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It's amazing. That one feature has endured from Windows 98 (or 95 with Active Desktop Update), where it was first introduced, all the way through 7 and 8.x, where it was deprecated in favor of "pinning." Like XP, the Quick Launch simply won't die So, since it's now been rediscovered yet again, it's probably the *only* thing in W10 that's actually good, Right? c

vinifera: I agree wholeheartedly! I'm sick to death of flat and boring. This whole anti-skeumorpism movement has gone too far. iOS 6 was the last Apple iPhone OS to have the nice, 3D, skeumorphic look. iOS 7+ is okay, but I prefer the old look. Likewise with Snow Leopard, though Mavericks is okay too (Yosemite is when it starts to get ugly). And the Windows Classic theme is superbly usable and looks clean and crisp. One of my gripes regarding Windows 8 is that the classic theme can no longer be enabled. It's still buried in there, but it's half broken now, and the methods I know of are incomplete and glitchy at best, which only adds insult to injury. Oh, well. It still beats Windows 10 any day! c

That's dreadful! I shudder at the thought of a Windows 10-powered microwave or refrigerator. That being said, maybe it doesn't have the telemetry nonsense. That, if nothing else, would be an improvement. c

Ah, I see. Could one redirect all calls to their proper XP versions instead of the WinVista/7/8/8.1 ones, for example: redirect calls from to user32.dll to, say, user32_xp.dll? And have it work?? It might be worth trying on something innocuous, like DESK.CPL. Couldn't hurt to try. It'd likely be useless, but whatever. It *could* be modified to seek display/appearance settings in their proper Vista/7/etc places instead of the expected 2000/XP ones, but I'm not certain how trivial that would be. c

Would that version be exempt from the seemingly arbitrary block? I suppose the only way to find out would be to give it a try. c

Has anyone figured out how to run the old DESK.CPL (or, indeed, any .CPL from XP or 2000) on Vista and newer with their native interfaces relatively intact? I ask because I don't like the "webby" control panels tremendously. They're OK, and they're certainly better than Windows 10 in my opinion, I just want to see if I can somehow get some of the tried-and-true interfaces back. c

I hate this! I don't want to pay a subscription for everything. What happens if you don't pay? They'll shut down your computer and Windows will refuse to boot again until you pay up for the month (plus a late fee, to add insult to injury). Sounds like the beginnings of ransomware-like behavior to me. c

Reading this and other similar threads, I've been recommending all my friends to upgrade back to Windows 7, and I'm testing the viability of moving to a carefully-tuned 8.1 when 7's support is dropped. However, I have recently chosen not to give in to all the fear mongering ("one MUST run the latest, most up to date software on the latest, most up to date hardware AT ALL TIMES, or the entire Internet will die"). So, with that, I will begin running XP as my main Windows OS again, hardware permitting (running XP on modern hardware has become increasingly difficult, and in some cases, impossible, so I'll run 7 in those cases). The main thing I'd need a newer version of Windows for (Pro Tools) I use on a Mac anyway, so there's nothing holding me back. c

I'll look into it. In the meantime, this post provides some very promising information that could allow me to have a proper driver. Of course, I won't know until I try. c

OK. I'll give that a try tomorrow when I'm home. c

I don't have to do that; the executables themselves run fine. They're just being artificially blocked from accessing Dropbox's servers. I suspect there's a version check of some kind, and if it reports that it's running on XP, it will not connect. If we can fake the version being reported, I think it will work. Problem is, I don't know how to do it. c

I read that Dropbox recently ended support for Windows XP, but I want to use it anyway because I'm gradually shunning everything MS has made since (except maybe Windows Vista and 7 ) I came across a hack that allowed the application to work on Mac OS X Leopard (which became unsupported sometime last year), so in principle it should be possible to do the same for XP. Sooo... anyone done it yet? c

I don't remember what version of the Crimson drivers I used, but when I edited the INF to include references for XP (aka NT 5.x), I was able to get them to install, but they error-ed out with a Code 10 or 39 (can't recall which). Simply getting them to install is half the battle, right? c

Have you been able to do anything with the AMD A6 APU w/ Radeon R4 Graphics drivers I posted above? c

OK, I'm bringing this fine, seven year old thread back from the dead because it's relevant to my problem I am experiencing the same problem on a 2009 Mac Pro with 28 GB of RAM. I have XPx64 installed on the first HDD (Bay 1, aka SATA port 1), so that can be checked off. I do have a bent pin in one of the CPU sockets, which has killed one of the RAM slots (otherwise I'd have 32 GB), but every other OS (OS X, Win 7x64, WinXP x86) runs perfectly?? Help??? c

