cc333

What about the other 10%? c

Well, neon looks a bit better than the black-on-black mess that 10 has been otherwise. I still won't let go of my Classic theme, though. Which means I stay with Windows 7 (with 8.1 used as a supplement). c

I don't need my reality augmented! NR (normal reality) is bad enough!! And, since I still refuse to downgrade to Windows 10, I'll probably never have it. c

Yup! It does!! It is fairly quick. Not super lightening fast, but it's better than 7 on the same hardware. Sort of. Apples Boot Camp drivers don't support installation on XP x64 (they never have), so you have to unpack and install each driver manually. You also don't have the nice control panel (unless one can figure out a way to spoof the Windows version and/or hack the .msi to install), but it works 100% otherwise. Are you going to get yourself a Mac Pro? If you're going to get yourself an Apple, the 2006-2012 Mac Pros are perhaps the best, most expandable modern Macs you'll find. c

I concur. In fact, I'm using it now, on my Mac Pro (arguably best machines you can find for XP x64, in my opinion). I do like that XP-32 is more well supported, though (XP-64 is this weird thing that sits somewhere between XP-32, w2k3-64 and Vista-64, being relatively compatible with all three (thus being capable of running 90%+ of all software written for them), yet barely supported by anyone). This makes it a bit of a challenge to get it working just right, but not impossible. c

I used the latest BWC Extended Core + Extended Kernel + all available updates (including the USP5 and UURollup). Notepad++ also works, although it's a bit clunky (and the toolbar appears to be broken). c

Yes, I've tried that, and it works (a bit clunky, but it works) on 2000. Also, JDK 8u117 works! Sorry, no screenshots to back it up, but I have installed it, and with a bunch of consternation, it does complete, and the end result is workable. c

That's excellent! Do drivers exist for HD4000 (Ivy Bridge) graphics? c

Why would NT share rise? NT 4.0 is more decrepit than even 95 (at least 95 has PnP), so I'm a bit perplexed. However, NT 4, at its core, is purely 32-bit, so I guess there's that. c

Yeah, I surmised as much. I don't think there is a way to disable the parallel or serial ports on a hardware level (indeed, the Mac Pro doesn't even have those ports, though some rudimentary support may remain in the chipset, causing the problem). Would it be enough to disable the drivers, if any, within Device Manager, I wonder? I'm inclined to believe that it's a clash with the BIOS emulation, though. Too bad simply installing an XP MPS HAL wouldn't work. Black Wing Cat is still actively developing KDW and Extended Kernel, so maybe he would consider incorporating patches that fix these issues? I doubt we could get HyperThreading support (that seems like it'd require a total rewrite, no?), but patching for these these Parallel/Serial Port and BIOS issues should be doable? c

Shame. It appears to be one of the few mainstream browsers to support native 64-bit operations on XP x64 (that I know of; ther could be others). Oh, well, at least the ESR of Firefox will still work in 32-bit mode (which seems adequate for most uses). c

XP x64 with Waterfox (a Firefox derivative that claims to support 64-bit operation under XP x64) works quite nicely with the modern world, despite being almost a year and a half past EOS. That being said, at least until 2019, XP x86 is probably safer due to the fact that it still receives security updates vis-à-vis POSReady 2009. c

I remember when Firefox 2.5 was current! It wasn't all that long ago. 2008, I think? If they hadn't adopted that rapid release nonsense that Google seemingly invented, we'd probably only just now be reaching Firefox version 10 c

I don't know, but apparently CS4 is the last to "officially" support XP or Vista. Subsequent versions can probably be made to work more or less via your method of adding functions and stuff to the kernel. c

That is most definitely a bug! How can someone have 4 TB of data on a 128 GB disk? There must be some excellent compression at work! @NoelCWhat happens if you try copying in the Disk Cleanup executable from either an earlier Windows 10 build or from Windows 8.x? c

And this is yet another reason why I refuse to downgrade to Windows 0! (no, that's not a typo!) I'm sorta feeling like Dibya. XP, for all it's technological deficiencies, represents the apex of the Windows UI, and everything thereafter is just meaningless medlling (yes, there are some newer features I like, but many, if not all the features I actually want can be added to XP via third party tools). That being said, XP x64 has a somewhat more modern, 64-bit kernel and architecture, yet retains the best of XP's UI. I use my Macs for most things, though, so I'm OK with even Windows 95 (though 2000 is my practical minimum for using Windows in a modern context (*maaaybe* 98SE, but that's stretching it quite thinly)). c

