Windows XP with modern Office, Chrome 100+, and Discord (via official Microsoft RemoteApp "Application Server")

[SuperWorkstationXP]

First, a screenshot:

From my imgur description:

• Latest Discord running on Windows XP (with tray icon)
• Chrome 100+ running on Windows XP (with YouTube)
• Office 2016 (and above) on Windows XP
• C++17 support via g++ 7.x, shared folders, and SSH (mintty)
• Newer C++ standards can be supported (e.g. by building clang from source or downloading pre-built binaries)
• Full Windows XP taskbar and tray icon integration
• Full Windows XP file association support. For example: associate all *.xlsx documents with Office 2016+ (with proper icons and double-click application launching).
• Full Windows XP Add/Remove Programs support
• haiku-os.org cannot be accessed from XP Chrome 49 due to needing ECC cipher suites, as proof of modern Chrome

This screenshot uses Windows 7 as the "application server" (for RemoteApp). Windows 10/11 are also supported, allowing you access to the latest software--such as the latest Chrome and Microsoft Office--beyond what is shown in the screenshot.

Just for fun, here's a second screenshot showing file association support. The .xlsx document has an Excel 2016 icon and will open with the remote Excel 2016 when double-clicked. The .xls document has an Office XP (Office 2002) icon and will open with Excel 2002 when double-clicked:

This method has been tested on both Windows XP Professional SP3 (32-bit) and Windows XP Professional x64 SP2. I've curated the exact files you need. Getting this to work on XP x64 (my preferred OS) was the hardest, but I've done the hard work and will share with you. So now that I have your attention...

My Story

I've used Linux for over 15 years now. After tolerating Desktop Linux for such a long time, my final verdict is: Linux will never succeed on the desktop. Anyone that has used Desktop Linux long enough, regardless of distro, will immediately know what I'm talking about. The gist of it is that the design & philosophy is not conducive to success in desktop operating systems, UI/UX issues, and, on top of all of that, there are too many minor bugs and annoyances that add up to an overall degraded experience. Even when the distro or desktop environment tries to emulate Windows in design, there are too many nuances that are just missing or wrong, and they inevitably run into a wall due to the overarching design and philosophy of Linux. One example of one of these "minor annoyances" that add up is when Desktop Linux still freezes in 2023. I haven't seen this in Windows since 9x. In some edge cases, I have to actually edit code to get things working in Linux. Linux/OSS fanatics will rejoice, "Yes! This is the way." I don't subscribe to the idea that something being open source is automatically better than fully developed, commercially successful, proprietary software. I don't have time to "edit code" every time something breaks, and anyone whom has been around software development long enough knows that understanding the code you want to edit takes significant time. With all of this aside, Linux is a fantastic server operating system. The average Linux application UI is essentially this though. Finally, the number of eyeballs on "server Linux," like OpenSSH where money can indeed be made or lost, far exceed the number of eyeballs on Leafpad, the attempt at a Notepad clone (which crashes and hasn't been fixed in over a decade) that's been in the Debian package repository for a while.

Recently, I migrated back to Windows XP, the last Windows OS I used. I had been doing all kinds of Linux tinkering some 4-5 years ago for remote work (before COVID): SSHFS and remote filesystems, HPN-SSH patches, etc. However, I came to realize, as a developer, I only needed:

1. Editor
2. Compiler
3. SSH

All of the above are available on XP, and they don't consume hundreds of megabytes of memory.

Furthermore, since I had been on Linux for the last 15-17 years, I haven't really been a heavy gamer. The games I play are from the XP era. I've played DotA 2 on Linux via Steam, but I never really got into it. I can't dedicate enough time to it to reach the threshold needed to not be a liability to a team in multiplayer.

Long story short, I migrated back to XP recently. I don't want to get into all the nagging issues with Linux, but I only recently discovered the value of rest and breaks in productivity. Not having the games I actually care to play available on Linux and resorting to doomscrolling social media instead, on top of all the poor UI/UX paradigms in Linux, has led to substantial drops in overall productivity that has worsened over time and were not at the forefront of my consciousness or obvious enough to me until I came back to XP. I sympathize with people whom stubbornly stay on XP because it's where they feel most productive. Since it's the last Windows OS I used, and since it's the only Windows I know inside and out, this is also the most productive OS for me.

