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Came across this page dated September 29, 2014 ... probably a good page to bookmark for future reference as the list grows. http://portableapps.com/node/42651 Apps That Have Dropped Windows XP Support: List, App Homepage Indications September 29, 2014 We're now starting to see more apps which are dropping support for Windows XP. I'm wondering how the community would like to handle this. We'd like to maintain a list of last-working versions for users to be able to obtain. We'll include a caveat about bugs, security issues, and it being unsupported, of course. I'm inclined to have a single page listing all the last-working versions and including links from each app's homepage affected to that page. That way we can have all of them in one place and only have one big notice about why it's a bad idea as well as how to install it so the updater won't offer to update it. It's possible we could also do a specific XP version with a renamed AppID (FileZillaPortableLegacyForXP) as a last release as well using the updated installer so that it will continue to work. We could even include a warning about it being unsupported on install. Thoughts? --------------------------------------------------------------------- Very good discussion about XP and SSE2 just below the list. There's some mention of a "go around fix" for some apps ... "As I mentioned in LibreOffice, the problem seems not to be so much a problem of XP but the CPU it is running on. If the CPU supports SSE2 then XP with SP3 should be good for awhile longer. Unfortunately the developers releasing new versions of software are not considering backward compatability for older CPUs and OSs. A quick google turned up SSE2 issues with Skype 6.2, uTorrent 3.4, and MuseScore 2 beta. There was a post at MuseScore that was pretty in depth:" ... also a fix maybe for some apps ... October 8, 2014 "If by soft fail and hard fail, they're both hard fails in our usage. If we mark an app as MinOS=Vista, that means it requires Vista and later no matter what CPU or anything else you have. It won't work on XP full stop. The same goes for requiring SSE2. An app that requires SSE2 won't work without it due to the way it was compiled. Note that we make a best effort to get apps working on XP even when no longer supported. For example, Blender is now only supported on Windows Vista and later, but we add the appropriate Visual C++ runtimes to our package and it continues to work on Windows XP. It's like a later release will be compiled with a newer compiler and not work on XP at all, but that's a different scenario." ------------------------ I didn't fully understand what has been happening so this page has brought me up to speed ... look forward to more discussion here also. A lot of reading at that web page. *** As a side note further below in the discussions ... a "small fight" or "brush fire" over also including Windows 2000 has started ... Ditching 2K We're ditching 2K. It's barely used and most apps no longer support it. Windows XP is still widely used. ------ Poor Win2K, this makes me very sad. I would think you'd want to make it a reusable system, in case Vista (not likely) or Se7en (more likely) decide to hang on like XP has, in which case adding 'Legacy Win2K' support wouldn't be much more of a burden then adding 'Legacy XP' support already is. (I'll make 'Legacy Win2K' Plugins [see below] for you if that'll help to change your mind.) ------ First, we're dropping Windows 2000 support in the platform, so they won't even have access to the ability to download alternate versions by the platform, rendering the alternate packages moot. Second, even if we did tie ourselves to the dead Delphi XE2 release in order to keep supporting Windows 2000, the bigger issue is time. At present, all releases have to be reviewed, digitally signed, uploaded, and added to the database by me. I'm not going to spend time doing that for the 150 apps in our database that dropped Windows 2000 support 1 or more years ago. Windows 2000 users have no active support from most apps right now, so it's not like they're losing anything. Windows 2000 also has barely any userbase. Windows XP is a very different situation. There are probably more Windows XP users today than there were Windows 2000 users 3 years before it was end of lifed. And the majority of apps today support Windows XP. So, this is a small amount of work for the handful of apps dropping Windows XP support that we'd have to test for anyway for a benefit for a good number of users. Windows 2000 is a ton of work for a handful of users for very old and insecure versions of apps. --- I answered what you asked. And you did have 2000 or 2K 5 different times in your post. My point was that it would only serve Windows 2000 right now, which doesn't make sense because it's barely used, would require a ton of effort to sort through the apps for little benefit, and the platform will be dropping support for it anyway which makes it moot. We don't need to worry about Vista until 2017... and then not much at all since it's the ugly stepchild with hardly any users. So, Windows 7 in 2020 is the likelier bet due to the large installbase and the fact that desktops get replaced much less often than 10 years ago. ... Oh well those old Windows 2k die hards ... hope it just stays XP, will be complicated enough. ... also as mentioned in the discussions ... the little free program CPU-Z will show if your CPU has SSE2. I have used it for years as most everyone has but if you never heard of it ... here's the link. I am still using version 1.70.0 but the current version is CPU-Z 1.71.1. http://www.cpuid.com/ ... this is from a posting at the discussion section: I think an addition to your proposed page instructing the users to try CPU-Z to check their CPU. If it doesn't support SSE2 then they are probably stuck with an older version of the App they are trying. Maybe a sticky somewhere is needed to alert XP users to check their CPU if they are having problems with new version of an App. ...