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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

Indeed. Most of the drivers Apple provided, though, seem to have combined XP/W2k drivers, so I suspect they'll work equally as well on both OSes. I've installed XP many times on this particular machine, so that works 100%. By generic image, though, do you mean something like installing it on a regular PC, removing the hard drive from that PC, and cloning it onto a drive in the Mac? That could work. The only issue is MBR vs. GPT (I highly doubt 2000 understands GPT, as even XP is iffy with it). The Mac will boot from MBR-only disks though (except I won't be able to choose the disk via the Startup Disk preference pane; no big deal there), so it should be fine. c

jaclaz: Thanks! That's exactly what I wanted to know!! Since the documented process of replacing the NTDETECT.COM file seems generic enough, the process of installing it on the Mac Pro should be identical to that of the Mini (though I'm not sure what setup will do if it finds a pair of quad core processors instead of a single dual core one; I suspect it'll work fine, as multiple physical processors were a thing when 2000 was released (I might want to try advanced server or something like that, though, as it has proper PAE support so I can use all 32 GB's of my RAM)). I shall give it a try at some point today and report back any news.... c

Hi, I'm just wondering if anyone has done this successfully, since I would like to experiment with it. c

OK, I just thought I'd bring this up again, as I noticed something strange. On this same computer (2008 Mac Pro), the same thing happened under Windows 7 with 100% official updates (the mouse cursor froze). However, it recovered after I left it in standby for a few minutes. This suggests that it may be a hardware issue of some kind. I wonder if XP would've done the same? If/when I get around to reinstalling it, I'll have to give that a try. Thanks, c

I have a link in the first post, but here it is again for convenience: Saffire MixControl 3.4 The driver itself is hidden inside the installer somehow, but it's there. I hope you can get something working, and I'll gladly test anything that you come up with as you go! c

Yes, I realize that it is "officially" unsupported on XP! The point of this topic was to see if it is at all possible to hack the drivers (or XP itself) such that it works on the unsupported system. People here have done so many wondrous things with XP (4+ GB on XP 32-bit, XP USP4, etc.) that I thought maybe *someone* had an idea as to how my audio interface could be made to work. Of course, if it's absolutely impossible to modify an existing driver (necessitating the reverse engineering of all the protocols used in the noncompatible driver and writing an XP-compatible one from scratch), then I'll just accept that and either 1) not use my interface under XP, or 2) go find the legacy version of the interface that is natively XP-compatible. c

Hi, I would like to do some audio recording under XP, but it would seem that my interface is only compatible with Windows 7 and up. The drivers don't have any checks to see what OS they're on, so they blindly install on XP (I do get the "driver not signed" dialog, though), which of course causes everything to freeze quite hard. That being said, I'm wondering how easy it would be to modify the driver such that it wouldn't crash, and if not the driver, maybe update/hack/patch XP somehow? The driver is contained within saffire-mixcontrol-3.4.exe and can be downloaded here for the curious. Thanks, c

OK. That makes more sense. I'll try it and see. Any idea what the checkboxes mean? c

OK, I got the fix128, but I can't figure out how to use it since its UI is in Russian (which I can't understand) Also, the problem seems to be affecting Firewire as well, so maybe it's just some sort of incompatibility with a recent update? I'll try reinstalling standard XP with SP3 and only official updates to establish a baseline, then I'll add stuff from there. Thanks for the help! c

There's also the problem that more and more, wireless routers, access points, and smartphone hotspots are only supporting WPA2 and dropping WPA and WEP compatibility. Fortunately, having an open (unsecured) network is still an option for the most part, but that does of course negate the whole point of this discussion. c

Hmm, I will give it a try... once I figure out how to get it! There's a link on a Russian forum, but I need to join it to be able to download. EDIT: I decided to just register and download the thing. I'll try applying it shortly. c

OK, I have everything back up and running now, and I now have it rigged to boot from a custom kernel, with the standard one as a fallback so I don't have to reinstall. It would seem that with some update, the kernel files were updated from 5.1.2600.6748 (the version of the kernel with the known working 4+ GB Patch, hereafter referred to as 6748) to 5.1.2600.7053 (the version which disables the patch, hereafter referred to as 7053). When I try booting with ntoskrnl.exe 6748, everything works, but there's no PAE (and the patch doesn't happen anyway). However, when I try to boot with ntkrnpa.exe 6748, I get a stop error (page fault in non paged area). So, is it possible to reapply the patch to the 7053 kernel files, because it would seem that something has changed and the old version with the patch will no longer boot properly (unless I'm missing something?) Is there some patcher program that can patch the US English versions of these files? I know there's a Chinese version, but I don't know if it'd work. Thanks! c p.s. USB will have to wait until I get this sorted out, because I suspect the two problems might be related somehow.

That's what I did! Anyway, it's moot now, as the installation blew up in my face last night, forcing a reinstall. Thanks! c

I have version 4.4 of MSE on XP w/ USP4, and it works fine? It updates like it always has. c

OK, I happened to have an install of W2k3 on my file server and copied the file. No change (however, there's \Windows\System32\dllcache and \Windows\Driver Cache that SFP uses. Could this explain why it didn't work?) Thanks, c

Hi, After using strictly Windows 7 for awhile, I once again installed XP with USB 4 on my 2008 Mac Pro (on which I previously had XP running perfectly fine for years). That is not the case this time, though. Whenever I plug in a flash drive, it's like XP freaks out and cuts off all USB related things, including, most unfortunately, the keyboard and mouse. If I leave my flash drives unplugged, it seems to work fine (I'm using XP now). I've installed a bunch of updates, but I'm not sure if it was that which messed it up, or something else. Regardless of why, I want it fixed. Any ideas? Less urgently, I also would like to ask how to reapply the 4 GB patch to a live installation without a reinstall, as a recent update seems to have undone it (I'm back to 1.99 GB usable out of 32 ). I have the 4GB Patch "baked" into the slipstreamed installation disk I made up, so I can easily reinstall if I must, but I'd rather avoid that if possible. Thanks! c

Hi, This looks very interesting, and I'd like to give it a try. However, does anyone have it all packaged up so I can just unzip an archive and execute a .reg file to add all the needed registry entries? Or maybe an installer of some sort? I can try to figure out how to do it by myself when I get more time, but something like that would be nice. c

Changing the font worked. Thanks! It also got ClearType working (apparently) via RP9.7, so that's good too. How would I go about updating MS Sans Serif in the future so that it would work as well? c