Motivation

I'm still learning and tinkering to get the most out of XP. At some point, I'm going to compile everything I've learned into a website. For convenience, I'm sharing what I've learned on message boards for now.

There's a lot to share with the XP community. For example, I've observed (possibly incorrectly) the community has yet to recognize the benefits of hardware virtualization and instead run XP natively on old hardware. If you're running XP for productivity (rather than retrogaming), you should be virtualizing. Just because XP doesn't "officially" support Threadripper doesn't mean you can't run XP on a single Threadripper core and benefit from its 256MB L3 cache. You might have to write custom benchmark code, but I'm almost certain the data will confirm virtualized XP will have full access to the CPU's modern L3 cache. I had an NVMe drive failure, but I was going to set up my website with actual browser benchmarks. I've already tested the latest Firefox on modern Linux to be slower than Chrome 49 XP on the SunSpider and Octane benchmarks with the 4790K. FYI, this has something to do with JIT implementations too, but the XP VM will clearly be using your actual CPU hardware if you do your own tests. The cache is important because program instructions are loaded into memory. The differences in speed from the L1 to L2 to L3 SRAM cache, to DRAM, and, ultimately, to SSD/HDD are significant. Hardware virtualization is the only way to run Windows XP on a modern CPU and take advantage of innovations in CPUs over the last 10-20 years.

If you're running XP for retrogaming, you should STILL be virtualizing. Look up qemu/kvm with GPU passthrough. With GPU passthrough, the XP VM will use your actual GPU, rather than the emulated 3D acceleration that Virtualbox/VMware have. You'll still need an XP-era GPU, because GPU passthrough requires XP drivers. However, you can couple it with modern CPUs, DDR5 RAM, NVMe SSDs, etc.

Consumer hardware is only just now starting to hit XP's limits. 32-bit XP with the PAE patch should be able to support up to 128gb RAM. XP x64 natively supports 128gb RAM. Mini-ITX motherboards are just now hitting the 128gb limit.

Again, at some point, I'll have a website that teaches you how to 1) select hardware most suitable to virtualized XP (it's not Threadripper anyway), 2) how to actually use and properly virtualize the hardware (e.g. CPU pinning, host OS configuration), 3) how to handle SSD TRIM, 4) etc.

My motivation is to spread the gospel of virtualization. Running modern software on XP requires virtualization. Today, you'll be dipping your toes into this wonderful new world.

1. What is RemoteApp?

RemoteApp is an official feature introduced to Remote Desktop by Microsoft for Server 2008. Rather than showing you the entire desktop, RemoteApp shows only the specific application you want. For example, if you want to edit a .docx file in Word 2021 hosted on Windows 10, Remote Desktop will route your local .docx file (on Windows XP) over to the Win10 server. Instead of showing the entire Win10 desktop to you, it will show you just Word 2021 with the document you opened.

Since RemoteApp is a feature officially from Microsoft, integration into Windows is tight. You can create installers for RemoteApps. When you run the installer, it'll install the application as if it were a local application. So I can install a Word 2021 RemoteApp to my XP machine. If I go to Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs, I can uninstall Word 2021 as I would with any local application.

As part of the tight Windows integration, RemoteApps can also have file associations. For example, I can install Office XP on my XP machine and associate .doc with Word 2002. However, I can also choose not to install Office XP at all and associate .doc and .docx with the remote Word 2021 hosted on Windows 10. When I double-click a .docx file, RemoteApp will launch Word 2021, forward my local .docx document over to the server, and Word 2021 on the Win10 server will load the file forwarded from the XP client. If I uninstall Word 2021, it will uninstall the .doc, .docx file associations.

In other words, "RemoteApp" is an official feature from Microsoft that allows you to run modern applications as if they were local applications existing on Windows XP. The integration is very tight: taskbar, tray icon, install/uninstall, application launching, etc.

2. Hardware and Software Requirements

The last post I made here about using VirtualBox seamless mode to achieve something akin to RemoteApp received some flak for having hardware requirements that are too high for the average XP user on older hardware. The benefit of RemoteApp is that you can run the latest Google Chrome on a XP 32-bit machine with 512mb RAM. The resource usage occurs on the server. Buried somewhere in my VirtualBox thread, you'll find a screenshot of Chrome 100+ hosted on Windows 7 using some 25mb memory on the XP32 client. This is because the bulk of the memory consumption is occurring on the Win7 server, not the XP client.

