XP 32 Bit? I will follow this with interest since I might have to use a 4th gen Intel i7, the only CPU I have lurking around, to build a small mini-ITX pc with XP for playing early 2000's sports/racing games.

Wow! That example seems a bit extreme, but the tools/methods used might be useful for the days when XP compatible hardware is no longer plentiful.

The fact that the CSM is going the way of the dodo will likely signal an end to such adaptations, unless someone writes a BIOS emulation layer to run on top of UEFI ( maybe somebody's working on that already).

CSM is still present on recent Z490 Boards, maybe the last ones.
XP 32 Bit, yes.

GokuSS4 wrote on 2020-09-13, 23:30:

CSM is still present on recent Z490 Boards, maybe the last ones.
XP 32 Bit, yes.

I have a Gigabyte GA-H97N-WIFI, how do I know if a board still has CSM?

Bruninho wrote on 2020-09-14, 04:14:

GokuSS4 wrote on 2020-09-13, 23:30:

CSM is still present on recent Z490 Boards, maybe the last ones.
XP 32 Bit, yes.

I have a Gigabyte GA-H97N-WIFI, how do I know if a board still has CSM?

Look in the BIOS, usually there is an option to enable/disable it .

To test it, try booting from a non-UEFI capable OS install media, like a Windows XP installation CD, a USB DOS bootable floppy or an old Linux distribution CD or USB drive that predates UEFI .

darry wrote on 2020-09-14, 04:25:

Bruninho wrote on 2020-09-14, 04:14:

I have a Gigabyte GA-H97N-WIFI, how do I know if a board still has CSM?

Look in the BIOS, usually there is an option to enable/disable it .

To test it, try booting from a non-UEFI capable OS install media, like a Windows XP installation CD, a USB DOS bootable floppy or an old Linux distribution CD or USB drive that predates UEFI .

Thank you, I didn't knew that. I have 9X, 2K, XP install CDs, I'll check it when I have some free time to rebuild that machine.

I know this isn't relevant to what you are trying to achieve, but I really hope you're not connecting this machine to the internet.. XP is soon a 20 year old OS, and it doesn't receive updates anymore. I bet there are multiple known unpatched 0day exploits for XP already. Wouldn't be fun to have some invisible keylogger on your system, for example... 🙁 People say "I use my brain, so I'm safe" all the time, but it's not that simple.

No hard feelings, I just hope people are aware of the huge security risk.

8bitbubsy wrote on 2020-09-14, 09:35:

I bet there are multiple known unpatched 0day exploits for XP already. Wouldn't be fun to have some invisible keylogger on your system, for example... 🙁 People say "I use my brain, so I'm safe" all the time, but it's not that simple.

No hard feelings, I just hope people are aware of the huge security risk.

No hard feelings, but I find that most security threats are usually overblown. If somebody will write an exploit, somebody will write a patch. If an exploit is out, and it's major enough, it will get out in the open. The idea that there are some very widespread, very dangerous exploits out there, and no one knows about them, is not plausible.

Generally, an old OS is not as safe, definitely. In practice, the "use your brain advice" is typically better than blind reliance on "Patch Tuesday" of your supported OS to protect you.

I wouldn't advise to use XP to browse the web for prolonged periods of time, for sure. For security reasons, and others. It's not even a pleasant experience with all the mainstream browsers having dropped support. But the idea that as soon as you connect it to the internet you are at a terrible horrible immediate risk is, well, FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) spreading.

The combo of advice that is good enough to stop the majority of attack vectors:

1. Browse from behind a NAT router (who doesn't?)
2. Use an adblocker (who doesn't?)
3. Use your brain (there we might have some problem sometimes, but there's no way around it)

This is j4f, playing Games on XP offline or for Benchmarking, not for productive using..
XP got updated with POSReady Updates
https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/sear … .aspx?q=4500331

Just my two cents but I never did any serious browsing on any of my old Windows VMs. Just casual stuff like downloading apps, games & drivers, some forums like Vogons and thats it. The serious stuff I do on my Mac with Safari.

Not that I am scared but just playing safe. Anyway, I bet it’s safer now to browse in a Win 3.x or Win 9x browser than before in their heydays, and also than XP and later browsers.

Bruninho wrote on 2020-09-14, 12:51:

Anyway, I bet it’s safer now to browse in a Win 3.x or Win 9x browser than before in their heydays

For sure, especially since there are about 2 websites in the world that still work in a 3.x/9x-compatible browser. And one of them is VOGONS. 😁

Not going to hijack this thread anymore after this post, but I just want to reply to some stuff.

dr_st wrote on 2020-09-14, 11:07:

If somebody will write an exploit, somebody will write a patch.

Not sure about that. The small percentage of people that still use XP, are people working in hospitals, military (ironically enough) etc.
AFAIK, the people writing patches (outside of MS) are mostly hobbyists or people getting paid to do it, and how relevant is XP to them these days?

dr_st wrote on 2020-09-14, 11:07:

But the idea that as soon as you connect it to the internet you are at a terrible horrible immediate risk is, well, FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) spreading.

That does indeed seem like a dumb idea.

dr_st wrote on 2020-09-14, 11:07:

2. Use an adblocker (who doesn't?)

Well, the browsers that run on XP are outdated already (are there are non-official updated ports for XP btw?), and maybe they don't even support the current adblocker addons.
It's important to update your browser and adblocker too.

dr_st wrote on 2020-09-14, 11:07:

3. Use your brain (there we might have some problem sometimes, but there's no way around it)

Common sense, but to some people it seems like it's the only thing you need to stay protected. Some don't use anti-viruses because they stand by this statement. It's madness if you ask me. I personally don't take any chances, there has been all sorts of mindblowing exploiting out there.

