I’m curious what you’ve been doing with it, what workarounds and fixes you’ve had to do over the years?
Probably plenty of critical infrastructure and medical systems.
In 2020 I worked for an MSP and we had to fix a broken Windows 2000 machine because it was the only machine that a certain medial office could use to send a receive faxes. They could not afford to upgrade a more modern system, as it necessitate a forklift upgrade of all their systems that would go into the 5-digit dollars. They didn’t have that money and no one could get computers quickly in 2020 so fixing it was the only option. After 20 hours of troubleshooting it got bounced up to me, because managed the team that had to fix it. I went into the office after they closed and everyone was gone, because pandemic. I pulled the machine in question out of the corner of the “server room” (read: poorly ventilated closet) it was in. An old Gateway full ATX tower, it was a sight to behold underneath the dust. Turns out the dust was the problem - it hadn’t been cleaned at any point in the last 20 years and there was a literal quarter inch of dust and lint on top of the motherboard. I cleaned that thing till it sparkled, set up back up and turned it on. Worked PERFECTLY, like nothing had ever been wrong. I was happy, the client was overjoyed and my bosses were happy. Good stuff.
The PSU blew 7 months later, taking down the motherboard and drives. Paperweight. So we took the full backup we made after I fixed it, turned it into a VM, set up a USB passthrough and gave it a USB fax modem. I left that job a while back, but to my knowledge it’s still working. By the time we had done that we had billed over 30 hours of work to the client at $150/hr. That’s a $4500 Windows 2000 fax server with added VM licensing on top of it. Pretty silly at the end of the day.
Don’t know whether you mean that as a joke, but I can tell you it is very real thing world wide still.
We run it in a lab, one of the microscopes we have is no longer maintained, and there is no driver for a modern OS.
It’s completely offline though, we copy the images onto a flash drive and then move them over to the production system manually, so there’s no need to update or fix anything just yet. It’s the same old computer. I’ve got a full set of replacement hardware though, just in case.
Make an image of the whole computer if you can.
One day the hardware will die and it will probably run on semi modern hardware if you have a backup of the original drive.
Sure, I have an image and 2 or 3 identical HDDs to restore them to. I have my doubts the image would mount as a VM, but I can install a fresh XP in a VM and then try to restore the drivers. I’d only have to find a way to access a serial port - I know they exist as USB adapters, but can’t be sure the software would recognize it accordingly. Would have to recognize it as a serial in the host OS and then pass through to the image. Which in theory should work, but in practice I’ll only touch it when it becomes a necessity. And luckily there’s a million old computers for cheap on ebay, so I hope I can just wait it out until the microscope eventually retires. It’s been long since written off, and I believe there were plans to replace it within the next 5 years, max.
Something like that is more likely to work if it’s the same exact hardware, an XP image applied onto a totally different system is likely going to BSOD when all the current drivers it has installed suddenly stop working. And XP being XP, you’re not going to find new drivers for new hardware.
A lot of these XP machines running other hardware also have their own specific drivers and long unsupported proprietary middleware installed that won’t transfer onto new systems easily.
But I do agree with you on the disk image, if only the hard drive on that XP system dies then that’s an easy fix. Worst case OP would have to hunt around for an IDE drive if that desktop is particularly ancient.
Man, i feel strange still running 10.
At my current job, W10 is staying for the foreseeable future and we are holding back W11 for as long as it could be possible. Because MS is just charging way too much for an spyware and ad free W11. Last year our purchases team sent a request for a W11 without ads, without tracking (we are privacy and security critical) and without AI, or at least reasonable ways for the ICT team to remove them. That option simply doesn’t exists, so it is W10 forever then.
I have an old CNC machine driven by an XP laptop. XP runs great, I just don’t mess with it and of course keep it off the internet.
Yes, I have a 2008-era build running it. It’s glorious. Not really many fixes other than installing all the updates up to 2019, and making sure to manually run SSD tools to trim my drive.
Look man, I just really like Space Cadet Pinball.
I know this is (probably) a joke, but there’s a modern reverse engineered version: https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball
Someone’s also packaged it for Flatpak: https://flathub.org/apps/com.github.k4zmu2a.spacecadetpinballIt was a joke until you posted them links bruh, I’m gonna try this!
I just took the exe file from XP and run that in Wine.
But anyway.
You can just copy the binary from XP to a modern Windows version, or even better you can install the reverse-engineered version on loads of modern devices!
Quite a few people here sound like ideal candidates to try ReactOS. It is an open source implementation of the NT architecture and should generally slot in for most software including drivers. It works quite well and plenty of people have managed to get old hardware working on ReactOS that was not otherwise ssfe to connect to a network. It works just like Windows NT and looks very similar but also supports more modern security standards and software.
