ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-12-07, 12:35:

Why does it need to be a self built computer?

If the guy isnt really confident enough in computers to find XP drivers then should we be pointing him towards building his own PC with a £200 motherboard when a £100 prebuilt will do everything he wants to do?

These are logical thoughts, but I hope that my effort at humor hasn't shifted the thinking in this helpful thread. I built more than a few PCs up to the Win 98 days and I recently got an ASRock Z68 Pro3-M mobo to work with Win XP Pro SP3 x86 on a 2.5" SATA III SSD. No offense to anyone, but I can't remember a single PC I built that went together without at least a few headaches. The Z68 machine, for example, forced me to learn how to use nLite to "mod" a stock Win XP x86 installation disk to create a "custom" ISO image that, eventually, got the system to work with a SATA III SSD ... but the point is that I have more than enough experience with PCs to know that one really can't expect building one to be what M$ used to refer to as "plug-and-play." 🤣

I am sure there are many here who are experts in installing XP on much newer hardware....

EDIT: I was going back through the thread and realized that I never wrote about the fact that both of our upcoming projects are not permanent. In other words, it would be pretty nice if the machine we build could still be used after the projects are finished. This is why posts to this thread - like the one describing an AMD AM4 machine that's running Win XP Pro SP3 to nearly its fullest potential - are also pretty interesting. I mean, if newer hardware can be set up to run legacy software, shouldn't that also be considered?

Biggest project creep that's possible.
If that's the case then I would definitely get one of the little 1 litre pcs like a hp mini G1 elitedesk then once you've finished with it use it to install Linux and pihole on it.
The ad block problem will get bigger in a few months as companies like Google fight for their ad money and force ad block out.

Intel is on gen 13 and you're looking at gen 4 so it will never be all that capable once you've finished your audio work.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-12-07, 22:30:

Intel is on gen 13 and you're looking at gen 4 so it will never be all that capable once you've finished your audio work.

I appreciate your thoughts, @ElectroSoldier, but I can't help but think about the fact that the machine I use on a daily basis is a Haswell (4th Gen Intel) i7-4980HQ MacBook Pro 15 (MBP 15), which I'm typing to you on right now. Sure, it's not the fastest machine available - I've used an Intel 12th gen Dell machine, for example, that's clearly faster - but it hasn't stopped me from employing features like USB 3.1 and Thundberbolt 2 to transfer our huge files around. We definitely don't need the cutting edge, but we paid a pretty sum to custom order this particular MBP 15 - and it's been integral to our work for over 8 years now. In my experience with PCs, that's an awful long time ... so spending a bit more to [hopefully] get some future use out of a PC build should at least be considered, don't you think? 😉

Sigtryggr wrote on 2023-12-07, 22:55:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-12-07, 22:30:

Intel is on gen 13 and you're looking at gen 4 so it will never be all that capable once you've finished your audio work.

I appreciate your thoughts, @ElectroSoldier, but I can't help but think about the fact that the machine I use on a daily basis is a Haswell (4th Gen Intel) i7-4980HQ MacBook Pro 15 (MBP 15), which I'm typing to you on right now. Sure, it's not the fastest machine available - I've used an Intel 12th gen Dell machine, for example, that's clearly faster - but it hasn't stopped me from employing features like USB 3.1 and Thundberbolt 2 to transfer our huge files around. We definitely don't need the cutting edge, but we paid a pretty sum to custom order this particular MBP 15 - and it's been integral to our work for over 8 years now. In my experience with PCs, that's an awful long time ... so spending a bit more to [hopefully] get some future use out of a PC build should at least be considered, don't you think? 😉

Ten years ago, I would have agreed with you. And then Microsoft pulled that crazy BS with Windows 11 where your high end Kaby Lake (i7-7xxx) is unsupported and your low-end 8th gen stuff is supported. In reality, it means nothing because you can run Windows 11 unsupportedly on that machine just fine with TPM, UEFI, secure boot, everything, and they haven't done anything to break that... but they reserve the right to.

