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Thank you for this. That development post was especially interesting. I didn't realize that so much "10-isms" were (unfortunately) implemented with Windows 8.1. I wish I had known before I installed Windows 8.1 on an old laptop! I made a similar mistake.

Oops! Setting "layers.acceleration.force-enabled" to true in pref.js seems to have done the trick for Firefox 48. For Firefox 52, I made the core,ini changes that you listed, except I had to use Kstub824 instead of Kstub825 because it would cause explorer.exe to crash upon startup. Now everything works! Thank you!

Testing now, I was able to get Firefox 31 to run after setting Windows XP SP2 compatibility on Firefox.exe and xul.dll. However, Firefox 48 does not seem to work. After adding the XP DLLs files to the Firefox folder, it shows the loading cursor for a moment, but nothing else happens after that. No error message at all. Yes, I have the Kstub824 and Kstub825 and their respective ini files. Could it be something to do with the KernelEx Core.ini?

Out of curiosity, what would be some of the reasons to use Windows 8 as opposed to 8.1?

I recently setup a Windows ME installation on an IBM ThinkPad T42 and was curious to give this a try. I installed Microsoft Layer Unicode+ KernelEX 4.5.2 along with the various core updates from Jumper all the way up to v4.22.6658. The Firefox 52.9 ESR installer would freeze at the end, so I had to extract the files with 7-Zip. Firefox.exe and xul.dll are both set to Windows XP SP2 compatibility mode in the KernelEx properties (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\KernelEx\AppSettings\Configs\XUL.DLL="NT2K" was also deleted). I put the mentioned Windows XP SP2 DLL files into the Firefox folder and put ucrtbase.dll version 10.0.14393.33 into the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. I've also edited the dependentlibs.list like so. However, even after following all of the steps in the initial post, I am unfortunately not able to get Firefox 52.9 ESR to run. It gives an error "Couldn't load XPCOM" each time. This really has left me quite stumped. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

From a purely technical and compatibility basis, would you guys recommend updating to v117 or sticking to v115 ESR? Edit: How far can Windows 8.1 go?

Beta versions of Windows 10 were originally known as Windows NT 6.4. It isn't exactly a stretch to assume they bumped the kernel version up to 10.0 to match its name.

Firefox is my main browser. It was formerly Pale Moon, but the bloated web started to take its toll and some websites refused to work properly. In many respects, Google Chrome has become the new Internet Explorer and it isn't hard to come across a website that only properly works under Chrome. I refuse to be subjected to Google's spyware where possible, however, so I only use it when absolutely necessary (and specifically - Ungoogled Chromium, at that). Firefox is far from perfect. Their Quantum update and rebrand seemed to have been done in an attempt of attracting Chrome users while in reality only serving to alienate their existing user base. Firefox simply can't compete with Google's monopoly over the web. It will never be the fastest browser (many suspect non-Chrome browsers are purposefully throttled on sites such as YouTube), but it was at one point the clear winner in terms of features and customization. I could go on, but you probably get the idea. With that being said, my wishful hope is that Mozilla understands the importance of keeping Windows 7 & 8 support. I couldn't possibly know what their usage statistics on those operating systems say or what exactly their ultimatum will be for eventually ending support, but I hope it's pushed back as far as possible. For those of us left on Windows 7 & 8, likely disillusioned with Microsoft's current direction, it's only going to get more difficult. Undoubtedly, there will be unofficial browsers (as there have been already) but having official support is still quite important.

I think another problem is hardware support. Vista cannot be installed on anything following Intel's Ivy-Bridge. Some users have luck with AMD's Ryzen, but most people still have Intel systems. It may seem odd (and it is), that Vista doesn't install on anything after Ivy-Bridge, considering a lot of Windows 7 drivers actually work on Vista. This is further exemplified with Windows XP, which is left with scarce NT5.x drivers on newer hardware, but yet, actually can install with proper SATA drivers. I'm sure there are a few members here that would install Vista on second partition if it were practical. Security and FUD certainly play a role in the declining market-share. Although most FUD was centered around XP, Windows 7's "your computer will explode if you use the internet" day is coming quickly. Some people who have Vista probably see Windows 7's EOL as a reminder or something of the sort. Most of all however, is browser support. Roytam1's Pale Moon and Firefox 56(?) back-ports are excellent, but the average user is only going to think about Chrome and Firefox which are both no longer updated.

MacOS and Windows 7 is only a difference of 6% and Linux is more popular than Windows 8.x? These metrics seem a bit skewed. MacOS is tied to Apple's hardware, which means that it will be virtually impossible for it to beat Windows 7 which was pre-installed on almost everything that isn't Apple's from 2009-2015. Windows 8.x may not have caught on, but Linux is still very much a niche market outside of servers. Netmarketshare tells us a completely different story , which further indicates this.

This is really sad, I recognized that name anywhere when it came to 9x enhancements. Rest in peace.

