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Build your XP Time Machines Now

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Reply 40 of 55, by Rhuwyn

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Jade Falcon wrote:

Forget your crummy online game buying accounts.

What will you do when M$ pulled the plug on the windows xp activation servers?
Another resion why I hate XP and prefor 2k

There will always be some sort of solution for that. There are solutions already actually. Unfortunately, most of the time the intent of those solutions is piracy. But, like I said earlier I do it the Microsoft way until they give me no other option. Then I will make my own options.

Reply 41 of 55, by PhilsComputerLab

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^^

That's it pretty much.

I wonder if Steam will get hacked if they shut out XP users. The motivation would be there. All we need is our backups on a hard-drive and offline activation.

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Reply 42 of 55, by FFXIhealer

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Rhuwyn wrote:

I think we all ran XP on a single core during the early to mid life of XP. The multi-core phenomenon really changed desktop computing though and in most cases I think if your building an machine to cover the entire XP era you pretty much going to get a Dual core machine at the least.

I never used a multi-core processor with Windows XP. I never had to. My first experience with a multi-core processor was when I built my mom a new computer (to replace a God-awful Windows Me computer) to run Windows Vista. I had heard Vista was resource-heavy, so I deliberately designed the computer to be as powerful as possible under a $500 budget. So I had put together this:

Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 Wolfdale @2.53GHz)
4GB DDR2-800 (2GB x 2 sticks)
nVidia GeForce 8400GS (powerful for an office type PC, shit for gaming)
Windows Vista 32-bit

Worked fine for YEARS and never had any issues with drivers or behaving slow until Micro$hit started to screw her out of using browsers. Chrome and IE both started bitching on websites about being obsolete. So I put my last computer back together as it ran a Core i7-860 2.8GHz Quad-core with 8GB of DDR3-1333 and ran Windows 10 off of a 250GB Samsung 850 EVO (SATA2 interface, unfortunately) with a 1TB WD Black 7,200 RPM storage drive. No more websites complaining because she now has IE 11. And the system does weekly C: image backups to the 1TB drive. I LOVE having a 2nd drive for this now! I do it on my newest gaming rig too - every Sunday at 7PM. It's already saved my ass from a boot failure twice now.

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Reply 43 of 55, by KT7AGuy

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FFXIhealer wrote:

Am I the only person who ran Windows XP for years on a single-core? It's got an Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53GHz), 512MB of RAM (DDR1) and old PATA drives like a DVD-RW and an 80GB Western Digital drive? I mean, the motherboard didn't even have USB 2.0 built-in! It had two USB 1.1 ports on it! Ran it with an ATI Radeon 7500 64MB AGP card in a 4x slot (MB only went up to 4x).

You're not alone. I ran single core PCs up until I put my Phenom II X2 together in 2011. I'm still running the same Phenom II system today, although I do worry about possibly replacing the 5+ year old PSU.

My HTPC was a single core Athlon 64 up until October of last year. I only switched to a C2D because it was really cheap and I needed to rebuild the HTPC anyway. The HTPC also ran XP MCE until spring of this year when it started having problems with the built in Media Center TV schedule. There were ways to fix it, but I got upset and just installed Win7 32-bit out of frustration. It works fine and I have yet to find any XP-era games that won't work with Win7 32-bit. It seems to be just as compatible with older games as XP was. Also, I can play PixelJunk Shooter on Win7. That won't work with XP. So, I guess that's +1 for Win7.

Reply 44 of 55, by KT7AGuy

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PhilsComputerLab wrote:

^^

That's it pretty much.

I wonder if Steam will get hacked if they shut out XP users. The motivation would be there. All we need is our backups on a hard-drive and offline activation.

I never used Steam under Win9x so I wasn't even aware that a Win9x client once existed until I started this thread. I think killing support for Win9x was probably easy for them. Most of the games from that era were originally released on CD or DVD media. Steam came onto the gaming scene rather late for Win9x users. Also, by the time Steam went online, there probably weren't too many Win9x gamers left. The outcry from shutting down Win9x serivce was probably minimal.

XP, on the other hand, was a very popular OS for 13+ years. Digital Distribution became a thing during the halfway point of its lifespan. It still has lots of users and compatible games even today. I think there would be quite a howl of discontent should Steam drop support for XP without making a legacy client available.

I'm already wary of buying games on Steam, but that hasn't stopped me from building a library of over 200 titles. Dropping support for XP without providing a workaround would ensure that I never bought anything from them ever again. They've got to be aware that more people like me exist and that it would be very bad for business. It can't be too hard for them to provide a legacy client and say "Here's a legacy client for XP, but we won't support it. Good luck!".