For this tutorial, I'm assuming:

- 4gb RAM for Windows 7 Ultimate

- 4gb RAM for Windows XP x64 (although you can probably get away with 512mb RAM, but I haven't tested this)

- 4gb RAM - additional memory available for the host Linux operating system.

Use whatever CPU that will support both Windows operating systems running simultaneously. You'll want both Windows operating systems on the same machine for lag-free audio that syncs with streamed videos.

If you want to use an operating system besides Windows 7 Ultimate, please make sure you check the compatibility table for RemoteApp Tool here first! In my tests, I was able to get RemoteApp Tool to work on Win7 Ultimate but not on Win7 Professional--which is in line with their compatibility table.

You can get Windows 7 Ultimate for about $50 USD on eBay. You can get a stick of 16gb DDR4 RAM for $40 on NewEgg. The requirements here are relatively low, but they aren't minimal.

Additionally, you'll need some software:

- .NET Framework 4, WiX Toolset (pre-requisites for RemoteApp Tool)

- RemoteApp Tool (again, check the compatibility link to make sure your OS is supported if you don't want to use Win7 Ultimate)

- RemoteApp Windows updates for your version of Windows XP. You only need RDP 6.1, but I've been able to find updates up to RDP 7.0 for XP 32-bit.

You can find the downloads at my archive.org profile here.

3. VMware Workstation

You will need virtualization software. VMware Workstation is a Type 2 hypervisor. If you want a Type 1 hypervisor, you can use qemu/kvm, but you'll ideally want to set up GPU passthrough. For the sake of simplicity, Type 2 hypervisors like VMware Workstation are the easiest to set up. You can also use Virtualbox, but VMware has better support for 3D graphics. VMware Player is also free.

XP is so old that I haven't seen this tip anywhere else on the internet, so here it is: if you want to play Warcraft III and other XP-era 3D games, you don't need native XP or a Type 1 hypervisor with GPU passthrough. VMware 3D acceleration supports these games. Enable 3D acceleration for the virtual machine and SET YOUR HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY TO VMWARE WORKSTATION 10.0. Modern VMware dropped support for XP a long time ago, so, out of the box, it seems like VMware doesn't have 3D acceleration for XP. By changing the VM's hardware compatibility to a legacy mode (and installing the corresponding VMware Tools), you can play fullscreen XP-era 3D games. Again, this is outside the scope of this article and will need to be put up on my website at some point. However, for the sake of simplicity, I'm going with VMware Workstation because you can enable 3D acceleration on both Windows XP and Windows 7 simultaneously, on a single GPU, by just clicking a checkbox. This is much simpler than writing docs to get graphics working on both operating systems and various hardware configurations. Advanced users can tinker for best results.

For the host operating system, I'm using Xubuntu 18.04 LTS. My kernel version is 5.4.0-149-generic. The reason I am using this specific distro (rather than newer Linux distros with newer kernels) is because I have been getting periodic CPU spikes on my XP VMs on both AMD and Intel hardware with the newest distros/kernels. (X)ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Debian 9.5 are the last versions of Debian/Ubuntu I've had without periodic spikes in CPU usage on XP over VMware.

In VMware Workstation, make sure you go to Edit > Preferences > Memory and check "Fit all virtual machine memory into reserved host RAM," otherwise, you might find Windows 7 will be incredibly slow.

The last VMware hardware compatibility version guaranteed to support Win7 is 12.0.

I've tested this setup on VMware Workstation 15.x, with the XP VM set to 10.0 hardware compatibility and the Win7 VM set to 12.0 hardware compatibility. Each Windows VM is assigned 4gb RAM, as previously mentioned.

4. Installing the Updates on the XP Client

Since Windows XP predates RemoteApp, you'll need some Windows Updates to enable it. I've compiled the exact updates you need and archived them:

https://archive.org/details/@superworkstation

Find your version of Windows and install the updates in order. I've numbered each update. Start with 1, then 2, then 3, etc. Always reboot when prompted.

For convenience, here are the installation orders taken directly from my archive.org profile:

XP SP3 32-bit

1. KB961742-v3 - Updates to RDP 6.1

2. KB969084 - Updates to RDP 7.0

After updating to RDP 7.0, read the included text document, "Enable Network Level Authentication.txt" to enable NLA. Reboot after the registry edit or NLA will not work.

