Snear

Maybe someone should start a new thread "Community builds for XP" or something like that. That would make it much easier to find the new builds.

I guess no one posted it yet, right? I can't find it on RyanVM.

Even if they are - it is still unclear to me, why the same browser (same executable!) runs so much faster on WIn7 x86 than on Win XP Pro. It has to do something with Windows XP. I never recognized this behaviour for other software. It might have something to do with memory management, network traffic or network connection. I was hoping that someone knows, but it seems it is kind of a mystery.

I am using roytam1's great browser builds and I am always wondering, why are they running so slow when using XP. The same browser build used with Win 7 (32 or 64 Bit) runs much much faster. Ads are not the problem, neither is the agent string used. Even if there is nothing I can do about it, I am interested in the reason. Here is one site which is free of ads and shows up pretty quickly in Windows 7 with roytam1's KM-Goanna, Basilisk and PalemoonXP, but won't even load completely in Windows XP: https://www.binance.com/de/trade/BTC_USDT PS: No discussion about crypto's please.

Well, I wouldn't say it has been released... it has been leaked. Repositories with the source code are taken down as quickly as they show up. Pretty heavy fight going on right now...

Right, no MS XP SP3 contains it. Get the chipset drivers for the Asus AM1I-A Motherboard: https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AM1IA/HelpDesk_Download/ This package contains a huge set of AMD drivers - probably the latest you can get for XP. The ahcix86.sys V3.1.1540.86 is located in XP\Packages\Drivers\SBDrv\SB6xx\RAID\XP\ Some of these drivers, for example the drivers for the integrated graphics card of the AM1 processors, are not even available at the AMD website. As far as I know, the AM1 platform did not even support XP, but the drivers from Asus work perfectly on every AM1 mainboard - and any other AM2/AM3 mainboard.

Here is the list: ahcix86.sys V3.1.1540.25 works ahcix86.sys V3.1.1540.86 works ahcix86.sys V3.1.1540.127 (newer) does NOT work and cannot be even installed ahcix86.sys V3.2.1540.35 does NOT work ahcix86.sys V3.3.1540.29 does NOT work I have several versions of XP Pro. Some versions are original products from Microsoft and some are OEM versions from Compaq, HP, Dell and Medion. I checked about a dozen CDs. As it turned out, the ahcix86.sys V3.1.1540.86 is only part of Dell OEM versions of XP Pro. I checked a server mainboard with a AMD SP5100 southbridge: exactly the same behaviour. All tested controllers (SB700/SB800/SP5100) have the same hardware id: VEN1002&DEV_4391. All versions of ahcix86.sys support this hardware id, although the various versions seem to be designed for different chipsets. I downloaded the latest chipset drivers for XP and V3.1.1540.86 is the newest version for the SB600. But it does not seems to be a problem to mix things up. The ahcix86 driver in folder SB800 works perfectly with SB700 and vice versa. Using the V3.1.1540.86 (designed for SB600 with SATA-II 3Gb) at a SB800 (SATA-III 6Gb) still gives full speed (reading at 394MB/sec with a SSD, which is not possible with SATA-II).

Found an even newer version: 3.3.1540.29. The 5 TB HDD does not show up in the disk manager. It seems like this "virtual sector size" feature was part of some early version of the AMD AHCI driver, but has been removed eventually.

The V3.1.1540.25 AHCI driver works - the 5TB HDD is accessible. V3.1.1540.127 is corrupted in some way. I can't make it run. If I switch back to V3.2.1540.35, the drive vanishes from the disk manager.

The disk manager does list the hard disc in IDE mode, but it is shown with the wrong size. I made some further tests with the J&W Minix 780G (SB700) mainboard. In all tests in AHCI, I used the driver rcxpahci.sys V6.1.3.00035 from 2014. I integrated this driver in order to let the drive show up during the installation of XP Pro. What I did not recognze so far: it is actually only being used as a textmode driver. XP Pro SP3 has its own PNP AHCI driver: ahcix86.sys V3.1.1540.86. I then tried a different one: ahcix86.sys V3.2.1540.35 from 2009. And suprise - I do not see the 5TB drive in the disk manager. It is only shown in the device manager. It seems like the AHCI driver is responsible for creating some kind of virtual sectors, but it looks like it's version dependent. I have two more versions to check: 3.1.1540.25 and 3.1.1540.127

Some news: No tools involved, it works with a clean Win XP Pro Installation including all POSReady updates. It requires AHCI to be enabled . If I switch to Legacy IDE in the BIOS and install the same version of Windows, it won't work. Of course, I need to integrate ahcix86.sys in order to boot from a SATA drive. Please note that I did not yet try to boot from the 3TB or 5TB drive. I only use them as data disks. It works on Asus M5A88-M (SB850) and J&W Minix 780G (SB700) mainboard. The drive is not readable using linux. I tried dozens of tools. No success. I can use the entire disk space. I don't have any Intel hardware to test. I am going to test another mainboard AM3+ mainboard with a SB950, an Asus AM1 board and a HP Thin Client T610. Happy new year!

It's not the hot swap case - it works without. I have never heard of the DiscWizard Extended Capacity Manager - we can rule that one out, too. I am currently filling the entire disc with data to check out if it's actually usable. And I am going to use the same ahcix86.sys on my other PCs with Win XP Pro and switching them to AHCI (they are running in IDE mode right now). I will also try to read the drive with linux. It might take 2 or 3 days until my next post, but I will continue to report about any progress I made. And of course, I am not going to use the 5 TB HDD for important data until I exactly know what's going on...

By the way, I did not install any Asus tools, which might have been shipped along with the mainboard. I always install clean drivers for LAN,USB3 and Chipset.

Asus M5A88-M running in AHCI mode.

I did not move the sharkoon drive bay, but connected them directory to a SATA port. But as already mentioned - it works on the "magical" XP system without a drive bay. BTW, I got three USB-HDD-enclosures for SATA drives and tried them out, but the drives never show up in the disk management tool.