GokuSS4 wrote on 2020-09-14, 12:04:

XP got updated with POSReady Updates
https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/sear … .aspx?q=4500331

Emphasis on "got", POSReady support ended on April 2019. But yeah, this should be better (security-wise) than running non-POSReady XP.

8bitbubsy wrote on 2020-09-14, 15:01:

Not sure about that. The small percentage of people that still use XP, are people working in hospitals, military (ironically enough) etc.

Exactly. It's a small but important market. In fact, I believe that if something truly critical comes out and gets noticed, MSFT itself will release a patch, even for XP, even now, because of this market.

8bitbubsy wrote on 2020-09-14, 15:01:

AFAIK, the people writing patches (outside of MS) are mostly hobbyists or people getting paid to do it, and how relevant is XP to them these days?

Very relevant, I'd say. Probably the only relevant one, since MSFT is still patching the newer versions of Windows (some of them still via mainstream, some via ESU).

8bitbubsy wrote on 2020-09-14, 15:01:

Well, the browsers that run on XP are outdated already (are there are non-official updated ports for XP btw?), and maybe they don't even support the current adblocker addons.
It's important to update your browser and adblocker too.

Browser support is a problem in general, not just security wise. Slimjet 10, Firefox 52.9 is pretty much all you can get from official sources. The other source is specific determined developers, like roytam1, who backports recent versions of Pale Moon to support XP/Vista. These browsers require older adblockers, for sure, but it seems that what's more frequently updated in an adblocker is not the core, but the filters, and these can still be updated on old extension versions as well.

8bitbubsy wrote on 2020-09-14, 15:01:

Some don't use anti-viruses because they stand by this statement. It's madness if you ask me.

I don't use any third-party antiviruses, just whatever built into Windows (Windows Defender). I don't think it applies to XP. I used to work with antiviruses, and found them useful in the beginning. Then at some point I realized that they no longer ever caught anything real for me, only a bunch of false positives.

8bitbubsy wrote on 2020-09-14, 15:01:

I personally don't take any chances, there has been all sorts of mindblowing exploiting out there.

That's fine. Just don't lull yourself into a sense of false security. Most people that fall victims to exploits do so despite running modern, patchable operating systems.

Sorry for the hijack as well. But I expect we can continue, if you wish. If it gets too long, the moderators can always split it into a different thread.

I too think that we deviated from the topic discussion, but to put my final comment on the browsers discussion, I have never ever used an antivirus since I switched to a Mac and never had problems. I don't even do backups. Not even a single iPhone backup, if it goes awry, I'd rather always (re)start like new again. More important data like finances are printed right away. I know, I am such a minimalist.

By other hand, when I built a PC for simracing around 2014, guess what, the PC was caught with one of those ransomwares and destroyed a lot of data on it. Fortunately nothing absolutely important. I just laughed, cleaned it and reinstalled the stuff.

There's also PiHole (?) which runs on a Raspberry Pi and filters incoming/outgoing traffic.
Could be handy for otherwise reckless semi-retro systems.. 😉

A couple years ago I did an experiment with XP. I built an XP system, left it unpatched and hooked it up directly to my cable modem. Within about 30 minutes the system was completely unusable due to so much malware being on it.

That was with me doing absolutely nothing... Just booted it and let it sit on the desktop.

If you are searching for a more recent Browser for XP try this: https://msfn.org/board/topic/180462-my-browse … -builds-part-2/ or https://rtfreesoft.blogspot.com/search/label/browser

Palemoon: https://o.rths.ml/palemoon/?sort=date&order=desc
Basilisk: https://o.rths.ml/basilisk/?sort=date&order=desc

uBlock for Firefox legacy: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock-for-firefox … egacy/releases/

For Win98 I found this: https://github.com/rn10950/RetroZilla/releases/

but not recommended for daily use, only for testing 😀

For Win 98 You can also use Netscape 9.0.0.6 with Roytam1's NSS patches, I think he posted it somewhere right here on VOGONS. I use Netscape because IMO it works better than Retrozilla with the same patches.

In regards to XP browsing, Pale Moon's developers decided it was a good idea to block out anyone using a user-agent string below NT 6.1, or containing the word "Mypal" along with some sort of anti-spambot protection (due to some older scraper/bots typically using ancient useragent strings such as IE6), from their addons site.

Apparently their excuse was that they're (roytam1/Feodor2) using up so much - conveniently, without any actual statistics of any sort - resources of PM while giving nothing back to the mainline project, and people are jumping to PM's forums asking for support for these unendorsed forks (as if that has any blame related to the developers), which according to them, constitutes abuse.

It's also not the first time they've pulled this garbage, either. There was the time with the BSD install script, as well as the Slackware builds. What's ironic is that Pale Moon appeals rather highly to users of these forks (especially given most users of anything past Vista won't give a damn about customisability) and users who are typically on lower end hardware... and they're literally calling them abusers of the original project? I think there's some very narcissistic developer attitudes going on there, tbh.

---

That said, given the state of the Modern/Consumerist Web that forces you to load 322 elements before you even see one line of actual content start to load, and keep JS on (unless you want to spend ten minutes trying to make it work without it client side), don't even bother using XP online, there's just no point. An 8 years old laptop with a low end processor would struggle, let alone something that likely lacks SSE2 support and has below 8 GB of RAM - it's a pretty sorry state really, and one that no one will ever solve while the more Chrome gains share, and the rest just keep on copying it as FF has done since 2008, while even the one viable choice is poor due to the attitudes of its developers being a rather possible putoff for some.

I swear, 2016 and beyond really was the death of the Internet, and it's ultimately everyone younger than us who's gonna suffer in the long run.

(Thus concluding a pathetically long, kinda off-topic, ranty post. Hi btw.)