XP x64 SP2

1. KB925876-v2

2. KB956744

3. KB2481109

Let me just add that it took many days of searching to find the needed updates for XP x64. At first, I thought Microsoft just never brought RemoteApp over to XP x64. However, I've been able to track down the three updates above, and I've archived them because I truly believe virtualization is the future for XP. So far, I've only been able to get XP x64 up to RDP 6.1 (the bare minimum needed for RemoteApp). The 32-bit XP has RDP up to 7.0 with Network Level Authentication (NLA). I have still yet to find the corresponding updates for XP x64 (if they exist at all).

5. Configuring the Windows 7 Ultimate Application Server

1. I would recommend skinning Win 7/8/10 to look like Windows XP. In this way, your RemoteApps on the XP client will look like native XP applications. This step isn't necessary for Chrome and Office 2016+ as they use their own styling. However, it can be useful if you intend to run other modern applications.

2. Install .NET Framework 4.

3. Install WiX Toolset 3.11.

4. Install RemoteApp Tool 6.0.0.0.

Finally, start the RemoteApp Tool. You'll see something like this:

Click plus button and select the EXE file you want to create a RemoteApp from.

Click the added application and click the "Properties" button (right of the minus button).

Now you'll see a screen like this:

1. Give your new RemoteApp a name. This is the name that will go into your Windows XP Control Panel's installed programs.

2. Click "Configure..." for file type associations.

3. Click the plus button to add a file extension you want to associate with the RemoteApp. Example: .xlsx for Excel 2016. Once you create the installer, the installer will install these new file associations on the client machine. RemoteApp Tool will prompt you to choose an icon. This is the icon that will be used for the file association.

4. Click OK once you're done with file associations.

5. Click "Save"

Click the RemoteApp you want to export as an installer to your client machine. You should now see a screen like this:

1. Choose "MSI installer" under the "Options" tab.

2. Configure your installer in the "MSI options" tab. I usually keep the "Shortcut tag" checked with "Remote" in the text field to identify my remote applications on the client machine. Example: Excel 2016 (Remote)

3. Click "Create..."

4. Copy the .msi file to your Windows XP client machine.

5. Install your RemoteApp in Windows XP.

6. Done!

6. Quality of Life Issues

• Use VMware Shared Folders (or network file sharing, etc) to easily share files between the Application Server (Win7) and XP client. For example, when Chrome downloads a file, you want XP to be able to conveniently access it.
• Make sure "ping" from the client to the server is <1ms.
• Besides network latency, the reason you want both Windows operating systems (client and server) running on the same machine is for latency-free audio. Specifically, RDP has an option for the audio to be played directly on the server instead of being streamed to the client.

For Google Chrome, I would recommend an RDP file instead of an MSI installer. Open the .rdp file in Notepad to edit it. Here's my config:

screen mode id:i:2
desktopwidth:i:1920
desktopheight:i:1080
session bpp:i:16
winposstr:s:0,3,0,0,800,600
compression:i:1
keyboardhook:i:2
displayconnectionbar:i:1
username:s:<YOUR USERNAME HERE>
disable wallpaper:i:0
disable full window drag:i:0
allow desktop composition:i:1
allow font smoothing:i:1
disable menu anims:i:0
disable themes:i:0
disable cursor setting:i:0
bitmapcachepersistenable:i:1
full address:s:<YOUR SERVER IP HERE>
audiomode:i:1
redirectprinters:i:0
redirectcomports:i:0
redirectsmartcards:i:0
redirectclipboard:i:1
redirectposdevices:i:0
drivestoredirect:s:C:;Z:;
autoreconnection enabled:i:1
authentication level:i:0
prompt for credentials:i:0
negotiate security layer:i:1
remoteapplicationmode:i:1
remoteapplicationprogram:s:Chrome
disableremoteappcapscheck:i:1
alternate shell:s:rdpinit.exe
shell working directory:s:
gatewayhostname:s:
gatewayusagemethod:i:4
gatewaycredentialssource:i:4
gatewayprofileusagemethod:i:0
promptcredentialonce:i:1

Specifically, you want to make sure audiomode:i:1 is set. This plays sounds on the remote computer instead of streaming it to the client.

For an overview of RDP configuration settings, see this link.

