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Thanks for the info! I don't use an antivirus but have tried a few in the past. If I was forced into a situation where I had to use one, I'd take ClamAV every day and twice on Sundays, because it's good on resources. Never had any problems with it or good old ClamWin. Avast 4.8, until support ended for it, was also a fantastic antivirus. It seems a port is being maintained that is backwards compatible all the way to NT4. There are certain caveats based on the situation in which you wish to run it, but if the requirements are met the results should be terrific. https://oss.netfarm.it/clamav/

Thank you for your reply...and for all of your efforts over the years. You are always appreciated around here!!

After lots of testing with newer OSes, I feel better about making the leap to 7+ in the future. For now, I am happily sticking with XP. Microsoft truly outdid themselves with this OS, in all its various flavors and evolutions. Compatible with lots of vintage and modern hardware and software, lightweight and fast, with rock-solid stability. I find that XP is still perfectly fine for offline use...there are tons of programs that will keep it useful forever. The only real question mark going forward is web browsing...of course, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for whatever the future holds. One thing I will say with regards to web browsing is that if you can make good use of user agent spoofing/switching, you can get a lot of mileage out of 360 and other XP-compatible browsers to this day. The mobile versions of most sites, where applicable, still seem to work fine in old browsers and should render with no major graphical bugs. Of course this doesn't work with all sites, but as much of the web is mobile-optimized now, it is a lifeline for XP-compatible browsers as more desktop-optimized sites continue to be redesigned/updated to take advantage of whatever the latest JavaScript standards are.

I'm not surprised! There was definitely a backlash when people found out about the minimum requirements for 11 at first. I'm honestly impressed that 10/11 can run on this PC as well as they do...so it's great to have them available as options for the future. For now I'm quite interested to see how far 360 and other XP/Vista-compatible browsers can be extended with UA tricks. That should also work well for 7+ users going forward!

No doubt about it. I'm ready, willing and able to transition to newer OSes in the future...just trying everything I can and evaluating all of my options. I went back to 7 not too long ago, and I think I'm just going to go back to XP because it's the fastest OS I can run on this PC with full driver support and the ability to run modern software without kernel extenders. The plan is to stay on XP for now as I can still use it for my daily tasks (web browsing still works quite well...and using UA tricks to get the mobile versions of websites should keep 360 and other browsers useful for a few more years at least). I'll more than likely move to 7 if XP truly becomes utterly & completely obsolete for modern-day web browsing (I refuse to mess with kernel extenders, so if that's the only option remaining then I will move on from XP) and later to Windows 10/11/12. I'm not sure if it will be possible to use 12 on my old PC...but if not, I'm staying with 10/11 until the end.

Thank you for speaking up! Mozilla definitely gets kudos from me for continuing to look out for 7/8.x users! (And you get kudos from me for being persistent in getting a straight answer!) I've been going all over the place with testing OSes...so far so good with Windows 11 on the old HP S5-1020. Didn't think it could be done, but it turns out 11 still supports my PC just fine when the installation hardware requirements are bypassed. Full driver support and everything. It's slightly slower than 10 but is running quite well. So the only limitation I face in the future is if programs start dropping support for the Pentium E6800's full instruction set. I've likely got better odds to win the Florida lottery twice than to have that happen anytime soon, so I'm definitely feeling good about the future. Curious to see what happens with 12...if it's a radical enough departure from 10/11, I'll skip it and stick with 10/11 until the bitter end.

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Just wanted to say thank you for continuing to maintain these browsers to this day! I will have to try them now and see how they are doing on performance...it's amazing how much speed you can gain by rebasing the DLLs. 360v13.x used to run well, albeit a bit slow with a lot of tabs open...when NHTPG rebased his 360v13.5 build, the speed became competitive with old and fast 9.5/11/12! The same principle applied to those older browsers, and to DCB and MiniBrowser, should mean significant performance gains for web browsing. It's truly fantastic because unlocking the extra speed is beneficial across the board, not just for those on Ivy Bridge and Haswell-era processors but those who are still using very old Pentium 4 or Athlon 64-based machines. For my part, I still use my old HP S5-1020, which I've even run 2000 on years ago (with full driver support) and have gone up to 10 with. 10 actually doesn't run too bad if you strip away the bloat and tweak it sufficiently, but XP is much faster. The performance can give the latest PCs running 11 a run for their money, and that's with an old HDD! If I ever put an SSD in it, forget it...it's game over. While it's possible to run newer OSes, having done a lot of testing recently (and over the years) I can say for sure that older PCs really thrive with XP and have their ups and downs with Vista and later. Being able to use modern web browsers in XP, and have a sense of assurance that they will not only run but run with good speed, is a truly amazing thing. Thanks again for doing what you do, H.O.!