So the idea of "oh, if I spend a bit more today, I'll get another year or two or three years" worth of use out of it is not as true as it used to be.

Also, I wouldn't pick the highest end Haswell MBP as an example of anything. That was basically Intel's flagship laptop processor about two years before everything went to hell with the 14nm process. It was a quad-core processor at a time when Windowsland retreated towards dual-core U-series for mainstream use. And it was attached to extremely high-performing storage solutions, too, well ahead of the SATA stuff in Windows land. For 90% of uses, a high-end Haswell with plentiful RAM is more than enough in 2023. Computers just don't get obsolete like they used to, at least good ones, which is why Microsoft has to resort to BS to obsolete them.

In this case, though, I think the other folks are right. You could probably pick up a Dell OptiPlex 7010 or 9010 for next to nothing. 3.5 years ago, I was buying factory refurbished 7020s with a modest warranty from Dell Canada for CAD$190. The parts are plentiful on eBay. XP drivers are going to be sitting at dell.com. You don't need fancy GPUs or anything else that would require more than that.

(And honestly, as an aside, spend some time with a 7020 with an i5-4570, an SSD and a generous amount of RAM and you'll understand why Microsoft is throwing BS hardware requirements to force people to buy new machines... along with new Windows OEM licences. Those machines are absolutely outstanding workhorses for non-gaming purposes...)

You can always install any old windows on the latest and greatest PC as a virtual machine. You can even get hardware passtrough for real retro expansion cards from a linux host. Just saying. I know that you said using your app in a VM won't work, but I don't understand why it wouldn't if everything is set up right

It uses some coding that does not work proper under a VM. Have had issues with older WP and Aldus stuff working proper under the older OS in a VM.

About MS stupdity: Bought a used HP Envy i5 3.2Ghz MT a few years ago for an office machine. It runs Win10 + the 2022 office apps just fine (only 12MB ram) but cannot be upgraded to Win11 and do not care.
It should last me another 5 years 😀
Back when the Intel Z370 (and other Intel 300 series) chipset first came out in 2017 MS pushed to get Intel and OEM's to remove Intels chipset drivers that supported for Win7 because they wanted everyone to run Win8.1 or 10
and BTW Win7 EOL was Jan 2020...hmmm so why in 2017 did MS do that ?? Yeah MS has a history of removing/preventing running either older OS or newer OS just to get $$$.
I do believe someone will perfectly hack Win11 to run on older boards, have seen some info behind the scenes going on about that 😁

Back to the topic: If you spend only a few 100 $ to build/buy a fully working XP 32bit computer for your current project you can always sell the parts later if you then decide you need something more powerful.
Ebay is full of that kinda stuff. Thinking of a fully supported XP box and then "ohh I now want to run Win10" is not the way to think.
How important is this project ? That should set the price. And if it is that important then why is the need for SATA3 also a need ? Is it only because you have SATA3 SSD ??

added: just looked at Ebay and can get a DQ77MK Intel board, i5-3470 3.2Ghz and 8GB ram for $40 plus $27 shipping.... that board does have SATA3, so other than a vid card (if you do not want to use the internal) you have the guts to build your XP 32bit box for less than $80. 🤣

Horun wrote on 2023-12-08, 01:16:

I do believe someone will perfectly hack Win11 to run on older boards, have seen some info behind the scenes going on about that 😁

You don't need to hack it - just turn off the check for the insane hardware requirements and I've had no problem installing it on a C2Q with no UEFI (BIOS/MBR), no TPM of any sort, no secure boot, etc. Literally none of the controversial requirements.

Fundamentally, it's a 64-bit NT 6.x. With perhaps the exception of some earlyish AMD64 CPUs that might be missing some instructions, it seems to run just fine on every machine that runs other iterations of 64-bit NT 6.x. Supports the same hardware with the same drivers too.