Conclusion

I once talked to a technology executive at a major company. What struck me is that he was searching for ways to get the most results with the least amount of work and resources. This is in stark contrast to a lot of hardcore programmers that pride themselves on hard work and showing the results of their passion projects that consume hundreds/thousands of hours of work. I want to spread the gospel of virtualization and get more people to dip their toes into virtualization (starting with RemoteApp) because I truly believe this is the path of least resistance for Windows XP going forward.

We're now in an age of Remote Desktop/RDP where you can get 60 FPS remote gaming. It's not just Google Stadia and other promises. For example, this Reddit thread shows a configuration to push RDP to its limits for 60FPS AAA gaming, tested at a AAA game development studio currently working remotely. Level1Techs on YouTube shows virtual machines all streaming graphics from a single server with one GPU. Here's one of their videos with VMware. However, I don't think 60 FPS remote gaming is possible on XP. Looking Glass uses DXGI for 60fps game streaming, which isn't available until Windows 8/10 (with only Win10 being officially tested and supported), but let's hope someone can get it working with RDP alone.

There is still work to do. However, the obsession with porting Chrome, which I consider to be a solved problem with virtualization--whether via RemoteApp or VirtualBox Seamless Mode--would be better spent on bringing 60fps Remote Desktop to Windows XP. Microsoft Remote Desktop provides the tightest Windows integration, but the FPS seems to have a hard-coded limit. Try rdesktop (win32 build) with VcXsrv or Xming, and you might find it to be much smoother. Taking the open source rdesktop code and improving the Windows integration (taskbar, tray icon, minimize) would be far more rewarding, more future-proof, and apply to far more applications than a port of Chrome 87.

My hope is that this is useful and, ultimately, redirects XP users' attention from ports to virtualization. A quest toward 60fps RemoteApp will be far more rewarding than ports and configs to get <insert application here> working on XP.

I hope this helps! Happy computing!

Edited May 29, 2023 by SuperWorkstationXP

[NotHereToPlayGames]

2 hours ago, SuperWorkstationXP said:

You can also use Virtualbox

Is there a minimum version for VirtualBox?  I prefer version 4.3.28 on my XP machines.

Edited May 29, 2023 by NotHereToPlayGames

[SuperWorkstationXP]

I haven't done enough testing with VirtualBox to give you a firm answer. Just in terms of how I would approach it, I would probably install the latest version of VirtualBox and see the results you get first. I think the CPU spikes are exclusive to VMware, as I wasn't getting CPU spikes on the latest Linux kernel with qemu/kvm.

EDIT: Just saw your edit. The RemoteApp method is for a modern OS host (e.g. latest Debian Linux) that hosts two VMs: one for the application server, and one for XP. WinXP isn't running any VMs inside of it. However, I did post a similar method using VirtualBox running inside WinXP over here, which uses VirtualBox 5.2.44. The methods and hardware requirements are different, but, ultimately, achieves similar results.

Edited May 29, 2023 by SuperWorkstationXP

[Sergiaws]

There is also an interesting possibility. What if we change in the Windows 7 server machine in the regedit the shell from explorer.exe to cmd.exe? I think that then it will use less resources, so XP users might be able to do that even with a Windows 11 Virtual machine (running a kind of minimal Windows 11 inside XP and get some softwares working).

[NotHereToPlayGames]

55 minutes ago, Sergiaws said:

so XP users might be able to do that even with a Windows 11 Virtual machine

I've been running a seamless VirtualBox Win10 server "inside of" XP for several years (VB Win7 server "inside of" XP for roughly a decade).  So technically "nothing new" here.  I've not tried to regedit the shell from explorer.exe to cmd.exe.

The seamless 10 takes up too many resources so 11 would seem to me to be a step in the wrong direction.

Seamless 7 now shows its age with software developers dropping support for 7 much faster than XP was dropped (or so it seems).

It is the Debian / RemoteApp that makes this all "new", not the seamless VM.

[AstroSkipper]

15 hours ago, SuperWorkstationXP said:

My hope is that this is useful and, ultimately, redirects XP users' attention from ports to virtualization.