Glad to know that everything worked out for you! It just goes to show why Revo is such a trusted program after all of these years. I couldn't commend the developers more highly...with so many sketchy pieces of software out there, and with how much programs tend to change and decline over the years, Revo has stayed reliable with its functionality and performance even on very old PCs. Old school functionality in a new school world. Here's hoping the freeware version will continue to support XP for the foreseeable future!

I believe what this means is that improvements were made to the JavaScript core compared to the 'stable' Mypal68. If I was reading what Feodor wrote correctly, 68.13 improves it to Firefox 76 standards, which seems to mean improved nullish coalescing & optional chaining implementations along with other important back-end upgrades. Of course, I could be completely wrong on this one, but that's what I got out of it.

It seems newer versions of Python (than what XP can run) are able to run natively in Vista…some of them still seem to be getting security updates. For example, Python 3.8.10 was the last release of the 3.8 line with binary installers, and can be updated until October 2024. It appears support was cut off with 3.9 but could possibly be restored with the Extended Kernel (I’d be careful with it, though). https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3810/

Absolutely...anything that benefits XP users is something to be grateful for. For my part I've actually taken a liking to Vista lately. A lot of people tend to think of it as a prototype 7 (which it is), but I see it more as a supercharged XP...better compatibility with modern software and a more powerful kernel, while still retaining many of the little XP 'quirks' that I love. It is the final version of Windows that can truly be made to feel like XP in its day-to-day functionality. While 7 does improve upon Vista in meaningful ways, it also took out many things from Vista that I personally like (including the 'true' 9x Classic theme [as opposed to the 2000/ME-style theme] and the Classic Start menu). Not all of the Classic functionality can be fully restored with 3rd party software, though I commend all who are making programs for that purpose. I'll never sway someone against using XP...it is still a fantastic OS & my go-to OS of choice for single-cores and less than 2GB of RAM. If you have a powerful enough PC, Vista can definitely still rock the house. A fully-updated Vista SP2 installation is as stable as it gets, and very hard to crash. (It's also incredibly beautiful--I smile every time I see the Vista logout screen fade to black during shutdown or restart, rather than just cutting to black. Over 15 years later, Vista still outdoes the most popular OSes of today in its aesthetics.)

Much appreciated! I did notice that the "Pro" version now has Vista listed as the minimum supported OS. It's great to know there is a clear 'final' version for XP. I will have to try it out one day (I saved it to my flash drive), but for now the freeware version suits my needs perfectly fine. Thank you!

If it makes you feel better, I was born in '92, so I grew up during the declining years of arcades. Had a chance to play a lot of classics but the players who were born 10+ years before I was were much luckier. I didn't really get into MAME until the mid-2000s, and at that time I think it was in the 0.9X range. I noticed that it was a fast emulator and seemed to have no issues, at least for the games that weren't 3D or used compressed hard disks (CHD). Didn't realize it until many years later when I found that some games that used to run fine were now running into speed problems, and had to go back to an older version to get them running at full speed again, that I first experienced MAME when it was still in its 'prime'. MAME went from a fast, well-performing emulator that focused on preserving the classics, to an absolute beast that sets out to try and emulate every device in existence. And kudos to the devs for that, because I'm happy MAME is still being developed 25+ years later! But if you're someone who just likes to play the games, you will have a much better and much more fun time with old versions. For example, I fired up good old 0.89 last night and played through the old Taito "Superman" arcade game. Couldn't see any major differences between how Superman is emulated in 0.89 versus how the newest version handles it. It's lighter on CPU usage and is one of the last versions before the sound engine was rewritten, making it a reliable old version for Pentium 4 & Athlon 64-era PCs. By the way, it may not be the most breaking news, but to try and contribute something else of value to this topic, I can confirm from testing that the latest version of the freeware Revo Uninstaller (2.4.2) (2022-12-06) still works in XP! I bring it up because this program has been reliable for me over the years in safely removing unwanted software. Just the other day I used it to remove some bloatware from one of my dad's old laptops...he went from wanting to get rid of it to having it work like new. If I live to see the day when XP users get cut off, I'm never letting go of the final version, whatever it turns out to be. https://www.revouninstaller.com/products/revo-uninstaller-free/

