Gemini000 wrote:

Odd... If you try to run DXDIAG and test Direct3D functionality, what tests get performed?

Direct3D 7, Direct3D 8, and Direct3D 9 tests, all successful.

Microsoft will have no choice but to extend it's support of Windows 7's life cycle and updates beyond 2020, until it can sort out the whole Windows 8's Metro mess and it's uncertain future pathway of it's OS ideology. That, or if it can survive any criticisms of it's next OS release.

If only Microsoft simply had labelled Windows 8 as a Tablet OS, and not the successor of Windows 7, and had let the desktop users alone, it wouldn't be this bad. Windows 8 was released quite early when Windows 7 is going well, and when even XP is still having a major footprint in the customer database, and it's such a stupid move to try to force everyone to change to Windows 8, even, trying to convert desktop users to adapt to a Tablet interface.

It's sad enough that Microsoft just wants to make more money - XP (let alone Win7) can already and still do what most desktop, home, office and business users want, yet MS is forcing them to upgrade every few years, by instilling the fear of dropping support to the OS, and repeating the cycle.

I just wish Microsoft uses something like an optional subscription service for the security updates (yearly, 2-yearly or 5-yearly) instead of forcing to upgrade the OS and the machines every few years, if it's afraid of not able to make more money.

Time to educate the people on Linux? 🤣

I'm sure it's just a matter of time for someone to come up with a Linux distro that looks and works exactly like the XP/7/2000/NT, etc. - to help new users who are not familiar with Linux. (Most Linux distros already work like the Win9x UI anyway.)

Malik wrote:

It's sad enough that Microsoft just wants to make more money - XP (let alone Win7) can already and still do what most desktop, home, office and business users want, yet MS is forcing them to upgrade every few years, by instilling the fear of dropping support to the OS, and repeating the cycle.

I just wish Microsoft uses something like an optional subscription service for the security updates (yearly, 2-yearly or 5-yearly) instead of forcing to upgrade the OS and the machines every few years, if it's afraid of not able to make more money.

To be fair, you can't just keep patching something indefinitely, can you? At some point I would think starting afresh would be necessary.

Time to educate the people on Linux? 🤣

Is there any distro that came out at the time of Windows XP (or perhaps XP SP3, to be fair) that is still particularly usable today?

I'm sure it's just a matter of time for someone to come up with a Linux distro that looks and works exactly like the XP/7/2000/NT, etc. - to help new users who are not familiar with Linux. (Most Linux distros already work like the Win9x UI anyway.)

There's something called ZorinOS that is relatively new, but I don't think it's going to take off – there was also something called XPde many years ago that died quietly. I think it's been said that optimizing the desktop experience doesn't seem to have been much of a priority in Linux development. Maybe that will change in however many decades it takes for X to finally be replaced.

Yes, I agree it's not practical to patch it indefinitely.

Hopefully the next main OS will be more sensible, unless Microsoft is adamant in going ahead of implementing the Tablet UI across desktops. 😉

Malik wrote:

I'm sure it's just a matter of time for someone to come up with a Linux distro that looks and works exactly like the XP/7/2000/NT, etc. - to help new users who are not familiar with Linux. (Most Linux distros already work like the Win9x UI anyway.)

Zorin OS

I think it's an Ubuntu distro with a Windows interface. 🤣

I'm not sure if in 2020 Windows 7 will be really useful for modern rigs though, iiuc it will support a maximum of 16GB RAM anyway (except for the really expensive variants) and I'm already at 8GB in my main rig right now.

Malik wrote:

Yes, I agree it's not practical to patch it indefinitely.

Hopefully the next main OS will be more sensible, unless Microsoft is adamant in going ahead of implementing the Tablet UI across desktops. 😉

But if enough people are willing to pay for those patches to older releases, then it is worth it for Microsoft to keep releasing them as opposed to releasing them for free to users of the current version.

Tetrium wrote:

I'm not sure if in 2020 Windows 7 will be really useful for modern rigs though, iiuc it will support a maximum of 16GB RAM anyway (except for the really expensive variants) and I'm already at 8GB in my main rig right now.

I doubt people consider Windows 7 Pro expensive (well sane people anyway) and since it would be EOL they'd probably be using an activation bypass anyway. It's usually the hardware that's the limiting factor on memory upgrades. For instance my FreeNAS fileserver that I built in 2007 tops out at 16GB which is where it's at currently.

http://www.ign.com/wikis/crysis-3/System_Requirements

I've had 8GB in my desktop since June 2010 and didn't need that much and still don't for gaming and considering that for the home user that gaming is what they'd need that much memory for I don't see users needing anywhere close to 16GB of memory in 2020.