The whole thing is clearly a marketing-driven thing where someone said 'guys, please make it detect all this hardware and refuse to install if you don't have it' late in the development process and the team added that check and a way to bypass it, but didn't actually tweak the rest of the codebase to require all things. Like, honestly, I don't think removing the boot loader for BIOS/MBR would have been that unreasonable, but it's quite definitely still there and working... (and, in all fairness, it's probably still there because the server versions of the OS need to run on hypervisors that are still BIOS/MBR-focused)

Here are the easy to use methods. Verified working with 23H2.
Been running Windows 11 on artifically unsupported hardware since it came out.

Use the Mediacreationtool.bat https://github.com/lzw29107/MediaCreationTool.bat/tree/main

or

Drop the following into a .cmd file in the root of the .ISO.
Boot the Windows 11 ISO
Press Shift F10 to drop to command prompt
Switch to D:
Run the .cmd file
Proceed with setup

@ECHO OFF
REM 1. Place batch file in root of ISO using AnyBurn
REM 2. At install screen press shift+F10
REM 3. Type in "D:\bypass.cmd"
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\LabConfig /v ByPassTPMCheck /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\LabConfig /v BypassSecureBootCheck /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\LabConfig /v BypassRAMCheck /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\LabConfig /v BypassStorageCheck /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\LabConfig /v BypassCPUCheck /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
setup

Thank you, both of you ! Yeah that HP has the upgrade now crap built in and will not let a DL+Install of Win11 using that. I will use those workarounds....when it comes time 😀

God Of Gaming wrote on 2023-12-08, 00:53:

You can always install any old windows on the latest and greatest PC as a virtual machine. You can even get hardware passtrough for real retro expansion cards from a linux host. Just saying. I know that you said using your app in a VM won't work, but I don't understand why it wouldn't if everything is set up right

Hi GoG!

When I asked the audio engineer we'll be working with about running his specialized software in a VM, he seemed to be pretty insulted. In fact, he immediately asked me a pretty simple question, "Do you really think that I'd keep a piece of [insert obvious expletive here] like this around here for all these years if the software would run properly in a newer OS as a VM? Believe me, I've tried it!" For me, that's about as clear as it gets. His first condition for his assistance was building a standalone Win XP x86 machine, so, needless to say, that's what we're still hoping to do.

Once again, cheers to all who've tried to help us out! 😀

So the idea of "oh, if I spend a bit more today, I'll get another year or two or three years" worth of use out of it is not as true as it used to be.

Hi VivienM !

Thank you for pointing this out. You have to remember, though, I haven't used a PC, for more than a couple of minutes at a time, since late-2010. In fact, I [very reluctantly] made the switch in early-2011 and ... you know what ... I've never had a reason to look back, quite honestly. This PC project is being forced, more or less, by the fact that the software we need was abandoned in the Win XP era. This should go without saying, but no offense to anyone here. I wouldn't be building a PC if I didn't need to. That's not a fan writing, either. It's the plain and simple reason that I've become ignorant of the changes in "Windows World" over the years.

I wouldn't pick the highest end Haswell MBP as an example of anything.

I think this was covered pretty well in the last paragraph, but I don't really get this statement. I'll leave it at this ... I can't remember the last time I was forced to restart this MBP 15, and every single update has worked as expected. I think that describes what most folks like to have in a computer, aye? 😀

I have built many.. for native full support without hacked drivers that would be

i7 4960X - Any X79 Motherboard - Titan X Maxwell

i7 4790K - B85\H87\Z87 Motherboard - Titan X Maxwell
(Z97\H97 do not have native driver packages & will have management engine and other components not installed)

Yes you can get XP working on Ryzen 5950X or later intel chips. But the combos above have all native motherboard drivers that can be installed using Intel .exe's. Snappy Driver installer is not required!!

I have all the drivers backed up and AHCI F6 Drivers. DM me if you require help 😀

Fastest WinXP Nvidia Cards
- Titan X Maxwell
- GTX980TI
- Titan Z
- GTX970

Fastest WinXP ATI\AMD Cards
- R9 280X
- HD7990
- HD7970

Sigtryggr wrote on 2023-12-07, 22:55:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-12-07, 22:30:

Intel is on gen 13 and you're looking at gen 4 so it will never be all that capable once you've finished your audio work.