Hoping it lasts for a long time to come! I decided to go back to NM28 x64 as my primary browser...it checks every box. Stable, mature code that's been perfected for years. A true 64-bit binary that uses CPU/RAM well. An old-school interface that takes me back to the days when the Internet was cooler. And it still gets frequent updates. (Of course, Mypal68, 360v13.5, etc. are worthy secondaries and very useful for certain sites.) Frankly, I'm quite stunned to see the improvements made to these UXP browsers myself. They're nowhere near being obsolete. It's amazing that they're still getting meaningful updates that aren't just security-based...and I am hoping the devs will stay on this path! Roy, thank you again for doing what you do...I'll do my best to keep up with your updates! All the best, man...you are appreciated!

No problem! Yeah, it does seem audio latency started to suffer a bit with later versions of MAME. This is another reason why it's good to stick to 0.106 and earlier versions. Unless your favorite game wasn't properly supported in 0.106, there's little reason to go beyond that release except for emulation improvements (which you can only really take advantage of on sufficiently powerful hardware). 0.160, on a machine powerful enough to run it well, is pretty much the perfect balance: OpenGL was now supported, you still had DirectDraw support (which was deprecated after 0.170, though a few forks forward-ported the old code), and the compatibility list had grown to include some really cool games. Not only that, you can easily find 0.160 ROMs online, and this release still supports Windows 2000. (I believe 0.169 was the last release to support Win2K, though others may have to do some testing on that front.) Trying to be careful here because I don't want to tick any of the admins off...if you want to talk more about MAME, feel free to PM me, my brother. I've really gotten into that emulator over the years. It's amazing how long it's been around--if you are crafty and clever enough you can find a release that will run well on pretty much anything. (The old 0.36/0.37bX releases are great on speed.)

Nice findings! I recall 0.147 was (and is) quite a good version. Just about all the essential stuff was supported by then, with great accuracy and performance. I don't want to go too far off-track here, but to quickly sum it up, a few important versions of MAME for anyone who wants to tinker: -0.37b15 and 0.37b16 (the first releases with DirectDraw bilinear filtering and hardware stretching, last of the 0.37bX line) -0.57 (the first release with fixed protection for WWF WrestleMania and the first to include Revolution X, good for Midway fans) -0.61 (the last release tested on consumer-grade hardware of the time [2002] where it was confirmed that every game ran at full speed at maxed-out settings. Starting with 0.62 you now needed a processor far, FAR beyond anything on the market at the time to run all games at full speed) (I have a personal 'eight years' theory that starting with 0.62, you need a PC roughly 8 years newer than the MAME release itself to be able to run all games at full speed. So if your PC was manufactured in 2010, you're good to go with 0.62; if mfgd in 2014, you can run all games in MAME 0.106 [2006] at full speed.) -0.67 was the last release where the original coordinator (Nicola Salmoria) was still overseeing the project; starting with 0.68 those responsibilities shifted to a young David "Haze" Haywood. This is very important because under Haze's 'regime' there were various changes made that sent MAME on the course it's on today, including the removal of a lot of hacks that made it possible for most games to run well on modest hardware. This is a great version to use if you're on an older PC, such as a PIII or an early P4. Other notable versions, summed up a bit more succinctly: -0.69 (easy to find ROMs for, has some bugs from 0.68 fixed and runs well on 'trash picked' PCs) -0.72 (last release with DCS Sound System hacks that allowed 90s Midway games to run at full speed on weaker hardware) -0.78 (easy to find ROMS for, support was added for a few more cool games, some emulation improvements made with others) -0.84 (easy to find ROMs for, has more games supported and a few more emulation improvements, still runs well on older PCs) -0.92 (last version before the sound engine was rewritten) -0.106 (a very famous version that is still often referenced, and the last true 'classic' MAME before the video engine was rewritten) -0.139 (easy to find ROMs for; this was also one of the last versions before the MAME devs began adding mechanical games) -0.160 (easy to find ROMs for; by this point Raiden II/DX were now working, and other games had some emulation issues resolved; notably this is also the first version with OpenGL support, which improves performance for certain games) If I had to recommend one MAME version, JUST one, to stick with and not change, it would be a toss up between 0.106 and 0.160 (yes, swapping two numbers). 0.106 is a reliable old version that will run on pretty much anything you find laying out in the street, but you need a PC made in the last decade or so to be able to play all of the games at full speed. By comparison 0.160 needs far beefier hardware to run well, but all of the simple 68K and Z80 stuff should run fine on it, and by that point a lot of the loose ends had been sorted out for the games that matter. I honestly don't think anything of true significance has been added since 0.160. (However, a lot of emulation improvements have been made for games that 0.160 supports, so that balances things out a bit.) It's not to diss the hard work of the devs because I am impressed with how far MAME has come. But it's also a long ways removed from the lightweight, intuitive, fast emulator it used to be. It puts me in a quandary because on the one hand I do like to have a certain level of accuracy, but if you go too far in that direction you sacrifice speed. 0.106 & 0.160 are good balances in that sense. And that concludes my off-topic MAME 'rant'...I'll try to keep it on-topic from here on out.