Is it possible to get this driver working on XP? EDIT: I have modified the inf file so it installs on XP now, but it fails to load with an error of code 39. Presumably, this is because it depends on some functions that the XP kernel doesn't have. Therefore, they ought to work if the needed dependencies are met. c

OK, I have it running fairly well now, except there's no GPU driver (anyone know of a modified-for-XP driver for the Radeon 4 series?), and I'm stuck with no ACPI support (so no standby, I have to manually power the machine off when I shut Windows down, and it only sees one CPU core). I'd like to fix at least the ACPI issues, but when I try from setup, it dies as described in my last post, and when I try the workarounds on the installed system, it crashes and BSoD's every time I boot. If anyone has any other ideas (patched files, registry workarounds), I'm all ears! Oh, well. I'm surprised it works at all. c

OK. Well, I got it past the AHCI issue, but now the computer shuts off for no reason after I hit enter to go forth into Win XP x64 setup. I'll try 32-bit XP and see what happens. EDIT: It works fine otherwise with Windows 8.1. EDIT #2: It does the same thing with XP 32-bit. What's going on?! EDIT #3: Success! Hitting F5 and selecting "Standard PC" on XP 32-bit has allowed setup to proceed normally, so far. I wanted XP 64-bit, but that'll have to wait I guess, as there is no "Standard PC" option. I will also try to download that driver pack, as it seems like a very handy thing to have. c

I am now in possession of the machine once again, so I will try the modded drivers. I'm gonna try XP x64 too, just to see how it works (it seems I have better luck using Vista drivers (should none exist for 32-bit XP) with 64-bit XP for some reason). c

Hmm, OK. Your system is better Hmm, I decided to do a quick search, and I came across this page, which compares the 5770 and the 7850. Despite the extra GB of VRAM in the 7850, it appears to be quite similar in overall performance to the 5770. c

Here's mine: At first glance, you might say it's XP with a windows 7 Ultimate caption in the start menu, but it's not! This is a genuine Windows 7 Ultimate desktop, tweaked to look as close to XP as I can make it. Tweaks used: Classic Shell 4.3.0 with XP Classic Retro skin, Black and Blue variation, slightly adjusted to get it somewhat closer in feel to the real thing. Classic XP-style Start Button 7+ Taskbar Tweaker Winaero Tweaker for the classic shortcut arrow I also took icons from a real XP installation and applied them over their 7-based counterparts. The only thing I need to work on is the system tray. It still uses the okay, but bland looking 7 icons. I want the XP icons there too, but I haven't learned how to do it, yet. c

Yeah, I got that yesterday. I installed it, but I don't know why it would affect anyone outside of Egypt? Too bad this can't be don with XP x64 and some sort of 64-bit POS embedded (an XP/2003-derived version of which, to my knowledge, doesn't exist). c

That's probably what I'll do with my 2009 Mac Pro (which will soon be upgraded to dual Xeon X5680s @ 3.33 GHz, so it'll be a close match to your system (I have 32 GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon HD 5770 GPU. How much RAM and what GPU do you have?) It ought to handle just about anything I can throw at it without breaking a sweat... I fully intend to keep XP and 7 on the side, though (I triple-boot OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Windows 7 SP1, and Windows XP USP4 now, with a spare drive set aside for another OS (I was going to put OS X 10.11 El Capitan on it, but I think I'll put Windows 8.1 on it instead). I think I may try getting Windows 2000 on here too, just to see if it'll work). c

Maybe I'm weird, but I actually like the BOB-inspired animated XP dog He's useless (for searching files, anyway), but he's just a nice, cute little bit of eye candy. Anyway, since it's probably in our best interests to avoid Windows Update now, what difference does it make if I run, say, Windows 2000 (which hasn't been updated by MS for at least 6 years) instead of anything else? Because 2000 is: *Light and fast on modern hardware that supports it *Free of any activation or WGA nonsense *Capable of being retrofitted with BWC's Extended Core so it can run the current version of Firefox and various other programs I've been thinking of using it instead of XP because, basically, since it's very close to XP in terms of compatibility nowadays *anyway*, why not run 2000 instead? XP does have some genuine improvements, though (and it more fully supports my 2008 Mac Pro, upon which 2000 cannot, for whatever reason, support multiple CPUs/cores), so I'm not going to drop it. It was just a thought. c

That does it! Now I KNOW MS has gone off the deep end! They've never been great, but, if nothing else, one could at least control Windows somewhat in the not too distant past. Windows 10, for better or worse, is here to stay, so I guess this means I won't be using anything past 8.1 anymore (if even that). This is making Windows XP and (if not affected) Windows Vista look better and better. c