I appreciate your thoughts, @ElectroSoldier, but I can't help but think about the fact that the machine I use on a daily basis is a Haswell (4th Gen Intel) i7-4980HQ MacBook Pro 15 (MBP 15), which I'm typing to you on right now. Sure, it's not the fastest machine available - I've used an Intel 12th gen Dell machine, for example, that's clearly faster - but it hasn't stopped me from employing features like USB 3.1 and Thundberbolt 2 to transfer our huge files around. We definitely don't need the cutting edge, but we paid a pretty sum to custom order this particular MBP 15 - and it's been integral to our work for over 8 years now. In my experience with PCs, that's an awful long time ... so spending a bit more to [hopefully] get some future use out of a PC build should at least be considered, don't you think? 😉

Mac is a different matter.
The 4th gen is already on its last legs as far as software support from Microsoft goes, as soon as Windows 10 support is over then officially thats the end of that because you cant officially install Windows 11 without work arounds.

I have several 4th gen machines myself and they will see years of faithful service but only because they will see use as things like pfSense, Pihole boxes...
I just see the use of such a nice case as an FD Mesify 2XL as a waste on such an old platform. Not that there is anything wrong with it. Its just that its end is already in sight.
For what you want to do with it £75-£100 will buy you all you need. and that includes 512Gb+512Gb of SSD storage.

On the other hand if you really want to push it then you might want to look into a dual Haswell Xeon system which will take a Z Turbo drive and you can drop in a Titan Xp Pascal (2017) video card for 1080Ti performance in Windows XP.
The systems you are being point to are mid range machines with upper mid range prices to say the least.

Sigtryggr wrote on 2023-12-08, 03:42:

When I asked the audio engineer we'll be working with about running his specialized software in a VM, he seemed to be pretty insulted. In fact, he immediately asked me a pretty simple question, "Do you really think that I'd keep a piece of [insert obvious expletive here] like this around here for all these years if the software would run properly in a newer OS as a VM? Believe me, I've tried it!" For me, that's about as clear as it gets. His first condition for his assistance was building a standalone Win XP x86 machine, so, needless to say, that's what we're still hoping to do.

It's just I haven't personally experienced software not working in a VM yet, anything I've tried has worked fine. Mostly seen trouble with games, being one of the following 3:
-games not liking the emulated video or audio card of the VM, solution, hardware passtrough, attach real retro video and audio cards to the machine and pass them trough to the VM, then games work fine
-games not liking the CPU being too fast and wanting a slower CPU - if your software doesnt like the CPU being too modern, you will have to account for that when building a real winXP machine too
-online games with anticheat software, where the anticheat software detects its being run in a VM and throwing a fit

but as far as work software of any kind, basically everything has worked for me. If there's any that won't work, I'm curious why wouldn't it, what would be the technical reason for it not to? Since its an audio software, maybe it doesnt like the emulated audio card, in which case passing trough a real sound card may help?

...but yeah, I do't know if you saw my suggestion already, but you can just buy a cheap refurbished office PC with a sandy or ivy bridge i5 cpu, that go for about 50 bucks, 100 at most, reinstall it with winXP, and I bet it will do just fine for this. You probably don't need expensive and rare high-end components just to run some work software

God Of Gaming wrote on 2023-12-08, 07:33:

It's just I haven't personally experienced software not working in a VM yet, anything I've tried has worked fine. Mostly seen tr […]
Show full quote

Sigtryggr wrote on 2023-12-08, 03:42:

When I asked the audio engineer we'll be working with about running his specialized software in a VM, he seemed to be pretty insulted. In fact, he immediately asked me a pretty simple question, "Do you really think that I'd keep a piece of [insert obvious expletive here] like this around here for all these years if the software would run properly in a newer OS as a VM? Believe me, I've tried it!" For me, that's about as clear as it gets. His first condition for his assistance was building a standalone Win XP x86 machine, so, needless to say, that's what we're still hoping to do.

