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Hi, I just got this second-hand audio interface at the local music shop, and I was eager to try it out on XP, since it was officially supported (unlike my Focusrite, which is mentioned in another thread), but it won't work! I can get it to work perfectly on OS X and Windows 7, so I know the interface is working properly. It just won't work on XP, yet it is recognized and at least part of the driver installs correctly. Trouble is, it never syncs up with the computer, and it never shows up under Audio devices in Device Manager (it does on 7). So, I've surmised that it must be an XP problem. With that in mind, I reinstalled XP from scratch, and I still have the same issue. Anyone here have any ideas? It's not super critical that I get it working on XP, but it would be nice. c

Hi, I want to get the Windows 10 free upgrade (yes, maybe I'm crazy) because, well, it's free, and I have a disposable Windows 7 installation. Trouble is, when I go to check for updates, it just sits at "checking For Updates...". Any ideas? c

Well, I haven't had much recent experience with modern PCs in the last year or two, but I have used an Apple PowerBook G4 upon occasion (which is contemporary), and it didn't fare too well (I'd say barely usable, and perhaps useless if you need to do anything Flash-intensive, like Youtube). From what I've heard and read, though, those old P4's often have fared better, if only somewhat (probably because they were often clocked much higher than the G4s). That being said, if you can optimize it carefully (and max out the RAM, if possible), it should perform quite adequately for light to medium web browsing (don't expect it to play High Definition Youtube videos, though, at least not without some serious upgrades). c

Neat! Is there a changelog somewhere? You have done an excellent job with your site! c

Understood. I wasn't trying to be political. I was just stating that NoelC's statement applied very nicely to the current election. I don't want this thread locked. I'm really not liking MS OR Apple at this point, and may switch to Linux if I have to (to that end, the distro that JorgA posted a screenshot of looks intriguing (and remarkably Vista-like). I'll have to look into it.) c

Well stated. I won't get too political, but the way people are supporting a certain republican candidate terrifies me, and this statement very aptly describes that as well I think. c

I'm really disappointed by Microsoft on this one. I mean, really? That's such an obviously anti-competitive move on their part that it looks *really* bad, and what's worse is that nobody (beyond this forum) seems to be catching on to it, so far. And I don't mean this specific incident. It just serves as a convenient example of how this "new" Microsoft has become totally stupid (for all it's flaws, I like the "old" MS better, and even with all he did during his tenure as CEO, I think Bill Gates did a good job (for what it's worth, even Steve Ballmer did a better job of at least *attempting* to continue Gates' vision, although I found his handling of the Vista incident somewhat questionable). The new CEO seems to just want to copy Apple (which, granted, MS has done one way or another from the very beginning) and shove everything to "The Cloud", leaving us poor users with almost dumb terminals with ugly, difficult to use interfaces. With that, I have an older, low-budget laptop that I decided to do the "upgrade" on, and so far, I'm not totally impressed. The machine came with Windows 7, and can actually run XP with some work, but both run rings around 10! Not totally, unusably slow, but slow enough to be annoying (granted, it's not the fastest machine in the world, with an anemic single-core Celeron and 2 GB of RAM, so it's probably a bad example as it's not in its nature to be fast). So, I'll probably stick with XP and 7 on my main machines. c

OK, this will be somewhat off topic, but I want to say it: how come everyone hates Vista so much (save for those few passionate users who found it perfect)? It received a lot of bad press during it's initial release, I'm sure because of MS' mishandling of the "Designed for Windows Vista" thing, but every time I've used it, I've found it to be very decent, and in many ways actually quite reminiscent of XP, and with the classic theme and classic start menu enabled, one can barely tell the difference unless they look really closely. The same is true of Windows ME. Anyone remember that? Whenever I've used it, I've found it also quite decent as OSes go, and when configured properly, it's even a bit better than 98 (which, along with 95, is my one of my favorite OSes in the 9x series). OK, got that out of my system now. Carry on... c

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I'm glad you're feeling better! The driver is for Windows 7, and appears to be for both 32-bit and 64-bit. Since I have the hardware, please let me know if you need me to test anything. c