Of course needing that amount and computers coming with that amount by default are two different things.

DosFreak wrote:

I doubt people consider Windows 7 Pro expensive (well sane people anyway) and since it would be EOL they'd probably be using an […]
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Tetrium wrote:

I'm not sure if in 2020 Windows 7 will be really useful for modern rigs though, iiuc it will support a maximum of 16GB RAM anyway (except for the really expensive variants) and I'm already at 8GB in my main rig right now.

I doubt people consider Windows 7 Pro expensive (well sane people anyway) and since it would be EOL they'd probably be using an activation bypass anyway. It's usually the hardware that's the limiting factor on memory upgrades. For instance my FreeNAS fileserver that I built in 2007 tops out at 16GB which is where it's at currently.

http://www.ign.com/wikis/crysis-3/System_Requirements

I've had 8GB in my desktop since June 2010 and didn't need that much and still don't for gaming and considering that for the home user that gaming is what they'd need that much memory for I don't see users needing anywhere close to 16GB of memory in 2020.

Of course needing that amount and computers coming with that amount by default are two different things.

When RAM prices fall, there is always a surge in people upgrading their memory whether they need it or not. Operating systems and applications are always starving for more memory so upgrading when prices fall into the range of your budget is usually money well spent as it is cheaper than buying a new computer to run the latest software.

Just tried Zorin OS. It's really fast and responsive. I just wish they didn't make the default gtk theme resembling the win8 's flat, blue frames and buttons look, which is annoying for someone looking to escape from win8! 🤣

But it's Linux, so you can change the looks however you want.

It does resemble windows and, I'm impressed by it's speed snd responsiveness even from a USB stick on my laptop.

Tetrium wrote:

I'm not sure if in 2020 Windows 7 will be really useful for modern rigs though, iiuc it will support a maximum of 16GB RAM anyway (except for the really expensive variants) and I'm already at 8GB in my main rig right now.

Its only the crappy home version that has that limitation. Pro, Ultimate and Enterprise support 192GB RAM just fine.

I'm on my new system now, installed XP x64 but now I'm running into trouble.

I installed XP by slipstreaming SP2 and AHCI drivers onto the CD with nlite, installed all drivers, ran windows update, then discovered that Windows setup made a mess of my partition table. So I got a gparted liveCD and fixed it, and also aligned the SSD partitions on 4k sectors.

Now I get bluescreens randomly every few minutes. They seem to occur most often while booting or shutting down. Problem is, windows won't write a minidump because "\SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\iaStorA.sys cannot find dump_storport.sys StorPortExtendedFunct", whatever that means. I think iaStorA.sys (AHCI driver) is attempting to use some function not found in XP x64, even though they were supposed to be compatible.

Also, running CPUID's HWMonitor results in an instant reboot about 9 out of 10 times. And when it doesn't crash, it only shows the harddrive temperature sensors.

Now of course, I already heard XP x64 didn't have the best driver support... but this seems pretty extreme 🤣

Anyone knows what could be wrong? Or should I just install Win7 instead...?

When it comes to XP, just install 32-bit XP... the "x64" edition is a pile of garbage.

If you need 64-bit support you just have to use windows 7.

Using Windows XP x64 at the office, on several systems up to Sandy Bridge. Without any particular problems or instabilities. Just that there is no localized language version. I remember running Open-hardware-monitor on some of them. Probably CPU-Z too. It was with SP2, but I do not remember slipstreaming SP2 myself.

jwt27 wrote:

I'm on my new system now, installed XP x64 but now I'm running into trouble. […]
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I'm on my new system now, installed XP x64 but now I'm running into trouble.

I installed XP by slipstreaming SP2 and AHCI drivers onto the CD with nlite, installed all drivers, ran windows update, then discovered that Windows setup made a mess of my partition table. So I got a gparted liveCD and fixed it, and also aligned the SSD partitions on 4k sectors.

Now I get bluescreens randomly every few minutes. They seem to occur most often while booting or shutting down. Problem is, windows won't write a minidump because "\SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\iaStorA.sys cannot find dump_storport.sys StorPortExtendedFunct", whatever that means. I think iaStorA.sys (AHCI driver) is attempting to use some function not found in XP x64, even though they were supposed to be compatible.

Also, running CPUID's HWMonitor results in an instant reboot about 9 out of 10 times. And when it doesn't crash, it only shows the harddrive temperature sensors.

Now of course, I already heard XP x64 didn't have the best driver support... but this seems pretty extreme 🤣

Anyone knows what could be wrong? Or should I just install Win7 instead...?