Thank you for sharing those articles, UCyborg--I can definitely relate. It took a lot of consideration, but I decided to migrate back to Windows 10 LTSC, but went for 2021 instead of 2019. I've said before you pretty much can't go wrong with any of the LTSB/LTSC versions, but it seems that the newer releases offer various improvements, small but quite meaningful in some cases, over the earlier ones. (And a big benefit you get with using any version of 10 is being able to use modern browsers...the latest Chromium runs great.) For what it's worth LTSC 2021 does seem to have a few bug fixes compared to 2019, but both are excellent, the bugs are nowhere near significant, and LTSB/LTSC in general, again, comes highly recommended for anyone who wants to bite the bullet and ride the '10 express'. It's really up to your preference: the older ones will play nicer with older hardware and the newer ones may work better with newer PCs. For my part I'm still using my trusty old HP S5-1020, and when properly tweaked (there's no exact science, and in my cases it's taken a ton of trial and error) it pretty much runs as well as you could hope for it to on something that's now over a decade old. Actually, the performance is competitive with 7 and 8.x...it still falls slightly short, but not nearly as badly as it would if left untweaked. I've learned more about 10, and it seems to be the absolute best option going forward for old and new PCs. Turns out Win11 went the x64 or bust route so 10 is the final version of Windows that supports 32-bit processors, and also appears to be the last that retains a good amount of legacy NT code; it appears that much of it has been rewritten or removed in 11 already, and I predict MS will stay on this path going forward. So if you're running legacy hardware & software, Win10 may be your final refuge before a Linux leap. (I'm not opposed to that in the future, having experimented with Linux before, but to me that's the last resort.) To sum it up I still rank XP as the greatest OS Microsoft ever made. 7 comes in second, and 10 LTSB/LTSC takes a respectable third. Vista and 8.x are fantastic despite the bad reputations they unfairly gained, but honestly neither is a big leap over its predecessor. (They did introduce some nice innovations that their follow-ups improved upon, though.) If you're willing, I would give 10 a try. It's gotten a lot better with time and I believe it will be remembered as a great OS when the plug is inevitably pulled, many years from now. Just as XP and 7 ascended to the pantheon of the great OSes after early struggles, I believe 10 will also get there one day. (Depending on who you ask, it might even be there now.)

It's been a while since I posted here...and a while since I tested New Moon 28. Though I'm a 360v13.5 'convert' and have moved on to that as my primary browser in XP, I wanted to use NM28 again, at least for a few days...seeing PaleFill brought up, which I have used with good results before, gave me a 'spark' to revisit this 'blast from the past'. I'm writing this from NM28 right now and can confirm both it and PaleFill are working great. It's funny because NM28 is built on fairly modern web technologies, and has gotten some nice improvements over the years to bring it more in line with newer, more capable browsers. And yet it feels very 'old-school' now, not just because of the vintage Pale Moon UI but having so much legacy code from the Firefox 52 days. Despite that, I am impressed to see what they can still do, and my appreciation for all of the years of fun I've had with old-school Gecko/Goanna/UXP browsers gives me the patience to deal with their flaws and limitations. We're a long ways removed from how things once were, so it's nice to have NM28 and other projects like it, to remind us of those 'glory days'. As long as possible, I hope these browsers can be kept alive. (Turn off JS, for sites that don't need it, and they still crush any modern browser in terms of speed.) Thank you for all you've done, Roy! You are one of the legends of this community, and I thank you for continuing to do what you do.