I tried it twice and not a single time it clicked with my hardware. The idea is great though and might solve few problems for me (old software on modern PC).
Damn, that sucks. What sort of stuff were you trying to keep running? I haven’t got a lot of old hardware anymore after moving a bunch of times, everything I have is modern old, around to 5 to 8 year mark, so no hardware support issues but also nothing powerful enough to do anything fun with.
E.g. I spent a lot of time trying to convince specific old and outdated branch of AutoCAD-like program (never heard the name before or after) to work on anything past WinXP for my dad. He used that specific one at work and can’t get past anything else due to UI and workflow differences. I ended up running it in VM XP, because it was the only sane way…
Very cool. I helped my uncle get a tiny component of an old architecture program he paid a few thousand for working in a VM because literally nobody had made the same type of file converter since them and for some reason nobody minds having one machine running Windows XP on a machine in the corner. His XP machine died so I grabbed the disk and reimaged XP into a VM, brought over the files, and boom, that program runs and will continue to do so on a machine without network access but with a single folder mount point for dropping files back and forth.
ReactOS rocks!
You know i woke up today with a furious urge to buy an old Windows XP computer and play old games on it. Of course i wouldn’t ever connect it to the internet.
I suspect i might be setting myself up for major headaches
A virtual machine is still an option.
I’ve got a number of embedded systems that use a Java client which can’t work on a modern system. I run XP in a VM with an old version of Firefox and Java on it to get into those. Works great!
Up until a few years ago, I had a flight simulator running on Windows 95. It too, ran great and was certified for students to log flight time towards their certifications.
I have a bunch of retro machines, and one of them is running XP. Not long ago I enjoyed No one lives forever on it. Nothing beats the correct hardware.
Regarding fixes, Service Pack 2 is enough. And since Steam is not supporting retro machines anymore there is no reason to connect it to the internet anymore, thankfully gog let’s me download the installers, all the more reason to use gog exclusively. At least for my special gaming tastes.
i don’t necessarily use it, but i mess around with an xp vm a lot. for web browsing there’s mypal (which is old but still mostly functional firefox) and supermium which is somehow chrome 122 on xp. there’s also one core api for running more modern apps, but i haven’t ever tried it.
overall, xp is surprising usable for most people considering “usable” means “there is a modern web browser” but i still wouldn’t recommend it since xp is 23 years old.
I have an old film scanner (was pricy back in its day) that doesn’t have drivers for 64 bit Windows, and anything newer than Vista. So I have an old XP box that can talk to it.
That’s all I use that computer for, so it’s otherwise fine with its circa 2009 configuration. Haven’t had to do any fixes or workarounds.
What kind of resolution do you get?
Have you tried a Linux distro?
I know it’s a meme at this point but one thing Linux is really good at is support for older hardware. That’ll allow you to get updates and put it on a network too.
Consider trying out ReactOS. It is an attempt to reverse engineer a fully compatible Windows replacement which uses Windows drivers and Windows software. It looks verysimilar and works similarly but is completely open implementation of the NT architecture and as such may actually meet your needs while being free software. I would love to hear how it goes if you try it.
There are some CD-ROM games I run on XP in a vm.
Oooh do tell. I miss the shareware of the 90s
Mostly Magic School Bus
Unfortunately a lot of shareware is not compatible with xp, because it’s based on NT architecture. Unlike 9x which is based on DOS, and can run most if not all the shareware of the 90s.
Also XP was released in 2001, so not the best choice for 90s gaming. The lack of or limited compatibility, with 9x and DOS was an actual downside and reason not to upgrade for older hardware back in the day.
I use “compatibility mode” when needed.
Airgapped XP Pro on an old IBM laptop (somehow in near mint condition) in order to manage files on a Creative Zen. Linux can see, but not manage. Win10+ can’t even see.
Edit: I checked the model, if anyone is interested. It’s an IBM ThinkPad R51.
We have a few clients that use them to control the CNC machines they have.
The machines are isolated from all other devices on the network and can’t see the internet.
The machinists run their gcode files from USB sticks that are walked from their machine to the CNC
The machines are isolated from all other devices on the network and can’t see the internet.
Serious question, why are they even connected to the LAN?
The machinists run their gcode files from USB sticks that are walked from their machine to the CNC
Wait until USB-C becomes the de-facto standard, and new systems no longer come with USB-A, and USB-A sticks are no longer manufactured.
Happened to the floppy drive, too.
If these are machines running Windows XP, I doubt they’re very new.
Wasn’t talking about the CnC controllers as the “new” machines.
Ah, ok. Dongles it is, then.
True, but add-in cards are going to be around for a long time after that for the people truly desperate for USB-A ports on a new desktop.
For a while at work I had to use a add-in card in a Win 10 desktop just to have a parallel port for the ancient label printer we were using.