It's just I haven't personally experienced software not working in a VM yet, anything I've tried has worked fine. Mostly seen trouble with games, being one of the following 3:
-games not liking the emulated video or audio card of the VM, solution, hardware passtrough, attach real retro video and audio cards to the machine and pass them trough to the VM, then games work fine
-games not liking the CPU being too fast and wanting a slower CPU - if your software doesnt like the CPU being too modern, you will have to account for that when building a real winXP machine too
-online games with anticheat software, where the anticheat software detects its being run in a VM and throwing a fit

but as far as work software of any kind, basically everything has worked for me. If there's any that won't work, I'm curious why wouldn't it, what would be the technical reason for it not to? Since its an audio software, maybe it doesnt like the emulated audio card, in which case passing trough a real sound card may help?

...but yeah, I do't know if you saw my suggestion already, but you can just buy a cheap refurbished office PC with a sandy or ivy bridge i5 cpu, that go for about 50 bucks, 100 at most, reinstall it with winXP, and I bet it will do just fine for this. You probably don't need expensive and rare high-end components just to run some work software

Yeah...
Having used Proxmox for VM and PCIe pass through Im not so sure either.
Maybe a few years ago it was the case, but with VT-d I dont know anymore.

God Of Gaming wrote on 2023-12-08, 07:33:

but as far as work software of any kind, basically everything has worked for me. If there's any that won't work, I'm curious why wouldn't it, what would be the technical reason for it not to? Since its an audio software, maybe it doesnt like the emulated audio card, in which case passing trough a real sound card may help?

First things first, cheers for sticking with this thread, GoG! Although once, looong ago, I majored in Computer Science, I'm not a bona fide developer. I do know, however, that the specialized 32-bit software on the top of our priority list is based, for the most part, on the XML interface. Apparently, when MS made the transition from XP to the next OS platform, the way that XML files were processed changed in some way. IAW with the engineer, who's the known authority when it comes to this software, that's what restricts the utility in question to a standalone Win XP x86 machine.

...but yeah, I do't know if you saw my suggestion already, but you can just buy a cheap refurbished office PC with a sandy or ivy bridge i5 cpu, that go for about 50 bucks, 100 at most, reinstall it with winXP, and I bet it will do just fine for this. You probably don't need expensive and rare high-end components just to run some work software

Please bear in mind that I'm working with others on this. Having worked with it, in the past, I'm simply the one who took the lead on putting the PC hardware together. Let's put it this way, the fact that the 2nd gen mobo we started testing with had to be repaired [by me] prior to get it functioning - didn't impress anyone. In short, the consensus is that we should do what we can to find hardware that's as durable as possible. This is a big part of what I was trying to say when I wrote about "...spending a bit more..." yesterday. In fact, I've been asked more than once if it's possible to get the standalone OS spec'd by the project engineer to work via newer hardware. I addition, getting the 2nd Gen "prototype" system to function via Win XP Pro SP3 didn't come for free. We've already spent money on this project: RAM, PSU, case, monitor, GPU, etc.

Sigtryggr wrote on 2023-12-08, 04:48:

I wouldn't pick the highest end Haswell MBP as an example of anything.

I think this was covered pretty well in the last paragraph, but I don't really get this statement. I'll leave it at this ... I can't remember the last time I was forced to restart this MBP 15, and every single update has worked as expected. I think that describes what most folks like to have in a computer, aye? 😀

What I meant is that the quad-core Haswell MBP is an extremely high-end machine that was ahead of a lot of things at the time. And it's a machine that has aged extremely well - even on the Mac side, I suspect a lot of people are still rather happily running them with Sonoma and OCLP. Indeed the butterfly keyboard MBPs that followed have a much worse reputation...