From a purely technical point of view, this is all quite interesting. And your presentation is perfectly successful and detailed. But I don't see Windows XP as an operating system on modern hardware. Nor in a virtual environment. Many people still have very old hardware that may be fully functional and should be used for various reasons. I, for example, have a very old computer from the year 2000 with a 32-bit processor Intel Pentium 4 2.80 GHz and only 1.5 GB RAM. On such a computer, a maximum of Windows XP 32-bit SP3 or a 32-bit variant of Linux can be installed. Virtualisation on such a computer is of course doomed to failure. And to be honest, I'm glad that I'm allowed to use @roytam1s UXP browsers on this old computer and not this Chrome stuff that I use (or have to use) enough on Android, Windows 7 or Windows 10 anyway. I'm not a gamer, and I don't use Microsoft Office anymore. I therefore find my old, real Windows XP system a real respite and am completely satisfied. In my opinion, modern operating systems belong on modern computers, even if, like me, you don't necessarily like them. So why should I use Windows XP on them? For me, it doesn't really make sense, unless you want to go a bit retro. But then you don't want the Chrome stuff and other newer programs that you can always run on Windows 7 or 10. I don't think much of Windows 11. That's why I don't mention it. By the way, I should add that Windows XP 32-bit SP3 is still my main operating system, which is probably no longer the case with most people here in the forum.

Greetings, AstroSkipper 

Edited May 29, 2023 by AstroSkipper
Update of content

[NotHereToPlayGames]

It's not always that cut-and-dried, in my opinion.

My i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz w/ 16 GB RAM is far from "new", but I HIGHLY prefer XP x64 over Win10 for this "fairly modern" computer.

A full power cycle in XP (not talking hibernate or hybrid sleep), even with all my systray apps, takes only 20 seconds.

A lite Win10 LTSB takes just over a full MINUTE and that's with every "performance boost" known to man.

My two primary laptops are half as old as this i7-4770, but one is an i3 and the other is an i5 - they both boot from a fully power cycle in just over 40 seconds.

More often than not, I'm coming out of hibernate versus full power cycle, but XP does that quite a bit faster also.

[AstroSkipper]

TBH, how many seconds more or less are needed for a cold or warm start of a computer is completely irrelevant to me and not an important criterion. Then I'll go have a smoke.  The actual point I was making is different. Brevity is the spice: modern computer, modern operating system. It's as simple as that.  IMHO, Windows XP belongs on older hardware, which is fully utilised by this operating system.  Otherwise, a computer would not be used in all its capabilities.

Edited May 29, 2023 by AstroSkipper
Update of content

[SuperWorkstationXP]

IMO, criticizing people's choice of operating system or use case is not good for the retrocomputing community as a whole. I'm sure there are enough nuances for @NotHereToPlayGames to justify XP x64 as the choice for semi-modern hardware. Everyone has different reasons and preferences for choosing to remain with legacy operating systems. Cold boots don't matter to me either as my workstation is always on. There are cron backup jobs that run at midnight when I'm sleeping. However, cold boots might matter to laptop users or retrogamers. Their use cases are equally valid.

I used to do software optimization work where we had to optimize below some threshold of human reaction time. The idea is that 50ms, while not technically "instant," is perceived by the user as "instant." Once you cross 100-200ms, the latency is perceptible for the user. We were doing a lot of work to shave 25ms, which just seems ridiculous to the outside world, but, at the UX level, there was a different "feeling" of quality, snappiness, and performance. For a lot of XP users, they "perceive" the operating system as being faster. That perception, mind you, is even more noticeable on modern hardware like NVMe SSDs. Virtualization is able to expose drives from the host to the guest (so you can SSH into a modern Linux host and operate on the files seamlessly), handle TRIM, and expose >2 TB drives to XP. I have a 4tb drive I regularly use in XP that's shared with the host OS. For you, this might seem like blasphemy, but, for XP users that have extra hardware, this is exciting.

The benefits of virtualization extend beyond performance. VM snapshots to restore an entire VM -- wiping out viruses, bad installs (*cough* 64-bit Chrome for XP), rolling back bad configs, etc. Migrating to a new build on new hardware is just a copy & paste of a .qcow2 or .vmdk file from the previous PC. Backing up a VM involves just backing up the aforementioned files plus some configs. A virtualized XP on a Linux host can run regular cron backup jobs at midnight from SSD to HDD, with double/triple/off-site delta backups using rsync/duplicity with encryption.