EDIT: This method has recently obtained noticeable popularity, and seeing the troubles of other users and more confusing methods on places such as YouTube, I thought it might be a good idea to revise and clarify this a little. Despite the fact that the damage has already been done, perhaps people who come across this topic can be helped. HOW TO FIX ROBLOX ON WINDOWS XP, VISTA, SERVER 2003, and SERVER 2008. I realize this topic is a few days old, but it is now August 30th which means we can see what this actually means. I'm actually quite surprised that they have continued support for this long, but like most companies, have finally fallen to the wrath of Microsoft. Anyway, I have not really played Roblox in years, but I decided to see what could be done for XP and Vista players now that support has officially ended. Open launching a game we greeted with this error message. This is the same usual crap that is endlessly spewed about and of course depends on your definition of 'secure'. I wouldn't really consider the inescapable mass data collection in Windows 10 'secure' either. Moving past this, download your favorite Hex editor. I choose Hex Workshop, but it really does not matter. You can find Roblox's installation folder by simply right-clicking on the Roblox shortcut and selecting 'Find target' (On Vista, it is called "open file location"). On my installation it was installed in the following: If for some reason you cannot find Roblox's installation directory, simply re-download the RobloxPlayerLauncher by clicking the "Download and install Roblox" website prompt after the client gives you the unsupported error. In fact, I recommend this even if you can find the directory because some users reported problems while editing the launcher found within the directory. Open your Hex Editor. (The following instructions will assume you have HexWorkshop, but it should be a similar process no matter what you use. Open 'RobloxLauncher.exe' in your Hex Editor. You can simply drag-and-drop the RobloxPlayerLauncher into your editor, or click the open file button and find it yourself (wherever you saved the launcher to, for example: Downloads). Next, press ctrl key and then 'F' You should see a search dialog box appear. There should be an option for what you want to search for, select "text string" in the drop down. Search for the text string "XpVistaDeprecationLevel". It should now be highlighted. Next, right click on the selection and press 'Fill'. There should be a prompt asking what you want to replace the data with. Simply type '0' into the field. When your done it should become something like this: Now try launching RobloxPlayer again... The client should have updated successfully, now go to the website and play a game: Roblox is now once again working on XP, Server 2003, 2008, and Vista! I'm not sure how long this will work for, if what they say is true, dependencies will become a problematic in the future. Hope this helps you and other players who are having this same problem!

Maybe this isn't the best answer, but you could always just use a PS/2 mouse instead of a USB one. Alternatively, if you like the mouse that you are using, you can get a USB to PS/2 adapter that simply emulates your USB mouse as a PS/2 mouse. If for some reason your computer lacks a PS/2 port, you could also get a PCI PS/2 card.

Someone may have mentioned this before, but Windows Vista seems to run fine with Haswell if it is installed on another computer and then the hard drive is moved to a Haswell system. I tried this with Windows Vista 32-bit (but it should work with any version) and had no problems arise. I didn't install drivers or do any extensive testing but it seemed to be fine. This was with a Q87 motherboard and an i7-4790 CPU. I do plan on setting up the OS properly in the future, so I'll see if anything changes.

This is a very interesting idea and it would be really nice to see this working. This is also a huge undertaking, so I wonder if it would possible to make this a collective effort. Surely this would benefit countless enthusiasts, would it not?

Microsoft seems to know that there is a large amount of people who are sticking with Windows 7 (and with good reason) by now. Why they have selectively ported features (Edge, and now DX12 for some games) from 10 to 7 is a bit mind boggling though, especially in the last year of support. It's welcome, I guess, if you have a use for DX12, but you would think they would still continue to try and force users to 10 as they have continuously done in the past.

Very sad to see this come to an end, but as others have said, software compatibility is more important than software updates. The thing that I would be most concerned about now is the time remaining before Microsoft Update v6 goes offline forever. This is a very real scenario as this is could possibly be the last patches any version of XP will ever receive, meaning it can be closed. Windows Update v4 was closed in 2011 which IIRC handled NT, 95, 98, ME, and 2000 >SP4. Support for 98 and ME ended in 2006, but there was info regarding a version of NT that was supposedly supported until 2011. We can't really know for certain when it will go offline, perhaps tomorrow, or in 5 years, but when it does, installing and updating W2K and XP will only get more difficult from then on.

I saw some dentistry commercial on television a few weeks ago that had a computer in the background that was running XP. There was also a cash register computer running Windows XP Pro. at a thrift store that I saw a few months ago. Unfortunately I couldn't get a picture because there were a few people working behind the desk.

Opera 10.63 can also be made to work on 95. Normally, it only runs under NT4 and newer, but editing some functions in the application fixes the problem. It is by far the best browser for 95. It's from 2010 and even has some HTML5 support (think IE9). Link to edited version: http://danika.jukor.net/opera1063win95.html I wonder if this version could be made to work on NT 3.51?

Well, I used HFSLIP to create an updated W2KAS CD. Was able to install Extended Core and KernelEX. I couldn't get the GTX 750 TI to work even with the BWC's unofficial drivers. The chipset drivers that I had used for XP (from Optiplex 7010 which supported XP) failed to install with an unknown error, even after installing nonofficial .net framework 3.x and using FCWIN2K. So, basically XP will work fine on this unsupported system. Make sure you use drivers from the optiplex 7010 (or 9010 if using 9020) as they are similar in design and it supports XP. Ethernet works with Intel's networking drivers from XP embedded and Server 2003. XP 64-bit should also work, but I haven't tried it. Anything older than XP is just too difficult.