Doesn't the SP2/SP3 hal have important security patches and such? But, if it works, why bother with security ? I should give that another try (I think I tried it on my Mac Pro earlier this year, and it made things too unstable; perhaps it was because I did something wrong?) c

NoelC: My Mac Pro is quite similar to your system (I'm using x5680s though, because they offer 98% of the performance at 50% of the cost of a pair of x5690s), and XP handles 12 physical cores/24 logical cores perfectly (the 32 GB of RAM mostly goes to waste, but that's expected of any 32-bit OS, especially those with broken/absent PAE support). Windows 7 flies on it, and 8.1 is surprisingly decent, even with an old laptop drive as its boot disk (it was all I had at the time, and I didn't want to wipe any of the other 3.5" disks in my system). c

Yeah, I believe drives bigger than 2 TB won't work properly on XP 32-bit (you might be able to use a 3 TB drive formatted as GPT on 2k3 Server 32/64, but I don't know). There are some things XP simply can't do anymore (it's sad, I know). By the way, maybe XP *is* safer, if that many fewer CVEs were found? c

Indeed. I had forgotten about NoScript (which I've used before), and I installed it today. I have to say that, once I've got it tweaked just so, it really does speed things up. Stuff doesn't look quite as "pretty", but I don't care; all I want is the information (I'd have everything set up to look like it's 1996 if I could, as, in my opinion, the vast majority of sites from that time were simple and concise). Back on topic, though, Windows 8.1 really does feel sorta like a 7 SP3 once it's pounded into shape. 10 is in a league all its own though, and with it a strange obsession with useless changes that only make things worse. One could argue that it's been going on for decades, but they're now taking it to new heights never before seen in the industry (that I know of). c

I wouldn't be surprised. Bloat seems to be The Order Of Things nowadays. Gone are the times when people actually cared about making software efficient by saving resources like disk space, CPU cycles and RAM, which in turn ran faster because it was less bloated. The Internet is the worst offender, since even a "simple" web site nowadays brings my 2009 Mac Pro with dual six core X5680s and 32 GB of DDR3-1066 to its knees (that's inexcusable! Especially since it plows through everything else). Don't even think about my lesser machines! (my laptops are "slower", but they're based on newer gens of CPU architecture, so they're about the same as the Mac Pro). It's not just computers, either. My phone, an iPhone 6 Plus, was among the top of its class just a year and a half ago when I got it, but now when I try loading more than two or three of these wretched sites, it lags and stutters like nobody's business (the web browser has even crashed on me a couple of times because of it!) By 2001 standards, XP had a lot of bloat (and often slowed down modestly-specced contemporary computers that were only slightly dated when it was released), but looking back at it after 11 years of Vista et al, it doesn't look so bad, even with all the bloat it too has accumulated via updates and such. <end of rant> c

Wow! Based on that, I roughly figured out the amount of increase from version to version: NT 4.0 to 2000: ~3.6 times increase in disk usage 2000 to XP: ~2.3 times increase XP to Vista: 10.67 times increase! NT 4.0 to Vista: An incredible 88.89 times greater!!! Almost two orders of magnitude!!! Everything else since Vista have been relatively even from what I can tell (maybe 8.x and 10 are a bit more due to all the Metro App junk). c

I hate to be a naysayer, but it still seems to be trending downward, though? Although, I'm gratified that it is holding as steady as it is, and I hope it continues. c

In my experience, XP (and highly upgraded 2000 with BWC's Extended Core) work fine online. This is subject to change, however, as browser support gradually disappears (as it did with 9x from 2006 to 2013-ish). On the bright side, though, XP will still have ESR 52, which gives us at least two more years before things start going downhill. Vista is a sort of oddball, as it's somewhat 7-like, yet it's being treated like XP, so it will have the same problem in 2018. c

Maybe someone can make an up to date branch of ESR 52 that will continue to work on XP etc. after Mozilla drops it in 2018 (because, with the POS hack, XP would still have a good year of useful life left). Something for XP x64 would be nice too (Waterfox does, but I had issues running the latest version (put bluntly, it didn't), so an alternative based on the ESR would be better I think). TenFourFox, which did the same for PowerPC Macs, is alive and well, so I'm certain that it would be feasible, if someone is willing to do the work. c