So, to your point, the modern hardware *is* running on a modern host OS. Further, my day-to-day is not tied to retrocomputing, retrogaming, RemoteApp, or anything to do with Windows. I have to run long compile jobs and tests for C++ projects targeting mainly Linux amd64 but with occasional cross-compiles to Win/Mac, which occur on external servers, but my main test-code-compile loop is basically on my local workstation.

When people complain about the overkill specs for XP because I'm stuffing in modern hardware and then virtualizing it, they're missing the forest for the trees. I need that hardware. It wasn't intended for XP. It was originally for gcc/clang + Linux. All my builds in the last decade have been built with the assumption I would just be running modern Linux, but I somehow re-discovered XP and simultaneously stumbled on coupling it with virtualization around the tail end of 2022. gcc/clang are still running on the Linux host though, as shown in the terminal emulator of the original screenshot.

In any case, if the hardware is emerging from necessity and the software is emerging from choice, it's just a matter of squeezing out maximum performance from there. It would be wasteful not to. This is why I explained my background, story, use cases, etc. I realized there would be a minority of users, mainly developers still sympathetic to XP, facing a similar predicament, and I wanted to help. I'm not actually using modern Office or Windows 7/8/10/11 applications enough on a daily basis to need RemoteApp. RemoteApp is a convenience that isn't tied to my main work.

Each XP user has a different use case, preference, workflow, or story for why they chose XP over all other seemingly more logical choices, and it almost always boils down to user preference and personal habits. Cold boots, I'm sure, are just one of many nuances, and it's difficult to articulate or enumerate all of them. The beauty of XP is in the sum of its parts.

[AstroSkipper]

8 hours ago, SuperWorkstationXP said:

IMO, criticizing people's choice of operating system or use case is not good for the retrocomputing community as a whole.

Criticizing? Far from it. As far as I'm concerned, everyone can do whatever they want with their computer. Whether it makes sense or not. I couldn't care less! And if you read my first post properly, you would have noticed that I appreciate your project from a technical point of view. Here is my statement again:

22 hours ago, AstroSkipper said:

From a purely technical point of view, this is all quite interesting. And your presentation is perfectly successful and detailed.

And having a different opinion and expressing it does never harm. Quite the opposite! It might make you think. At least that's how it works here in Germany and in many other European countries. And if someone has a problem with that, it doesn't bother me at all. For my part, I am neither interested in gaming nor in retro computing. I have been a genuine Windows XP user for over 20 years and am therefore not interested in retro, but in original. All my doing here on MSFN is to support real Windows XP users who need this operation system or want to use it for whatever reason. And by that I don't mean playing around with Windows XP today and Windows 98 in a VM tomorrow and so on.

8 hours ago, SuperWorkstationXP said:

The beauty of XP is in the sum of its parts.

Yep, the beauty of XP is in the sum of its part and has fully developed in my computer over more than two decades. And it doesn't seem to want to stop.

Cheers, AstroSkipper

Edited May 30, 2023 by AstroSkipper
Update of content

[NotHereToPlayGames]

1 hour ago, AstroSkipper said:

Criticizing? Far from it.

Whether sounding "criticizing" or not is a matter of perception.  Not all of our "writing styles" come across the same way as our "verbal communications".

[AstroSkipper]

8 minutes ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

Whether sounding "criticizing" or not is a matter of perception.  Not all of our "writing styles" come across the same way as our "verbal communications".

I think I have made my point of view and therefore my opinion crystal clear. That has nothing to do with criticism. And the problem with perception is truly a different one and cannot be solved by me.

[SuperWorkstationXP]

Ah, no hard feelings then. Just a misinterpretation on my part!

[Snowshoe]

Is there not a way to do this without disconnecting the Win10 computer's session? What if you want to use Windows 10 while running Windows 10 programs inside XP at the same time under the same user?

[SuperWorkstationXP]

This is a limitation of the licensed operating system. From RemoteApp Tool's compatibility guide:

Quote

On client versions of Windows (XP / Vista / 7/8 / 8.1 / 10 / 11), there is a limit to one active user session. Exceptions - Windows 10 Enterprise for virtual desktops and Windows 11 Enterprise multi-session

Windows Server is limited to 2 sessions (No RDS licenses).

To get around the restrictions, you can either buy an RDS license or install an RDP Wrapper.

Note that I haven't tested RDPWrapper as RDPWrapper does have warnings about stability. Take a VM snapshot and restore it if things go wrong. Otherwise, let us know how it goes.