As for the last time you were forced to restart your MBP, I hate to say this, but I have had to forcefully restart my M1 Max MBP more frequently than my Windows 10/11 machines. Windows (NT 6.x) on good, high-quality hardware with good drivers is extremely stable. On junky hardware, though, not so much... That being said, Sonoma has been much, much more stable than the previous releases.

VivienM wrote on 2023-12-08, 22:49:

What I meant is that the quad-core Haswell MBP is an extremely high-end machine that was ahead of a lot of things at the time. And it's a machine that has aged extremely well - even on the Mac side, I suspect a lot of people are still rather happily running them with Sonoma and OCLP. Indeed the butterfly keyboard MBPs that followed have a much worse reputation...

Yeah, I agree. I'm sorry to say that I'm not familiar with the Sonoma version of macOS or OCLP ... but cheers for the words about those butterfly keyboards. Knowing that about certain MBPs could come in real handy for me down the line. 😀

As for the last time you were forced to restart your MBP, I hate to say this, but I have had to forcefully restart my M1 Max MBP more frequently than my Windows 10/11 machines. Windows (NT 6.x) on good, high-quality hardware with good drivers is extremely stable. On junky hardware, though, not so much... That being said, Sonoma has been much, much more stable than the previous releases.

This clearly shows that I'm not a huge Mac fanboy, either, but I had to look up what a "M1 Max MBP" is. I see that it's the "...higher-powered version of the M1 Pro version of the M1 Pro, with more GPU cores and memory bandwidth, a larger die size, and a large used interconnect." I don't know what the "...used interconnect" bit is all about [perhaps that's a typo], but I do know that Apple has left Intel behind and, as of October 2021, has started using the "house brand" ICs that they've employed in their iPhones in the past - under the banner of "Apple Silicon." Needless to say, that's only a bit over two years ago. I've never used a Mac that was newer than mid-2015, so I can't really form a judgment about what came from Apple, post-Intel. Once again, though, I honestly appreciate the feedback about what you've experienced. In other words, no Butterfly or Apple Silicone MBPs for us. 😀

Sigtryggr wrote on 2023-12-08, 23:17:

I've never used a Mac that was newer than mid-2015, so I can't really form a judgment about what came from Apple, post-Intel. Once again, though, I honestly appreciate the feedback about what you've experienced. In other words, no Butterfly or Apple Silicone MBPs for us. 😀

To be clear, the M1 Max MBP is overall a very nice laptop. Very pricy, but generally very good. But... software reliability-wise, I have found Windows better. Also, there was a bug with the audio drivers that caused sound distortion that took Apple something like six months to fix. That's just... not what you expect from Apple.

And, what I think you would find is that many people skipped the butterfly keyboard MBPs and went straight to the M1/M2/M3 Pro/Max models. And that's not a bad move...

VivienM wrote on 2023-12-09, 01:55:

To be clear, the M1 Max MBP is overall a very nice laptop. Very pricy, but generally very good. But... software reliability-wise, I have found Windows better. Also, there was a bug with the audio drivers that caused sound distortion that took Apple something like six months to fix. That's just... not what you expect from Apple.

And, what I think you would find is that many people skipped the butterfly keyboard MBPs and went straight to the M1/M2/M3 Pro/Max models. And that's not a bad move...

Hi again, @VivienM !

The last time we tried out Win 11, I found the OS to be bloated beyond freakin' belief! In short, it seemed to be on auto-pilot doing a lot of things that I'm not used to. For example, the Google search field that I've been using as a home screen for years was anything but a white screen with a search field in the middle of it. With Win 11, all of that white space was taken up with this video or that ad - and all of it was nonsense that I don't want any part of. That said, I don't recall having to restart it on a regular basis like I did back in the Win 98 and earlier days. If and/or when we build a machine for Win 10/11, I'll definitely be researching ways to control what Micro$oft obviously allowed in the way of adware and such.

As for the newer MBPs, I hope that, as time goes along, Apple gets their "stuff" together and gets their hardware and software working together ... well ... at least the way that I'm used to ... but those butterfly models do sound like bad juju to this old vet. Once again, cheers for the honest feedback.