Dave-H

Strange, KB2986256 was apparently issued on November 27th, but as you say @JerrMSFNI can find no notification of it and it doesn't appear after a scan on Microsoft Update. Is it perhaps not necessary on all systems?

Yes, it does need configuring for each chip, which is why it's a shame that @tillewolledoesn't also have an ALC883, if he had he could just use my files! @deomshsorted all that out for me. I really only needed it to be able to get the system sounds working, as i have other operating systems on the machine if I want to listen to music or anything else serious. There is some distortion on the system sounds, but surprisingly music is pretty OK if I do play something on Windows 98.

Only just seen this. I got a driver to work on Windows 98SE for a Realtek HD Audio chipset with the invaluable help of @deomsh and others. It was an ALC883, not ALC880, but you might be lucky! See this rather large thread.

I'm not sure that the OP's problem is the same as that one which I originally reported though. I wasn't seeing the Instagram videos at all, although still images were fine. It turned out that the videos' containers were collapsed to a single line. The OP seems to be saying that the containers are visible, but are just filled with black, which sounded more like not having html5/h264 video support in the browser. In that case Facebook and YouTube videos shouldn't work either as I believe that the Flash fallback has now been removed.

I assume you mean Firefox 52.9 ESR. Do YouTube and Facebook videos work, or is the problem just with Instagram? If not, see here.

Er, OK...........

You'll find that the use of ProxHTTPSProxy has been well documented already in this thread, and others!

I'd be interested to know if it works! I did look for Java offline installers which still worked on XP when the official ones from Oracle stopped working, but never found one. It is only the installer which doesn't work, the actual Java components still work fine on XP. You may well find that when you run the installer, nothing actually happens. If it does work, please let us know! EDIT: I've just actually downloaded that installer, and it is the standard offline installer from Oracle, which I can almost 100% say will not install on XP, whatever Codec Pack say!

Thanks Den! I guess I'll wait a bit longer. As you say, XP runs fine with only 3GB or so of RAM usable, and unless you want to run resource intensive games on it or whatever, there is probably no real reason to need be able to access more memory anyway.

Just a quick aside. IIRC there was some problem with running 16 bit programs in some boot configurations of XP. Will they still run if a PAE patch is applied? Asking for a friend. (No not really, I do actually have a couple of 16 bit programs that I use! )

Do you mean 231, that's the current Java 8 version? That works fine here on XP with Firefox 52.9.1 ESR, and there are no warnings in the plug-ins list about it.

No problem! I keep wondering whether Otter should be given more prominence in the "browsers that work on XP" threads in the XP section here. I've been monitoring it for years as the intention is to replicate Presto Opera, which I used for many years and was considered by many to be the best browser ever produced before it was cruelly abandoned in favour of yet another Chromium-based browser. Unfortunately Otter's development has been at a glacial pace, I suspect because there's actually very few people working on it, and although they did finally get to an official release, it's still very far away from something I would want to use as my default browser. All credit for them for maintaining XP compatibility though!

@VistaLover This is off-topic, but there is a workaround for Otter to get YouTube and Facebook videos working on XP. You need to download this - https://otter-browser.org/tmp/otter-browser-xp2.zip Then you need to copy the "Lib" folder over from that version to the current version. I did that ages ago, and it still works. See this thread for more detail.

Just for the record, on XP both Chrome 49 and Otter 1.0.81 open the Cote website fine without HTTPSProxy enabled. Opera 36 does as well, but again without the background video. My ancient version of Safari for Windows (5.1.7) also opens it, perhaps rather surprisingly, but it's not formatted very well. IE8 doesn't want to know without HTTPSProxy of course, just producing a "page can't be displayed" message. With HTTPSProxy enabled it just produces a blank white page. Thanks for all the research you've all done, especially @VistaLover, I really wasn't expecting all that! I guess it is worth looking into though, as potentially other sites could have the same problem.

Ah right, that explains the apparent anomaly! I guess they are assuming that anyone still now using XP would be bound to have SP3, so didn't see the need to specify it.

I haven't used Windows XP's task manger for years, and that's one of the reasons why! I use DTaskManager by Dimio (I'm not associated with him I hasten to add!) It's very good, gives a lot more information, including accurate RAM usage data. It can be set to automatically replace the Windows Task Manager.

So the portable version of Partition Magic 11.5 doesn't work on XP, but the full installer version of Partition Wizard 11.5 does? How strange!

He's edited his first post since it was first posted. I was pretty sure that Partition Wizard was in the list originally, and CPU-Z, and I thought it was a list of things that didn't work! Partition Wizard has now been removed from the list. Sorry if I misunderstood it!

Just for completeness, CPU-Z 1.90.1 also installed and works fine on XP for me. I'm afraid that and Partition Wizard are the only programs on your list that I have installed.

Wow, thank you for all that testing @bphlpt! Interesting that Opera Next 23 on Windows 7 produces the same result as Opera 36 does on XP, no background video, and yet Opera 65 works fine. IE11 is the only one that refuses to display the site at all, and it's the same in Windows 8.1, but fine on Windows 10. Bizarre!

Just as an aside, Partition Wizard 11.5 installed fine for me on XP. It was an update from version 11.4, if that makes any difference.

I must say that I knew about the first bit, but had never read the second bit! I wonder if any other restaurants do that? Still, as long as the staff are happy! Personally I never add tips to credit card payments in restaurants where it isn't included in the bill, as I want the money to go to the people who've served me, not to the restaurant owners! Anyway, back on topic, I've now tried in other browsers, and for the record the site works fine in Google Chrome 49 on XP, and in the latest version of the Otter browser. Opera 36 strangely displays the site but without the background video on the home page, so maybe that's what's causing the IE11 problem.

Could be, but as Windows 7, and certainly Windows 8.1, are still supposedly fully supported systems, why do they not have the necessary certificates for IE11 to display all current websites? I hadn't heard anywhere that IE11 is not now considered to be a current supported browser, and it does still work on Windows 10!

Thanks very much @bphlpt, that confirms what I found. I don't use IE now either, but this actually came up on a friend's Windows 7 laptop, where he does still use IE11 as his browser. I was surprised to find the same problem on Windows 8.1, and even more surprised to find that the problem isn't there on Windows 10, all apparently with the same IE11. Very strange.

I just tried accessing the website of a UK restaurant chain using IE11 on Windows 7, and it would not connect, saying there was some sort of security error, which couldn't be overridden. The address is https://www.cote.co.uk I thought perhaps this was because IE11 is now becoming obsolete, especially when I tried it on my Windows 8.1 netbook too, and got the same error. However, I just tried on IE11 on Windows 10, and it worked fine! Can anyone else confirm this, and has anyone any idea why it would work on Windows 10, but not on 7 or 8,1, using apparently the same Internet Explorer version? Thanks, Dave.