Sounds like either buggy or incorrect drivers. Found this:

"6a) There is implementation about StorPortExtendedFunction that you cannot see. The mentioned API was added in Win7, thus it’s only available in Win7 and up"

I've used XP 64bit for years with Intel AHCI drivers without issue. Make sure when you download the drivers from the intel site that you download the XP/2003 drivers. If those are the ones that you are currently using then try older versions. I have them all up until last year when I went on deployment so if you need ones that work then I can send them to you.

What error code and driver does the BSOD mention?

If the computer is automatically rebooting make sure you turn off "automatically restart" in sysdm.cpl in Advanced->Startup and Recovery.

gerwin wrote:

Using Windows XP x64 at the office, on several systems up to Sandy Bridge. Without any particular problems or instabilities. Just that there is no localized language version. I remember running Open-hardware-monitor on some of them. Probably CPU-Z too. It was with SP2, but I do not remember slipstreaming SP2 myself.

I checked with CPU-Z and it does exactly the same as HWMonitor. However CPU-Z displays a progress bar on startup and it consistently crashes when it's at "SPD".

DosFreak wrote:

Sounds like either buggy or incorrect drivers. Found this:

"6a) There is implementation about StorPortExtendedFunction that you cannot see. The mentioned API was added in Win7, thus it’s only available in Win7 and up"

I've used XP 64bit for years with Intel AHCI drivers without issue. Make sure when you download the drivers from the intel site that you download the XP/2003 drivers. If those are the ones that you are currently using then try older versions. I have them all up until last year when I went on deployment so if you need ones that work then I can send them to you.

I'm using these AHCI drivers: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc. … x?DwnldID=22502
They're meant to be used with the C600 server chipset, but I read somewhere that it's virtually identical to X79. In any case, these are the only RSTe/SATA/RAID/AHCI/(whatever it's called) drivers I could find for XP-x64. The mainboard manufacturer does not provide them either, only for Windows 7 and up.

DosFreak wrote:

What error code and driver does the BSOD mention?

If the computer is automatically rebooting make sure you turn off "automatically restart" in sysdm.cpl in Advanced->Startup and Recovery.

Automatic reboot was enabled, so I was unable to check the details. And of course, it didn't write any kernel dumps due to the above driver bug so I can't check them, either. I've seen at least BAD_POOL_CALLER, IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION and PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA come up.
After posting my last message I haven't had any more blue screens, though. I assume HWMonitor and CPU-Z do cause a blue screen but it reboots before I see anything, since the error message about iaStorA.sys and being unable to write a memory dump comes up in the event log too.

I'm wondering if if there's an issue with memory timings or voltage. Try running memtest86+ or other hardware diagnostics.

Though I love XP, I generally stayed away from XP64 (for home and gaming needs). Any reason to choose XP64 over Win7 x64 now? Especially with XP's official support ending in a month? Or was it just an experimental install?

As has been said, pretty much the only reason is if you want to run XP with more than 3 GB of RAM (and don't want to use PAE tricks).

Malik wrote:

Though I love XP, I generally stayed away from XP64 (for home and gaming needs). Any reason to choose XP64 over Win7 x64 now? Especially with XP's official support ending in a month? Or was it just an experimental install?

I've heard much about XP-x64's shabby driver support, but never actually tried it myself. So yes, I mostly installed it just to try it out. If I can get all the drivers to work properly I'd like to use Win7 just for gaming and XP for everything else.
Also XP x64 can read (but not boot from) GPT-partitioned drives. Since I have one 3TB harddrive I wouldn't be able to access it from 32-bit XP.

I couldn't care less about XP's support ending if that only means they'll break windows update. But if Microsoft decides to remove backwards compatibility from MSVC like they did with Windows 2000, that might be a problem.

DosFreak wrote:

I'm wondering if if there's an issue with memory timings or voltage. Try running memtest86+ or other hardware diagnostics.

I can hardly imagine that. These DIMMs are rated for 2400MHz, CL11, 1.65V. When I got those blue screens I ran them at stock settings: 1333MHz, CL9, 1.5V.
Turned them up to 1866MHz (maximum officially supprted by the CPU) with CL10 now at 1.60V and as a stress-test I ran both prime95 and cudaminer overnight. Besides turning the room into a sauna with that nice "new computer parts" smell, it didn't do anything unusual.
Of course, prime95 doesn't test the memory bit-for-bit like memtest86. I'll install Windows 7 today and run memtest overnight.

I must add, I did update the BIOS in the meantime. Maybe that's what fixed the blue screens.