Posting from Vista x64, but have tested in XP x64 (and what I'm writing applies to that OS--I didn't get around to sharing my findings until now). Wanted to offer an update on the MAME compatibility situation. (On a quick side note, I've found that Vista is the last version that still 'feels' like XP [meaning you can customize many things in the manner you could in XP], but has the benefit of a more powerful kernel, though only a few programs truly use the extra power of the Vista kernel properly. Depending on your tastes it's a good way to get the best of both worlds, to still have something that truly does feel like XP but is more capable under the hood. As for me, I'm going to go back to XP, because it still works fine for my needs.) What I mentioned before still applies (0.204 is the last 'universally compatible' official version of MAME, meaning the 32/64-bit binaries will work in XP [SP2 minimum], and 0.207 is the last official version with a 32-bit binary compatible with XP SP2+). However, I have done a little more testing with the unofficial MAMEUI versions that were meant to restore XP compatibility (these can be easily found on progetto-SNAPS), and made what I thought was a very interesting finding. It turns out that up to 0.208, the 64-bit MAMEUI binaries are still supported under XP x64. I'm not sure what happened with 0.209, but for some reason 64-bit binary compatibility was broken with that version. As of this current time, the latest 32-bit MAMEUI (version 0.251 at this time) still works in XP x86/x64 (SP2 minimum). So to sum it up quickly: 0.204 is the last 'universally compatible' official MAME version with x86 & x64 binaries working in XP (SP2 minimum). 0.207 is the last official MAME version with an x86 binary working in XP SP2+. 0.208 is the last unofficial MAMEUI version with an x64 binary working in XP x64 SP2. As always, I hope this helps someone!

Yeah, it does have some stability issues. But disabling the USB backend fixes most of them! I’ve always liked Mini but prefer 360 for its greater speed, better interface and nearly identical web capabilities. If the things being done with 360 now could in theory be applied to Mini, I’d be very excited to do beta testing. But I am very thankful for 360 and have no issues with it, so Mini isn’t too important to me at the moment.

It's more for curiosity than anything else, which is why I put the disclaimer about 360 being perfectly good for my needs and that I appreciate what we've got! MiniBrowser is a browser I've tried in the past and find quite interesting...it is a bit closer to 'traditional' Chromium (with codecs), which I have used on 7 and 10 installations with great results. It's forked from Chromium 87, whereas 360v13.x comes from Chromium 86. v86 and v87 are still great to this day, and advisable as 'base' browsers over the latest version if you're on a newer OS as they come with greater speed for general browsing. Both support nullish coalescing and optional chaining (introduced with v80), so the majority of sites still work 100% fine in both. I find 360 has a more interesting settings layout and more speed...the reason I bring up v87 is because there were some small but useful improvements made in the rendering core over v86. For the things v87 can do that v86 can't, MiniBrowser is worth a look. Unfortunately, it is not without its issues (no Flash support despite being forked from v87 [the final Chromium version to support Flash], heavier CPU/RAM usage than 360, and it will crash if you insert a flash drive unless you disable the USB backend in chrome://flags). I am not really concerned with MiniBrowser at this time, but at least one user has mentioned an instance of a site working in Mini that had issues in 360v13.5, so it could be an option going forward. (It also has no issues with overwriting files.) However, the one-version gap is so small that it doesn't really necessitate any serious work being done at this time (to me, at least). If someone wants to look into it, I am more than glad to be a beta tester.

No doubt! I've never had great luck with downloading files to the desktop. I usually download to "My Documents" first, then transfer to "Program Files". So far tonight I'm having a great time with rebuild 8...making some YouTube videos, accessing a few sites, and it's not only very stable but very fast. If the techniques used to enhance 360v13.5's speed could eventually be looked at for MiniBrowser, I'm more than happy to be a beta tester! (Of course, 360 is perfectly good for my needs...I'm just talking about the future. I expect nothing and appreciate what we've got!)

Glad you were able to solve your problem! I'm surprised it would be as simple as shortening a folder's name, but sometimes that does help. In general, I find I've had the best luck with 'regular' 360 builds, though all the ungoogled ones I've tried have worked quite well too. You really can't go wrong with any of them.

Thank you again for your continued efforts! For what it’s worth, I haven’t had any errors thus far with the version I’m using (rebuild 8, regular, WebGL enabled, translate enabled, XP skin). I am on WinXP x64 SP2 with all applicable POSReady 2009 updates through April 2019, so that might help matters a bit. I am happy to see that 360v13.5 is still being maintained…perhaps, if you still have some of your older builds, they could be preserved on the Internet Archive. Maybe the last 11/12/13.0 builds could be useful for people, or if you plan to revisit those as you’re doing with 13.5 now, that could be beneficial for those on very old (but still SSE2-capable) processors. You have put a lot of work into your builds and I’m sincerely thankful. If I can be of any service as far as testing, I will do my best. Again, thank you very much!