I'm sorry to hear that! Take care of yourself!! c

OK, I've extracted the drivers from the installer file given above and attached it for anyone interested in taking a peek: Saffire Pro 26 Drivers.zip Dibya: I know it hasn't quite been 20 days, but how's it coming along? Any luck?? c

Good point. If it's too hard, why bother? It's just that, since XP is so similar to 2000, and it works perfectly fine with multicore, then why doesn't 2000 work? I just want to know *why*. If it's too impractical to fix, then I'll let it go. c

OK, I got past the BSoD; apparently, I need /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN in boot.ini, or else it'll crash with that error. Nothing new with the choppiness, though after installing Classic Theme Restorer and enabling hardware acceleration in Firefox, it seems to be manageable (IE is a mess, though, but that's unimportant since I hardly ever use it for anything other than Windows Update). I've looked at the system event logs, and I didn't find anything that seemed like it was related to the GPU. One notable thing, though, is that the hibernate function is gone. Everything else seems normal. It's OK for now, but I'd still like to fix it eventually. c

Windows 2000: Because I can! Dibya: I totally agree! It's fine to have a single core (since it's super fast on it's own anyway), but the other 7 are just sitting there doing nothing. jaclaz: I pretty much figured that mup.sys was a red herring, since replacing it didn't do any good. c

OK, here is what I have so far regarding installation of Windows 2000 Pro on an Early 2008 Mac Pro: Using nLite and HFSLIP2000 on a Windows XP installation, I slipstreamed all the updates I could find into an untouched RTM Windows 2000 i386 folder. Then, I copied XP's NTDETECT.COM file into \i386, to allow the disk to boot on the Mac Pro. I preformatted the target hard drive in Windows so I don't have to wait ages for Windows 2000 setup to do it. When booting, I punched F5 to select "Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) Computer" so it'll boot. I'm trying to ascertain why the multiprocessor kernel won't boot; see below. Once Windows is up and running, I install any relevant drivers and BlackWingCat's Extended Core and Extended Kernel to gain full PAE support and to allow some XP apps to run. Done! Everything is working well in this configuration, except it seems to only be running off one core of one CPU (which I feel is a big waste of CPU power, since I have two quad-core CPUs installed for a total of 8 cores). No big deal, but little things like this really bother me! To that end, I've figured out which HAL's belong to which Kernels and added a bunch of boot.ini entries in an attempt to test each configuration, using /KERNEL and /HAL arguments to override the default selections (which are known to boot properly). So far, I've determined that both the ACPI Multiprocessor and ACPI Uniprocessor HAL+Kernel sets get as far as loading "mup.sys" before hanging. I've tried checking the boot logs and system event logs, but it never boots far enough for anything to be written, so the logs (as far as I can tell) are useless. It seems to me, based on my very limited testing, like it might be hanging on one or more of the initial drivers that get loaded just before the bootscreen shows up. Any ideas what they could be, and possible replacements? It seems the HAL and kernel themselves ARE loading properly, so perhaps they aren't the problem? Ideas (even speculation!) would be very helpful! c

Event logs? I did that, and it seemed to help *slightly*, but it's still problematic. I'll give that a try... after I figure out why I got a BSoD which reads "PAGE FAULT IN NON-PAGED AREA". (I can still use the standard unpatched kernel, so I'll go ahead and do this anyway w/o the PAE patch). c

OK, I've instead reinstalled XP on a *different* Mac Pro I just bought (an Early 2009, also with 32 GB of RAM), and so far, so good. I extracted PatchPAE3.exe from the fix128 installer, and then patched the relevant files (ntkrnlpa.exe and hal.dll) manually bypassing the Russian GUI. And it worked! Sorta.... I can see and use all 32 GB's of my RAM, but now, for some strange reason, video is very sluggish and choppy, as if the drivers aren't loaded (yet they are, as the video card is properly listed in Device Manager with no errors). Just for fun, I thought maybe I'd try installing the 32-bit Windows 7 driver from the Microsoft Update Catalog, as maybe there is a bug in the XP version of the driver that was subsequently fixed in the 7 version. If it doesn't work, I can always roll back to the current (apparently broken) XP driver. I'll try also looking for the official AMD/ATI drivers to see if that helps. In the meantime, any thoughts as to why this would happen, and/or possible solutions? c