I looked this up and saw that this laptop shipped with Widows XP SP2, correct? Do you know if NT4 is officially supported, and if not, what other versions are supported on it?

Well, I will continue trying regardless. I was able to get networking working (no pun intended) by taking a Realtek PCI networking card out of Celeron Windows 98 system. I ended up reinstalling to fix that integrity error. (This is NOT necessary, there is an update which fixes it available through Windows Update!) [First reinstall] Installed again, began fully updating, installed BWC's Extended Kernel, but then realized that I left the Windows 7 drive in the machine during W2K installation which means that W2K is the 'D' Drive. This is a problem because the Windows 7 C:\ drive is inaccessible in W2K and GPU drivers require the C drive to install files. [Second reinstall] Installed again, this time while removing the 7 drive during installation so that W2K sees itself as 'C:\'. Installed various updates, made sure the system was fully updated through WU (except SP4 rollup due to multicore issues). Installed Extended Kernel and rebooted. This caused the boot time to take about 10 minutes (after the splash screen) and I could no longer log into the system with an error similar to "The system could not log you on because the domain [DOMANNAMEHERE] is not available". (I selected Workgroup, not domain during the install). The only major difference between the last time was that I did not install the SP5.1; I've never had problem with the Kernel before. [Third reinstall] Installed again, got sound working, updated most updates from WU (except SP4 rollup due to multicore issues). Installed Kernel and get the same issue as last time. The reason the boot time was so slow becomes apparent when I saw that the HDD access light would only periodically blink about every 4 seconds. The reason the login didn't work seems to be that it just timed out as it would try logging in for about 30 seconds before giving the error. So close, yet so far. Not even sure at this point which order things should be applied. With so many updates, both official and unofficial, it is difficult to track down what causes this odd behavior.

What is Microsoft's reasoning for this? Better yet, why does the chromium engine have to be used for everything? Do people not remember what happened the last time a certain browser had too much market share?

Hello. It seems like only a little while ago I was asking for help to get audio drivers on an old AMD system. Well, that system is starting to show its age (especially the iGPU) and is having trouble with newer running software. So I moved the hardrive with the W2K to the new machine: Dell Optiplex 7020 i7-4790 (Haswell) Intel Q87 chipset ~Limited XP embedded support GTX 750 ti ~XP driver available 8 GB DDR3 500 GB HDD + 320 GB HDD (Windows 2K) Now, this presents a problem as XP support is limited on systems newer than Ivy-bridge and 2000 is non-existent. I also had a partition of XP on the 2K drive and was able to install almost all drivers except USB 3.0 (XP has limited support anyway) and an SM Bus controller. So I started installing Windows 2000 Advanced Server SP4 over the old 2K SP4 Professional installation. I made sure to change the BIOS to ATA mode before the installation (That was the only other option). Windows 2000 SP4 installation went smoothly until it hanged on "Setup is starting Windows 2000". I searched this forum and saw that the communications port needed to be disabled because the W2K setup incorrectly identifies it as a floppy disk controller. After that was resolved, W2K installed with no issue except while it was detecting devices. Two error dialog came up with errors pertaining to "usbhub20.sys". After the system finished setup, it rebooted to a BSOD with this message: Safe Mode could not be used to overcome this, so I booted into the Windows 7 drive and deleted the usbhub20.sys and backed it up in another folder. This allowed W2K to boot, but with no USB 2.0 support. I heard that W2K has issues with USB 2.0 on newer hardware because it has old drivers. The device manager shows many unknown devices. The most important of these are USB 2.0, Networking, and graphics drivers. The first thing I attempted to do was install the Windows XP embedded network drivers for this chipset (https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24555/Intel-Ethernet-Drivers-for-Microsoft-Embedded-Operating-Systems?v=t these worked fine on the XP partition). When I use the device manager to install the drivers, W2K states that it was unable to locate a driver for the device, even if I specify the directory. I do have a wireless USB networking adapter that supports XP, but without USB 2.0 there is no hope of getting that to work. I decided to just try updating Windows 2000, starting with IE6 SP1 and the SP4 update rollup 1. The next thing I went to install was IE6SP1-KB2817183-x86 but upon trying to install this it states "Setup could not verify the integrity of the file Update.inf. Make sure the Cryptographic service is running on on this computer". I tried using Start>Run and using regsvr32 to register dlls as suggested online, but sccbase.dll cannot be found and the problem is not resolved. At this point I am wondering if I should abandon this altogether, and be happy with XP (after fixing Win2K's corruption of XP, that is). Help is greatly appreciated!

Windows Media Player 7.1 will also install on NT 4.0 as well as 95. One thing I noticed though is that it can give a "MonitorFromWindow" error but I don't remember the specifics since its been about a month. You can even install official patches and hot fixes that were released for it; they work just fine despite what MS would leave you to believe. It's likely that it was once officially supported for 95 and NT4 (maybe even 3.51) but was scrapped for whatever reason.