I got the patch straight away. Microsoft has already rolled out the patch to Windows 10, Windows 8.1, 8 and I think 7 but what about XP? Do we have to wait for the next POSReady security updates rollout? That would be next month.

All the updates installed, no problem so far.

Avast supports XP and is probably the most complete antivirus with streaming updates (definitions are updated in real time), a firewall, a custom browser based on chromium that allows you to do internet banking and others "risky" things safely on XP thanks to the extra security layer, SecureLine (which allows you to use a VPN service - not in the free version, though -), a ransomware shield that protects all your file system resources from being accessed by untrusted third part applications, Secure DNS which allows you to use other DNS and access websites that are blocked in your country, a SandBox which allows you to load risky executables in a virtual environment, without the risk of infecting your real system, a Wifi inspector which tells you whether the wifi you are connected to is secure or not, a software updater which tells you which software needs to be updated and can, eventually, update it for you in background, a rescue disk which allows you to create a Disk or a USB with Avast Antivirus in it to clean up other computers (or your own computer) if it doesn't boot, a boot-time scan that allows you to scan for viruses before Windows starts in order to remove even the nastier threats, a mode to save all your password into a master password that encrypts them all and handle them for you (still in beta in XP, though), an email antivirus and antispam, a data shredder that allows you to permanently destroy files by writing random data in the cells of the files you want to permanently delete and finally a sensitive data shield which enables you to protect and encrypt your personal documents and prevent third part applications from accessing them. In other word, Avast is my way to go. I have Avast Premier in my pc and I'm a beta tester.

Certain Linux distributions are user friendly nowadays, while others are still the old fashioned way (like Arch Linux). Linux lacks many programs that are widely available on Windows, has limited support to professional suites (open source alternatives aren't always that good) and although there's a market to install programs within the official repository, there aren't many. Most of the time, you have to download packages, resolve dependencies and compile the program yourself with GCC++ (if it's written in C, C++). Also, every time you update the kernel, something might break (like pulseaudio) and you gotta figure out yourself. A deep use of Linux is not for everyone, but hardware compatibility is becoming less and less common for XP. An example? UEFI without Legacy BIOS support. My suggestion would be to use a Linux distribution on your new shiny computer (I personally use Fedora) and clone your existing XP to a new hard drive or convert it to a vdmk file to use a virtual machine (virtual box and VMWare are the most popular, but there are alternatives like QEMU). I'm using Fedora with Virtual Box and I can do pretty much everything in my XP. I have Avast Premier in XP and all the traffic goes through Linux with its firewall and antivirus (nod32) added on top of the Windows ones.

I was heading to the ACI (Automobile Club Italy) and once I got there, I didn't bother about all the manuals lying on the desk, but I quickly notice that blue bar: they are running Windows XP.

I modified it to 80%. Encoding a jpg image at 80% is a kinda good compromise, compared to PNG which is lossless.

Windows XP spotted in the tube.

Another good VM software is VMware which is probably the best one in this field, athough it's not free. @monroe as to virtual box and your XP installation, there are two ways to use a virtual machine: using a virtual hard drive (.VDI, .vdk file) or using the Raw Disk mode to access a physical hard drive or a partition and boot Windows from there, which is what I'm doing right now. Also, remember to install the virtual box guest additions in safe mode in order to get drivers and get USB 2.0 or 3.0, shared folder, high/full screen resolution, audio/video 2D and 3D acceleration via OpenGL and D3DX9 and a few more features. I also suggest to enable the PAE Flag in "Processor" and set paravirtualization to Hyper-V. Last but not least, please note that under Windows Virtual Box may be limited (certain functions are not allowed) and that PCI Express Passthrough doesn't work in almost every case, so don't even try it. If you can, use virtual box over other free VM softwares, 'cause it's really well done and it's a way better than how it used to be in the past. I can almost say that nowadays it offers a normal user experience, like using a native hardware, which was impossible years ago (it was a way slower back in the days).

I'm actually running Windows XP via Virtualbox using my brand new PC. I didn't install Windows, though, but Fedora instead (a famous Linux distro). Fedora is not Arch (which is kinda complicated to deal with if you are new to Linux) and is kinda easy and user friendly, so it's pretty easy to have everything up and running in a few minutes. I'm happy with my config right now, but there are a few issues when you run Windows in a VM, like GPU-Intensive programs running not-so-well, a lack of support for a decent 3D acceleration (won't be fast enough to play games etc), you won't be able to use your webcam if there aren't XP drivers ('cause webcam isn't generally virtualized, but it's "passed through") and audio latency will be high, generally too high to use a mixer, but you won't notice any difference if you just wanna play videos on YouTube, surf internet, listen an internet radio, check your emails etc, which is what many people do. Yes. You can install Windows 7, 8, 8.1, Windows 10 or Ubuntu/Fedora. It's not a big deal. Then just google "Install Windows XP with Virtualbox" and follow a tutorial. There are many different tutorial.