Well, I've got it working more or less! The only problem is, it doesn't seem to see all 8 cores on my Mac Pro (it will only work in uniprocessor mode). All attempts to run the multiprocessor kernel have failed (it hangs just before the bootscreen). Any ideas on how to fix this? It's probably due to some sort of architectural peculiarity unique to this series of Apple machines. I should probably document more clearly exactly what I did so it can be repeated? c

Hi, I want to slipstream some recent POSReady updates into my XP install DVD, and, of course, they don't work. I checked out trying to modify the updates myself, but I can't figure out how. That being said, does someone have an archive of the latest updates (as of July 2016) pre-modified for installation onto/slipstreaming into standard XP? The specific updates I'm interested in are: KB2926765 KB3124280 KB3126041 KB3126587 KB3126593 KB3139914 KB3139940 KB3140709 KB3140735 KB3145739 KB3146963 KB3149090 KB3153171 KB3153199 KB3153731 KB3156013 KB3161561 KB3161664 KB3161949 KB3162835 KB3164033 KB3164035 Thanks! C

OK, after messing with drivers and stuff, I am not getting a BSoD I can't get around (it happens in safe mode too), so I'm going to have to reinstall. Oh, well. As long as I don't reformat again, it should be fairly quick. c

I am trying! So far, I've gotten to the "Starting Windows" progress bar, but it hangs just before the bootscreen. I suspect it is related to a bad HAL, so I'm trying again with a different one. I'll post any updates as they come. c EDITS: Update#1 - I'm scrapping the VMware Fusion idea, so I slipstreamed USP5.1 (to enable LBA48 during setup) and copied XP-SP3's NTDETECT.COM (to enable it to boot on the Mac Pro) into the install CD, so hopefully that'll work (so far, I've managed to boot the installer, which is promising, though it seems to be hanging at "Setup is starting Windows 2000"). Update #2 - OK, well I have discovered that selecting "ACPI Multiprocessor PC" causes setup to hang. Selecting "Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC" (as directed here) allowed setup to proceed, so it appears to be the only workable option. So, after clearing that up, setup has now been able to start successfully and is now (slowly) formatting the hard disk!* *XP's initial textmode setup has "Quick Format" options that are much faster. Is there any way I can get those in 2000's setup? Update #3 - We have liftoff! The *ridiculously* long formatting process has completed, and it has successfully booted into the GUI portion of setup!!! Yay!!! Update #4 - SUCCESS!! I have Windows 2000 Advanced Server fully installed and booted on my Mac Pro! Now to find at least some of the drivers necessary to get it somewhat usable. Anyone know if there was ever a Win2k-compatible driver for the AMD Radeon HD 5770?

Good point. However, all Intel-based Macs use EFI firmware with BIOS emulation, so I'd expect the Mac Pro to behave more or less identically to the Mini where booting is concerned. Once booted, however, the differences in the hardware come into play, and that is the uncharted territory I'm attempting to figure out here. And you're right again, in that if it were so simple, it would've been done hundreds of times, with lots of documentation to back it up. On the other hand, 2000 was old news by 2007, and many users at that time preferred to use XP (XP was still current and readily available at the time, whereas 2000 was no longer available at retail (as far as I know) and was nearing EOL). c

Hmm, well, I'll try it anyway and see. I've got nothing to lose. You think 2000 would autodetect and correct for the different hardware? c

Hmm, OK. I have VMware Fusion installed on my Mac, so I'm gonna try to link it to a real disk and install 2000 that way. Theoretically, it *ought* to work, and then I can use something like Winclone to put the whole thing on an internal disk or something. If it fails, I'll try what you suggest. EDIT: So far, 2000 within the VMware Fusion environment is happily installing on my external Firewire drive, so that's promising. c