Reply 45 of 55, by PhilsComputerLab

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KT7AGuy wrote:

"Here's a legacy client for XP, but we won't support it. Good luck!".

That would be the best outcome. Seeing how many games are broken under Windows 10 anyway, not a big loss...

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Reply 46 of 55, by Snayperskaya

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nforce4max wrote:

(...)Core 2 boxes that sometimes become micro shutter generators.

Do you rember if DPC latency on those were abnormal? I've used a Q9400 @ 3.2GHz (with 800MHz 4-4-4-12 2T) for three years and don't remember having performance issues with updated drivers.

Reply 47 of 55, by candle_86

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Rhuwyn wrote:

I think we all ran XP on a single core during the early to mid life of XP. The multi-core phenomenon really changed desktop computing though and in most cases I think if your building an machine to cover the entire XP era you pretty much going to get a Dual core machine at the least.

Well unless your playing those few games that glitch on dual core

KT7AGuy wrote:
I never used Steam under Win9x so I wasn't even aware that a Win9x client once existed until I started this thread. I think kil […]
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PhilsComputerLab wrote:

^^

That's it pretty much.

I wonder if Steam will get hacked if they shut out XP users. The motivation would be there. All we need is our backups on a hard-drive and offline activation.

I never used Steam under Win9x so I wasn't even aware that a Win9x client once existed until I started this thread. I think killing support for Win9x was probably easy for them. Most of the games from that era were originally released on CD or DVD media. Steam came onto the gaming scene rather late for Win9x users. Also, by the time Steam went online, there probably weren't too many Win9x gamers left. The outcry from shutting down Win9x serivce was probably minimaal.

XP, on the other hand, was a very popular OS for 13+ years. Digital Distribution became a thing during the halfway point of its lifespan. It still has lots of users and compatible games even today. I think there would be quite a howl of discontent should Steam drop support for XP without making a legacy client available.

I'm already wary of buying games on Steam, but that hasn't stopped me from building a library of over 200 titles. Dropping support for XP without providing a workaround would ensure that I never bought anything from them ever again. They've got to be aware that more people like me exist and that it would be very bad for business. It can't be too hard for them to provide a legacy client and say "Here's a legacy client for XP, but we won't support it. Good luck!".

It wasn't easy for them, a lot of people where quite vocal about it, the CS 1.6 and DoD 1.3 players really didn't like the move, as alot of them had older computers that where great for 9x but not so great for XP.

Last edited by candle_86 on 2016-10-06, 03:03. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 48 of 55, by Rhuwyn

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candle_86 wrote:
Rhuwyn wrote:

I think we all ran XP on a single core during the early to mid life of XP. The multi-core phenomenon really changed desktop computing though and in most cases I think if your building an machine to cover the entire XP era you pretty much going to get a Dual core machine at the least.

Well unless your playing those few games that glitch on dual core

Are there really all that many? I've not had any issues on any games from that era. Any well known examples?

Reply 49 of 55, by candle_86

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Rhuwyn wrote:
candle_86 wrote:
Rhuwyn wrote:

I think we all ran XP on a single core during the early to mid life of XP. The multi-core phenomenon really changed desktop computing though and in most cases I think if your building an machine to cover the entire XP era you pretty much going to get a Dual core machine at the least.

Well unless your playing those few games that glitch on dual core

Are there really all that many? I've not had any issues on any games from that era. Any well known examples?

Call of Duty United Offensive first mission is unbeatable unless you set affinity to 1 core or your running single core.

Reply 50 of 55, by ynari

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I always ran XP on SMP, as at that point I was running a dual P3. The only P4 I had went to drive a CRT projector. Can't say I ever had any problem running games, but I've never bothered with CoD.

Reply 51 of 55, by SaxxonPike

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Building a Core 2 machine was one of the least expensive routes I found I could take. It's really impressive. I went the Win2k route instead of XP, though. There's some advantages and disadvantages there.

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Reply 52 of 55, by KT7AGuy

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SaxxonPike wrote:

Building a Core 2 machine was one of the least expensive routes I found I could take. It's really impressive. I went the Win2k route instead of XP, though. There's some advantages and disadvantages there.

I agree. Why bother with a P4 when you can get a C2D for the same price or free? I don't think I've ever seen a C2D or Phenom II system that won't allow the user to disable all cores except one. With only one core enabled it's still a much better system than a P4.

I think P4 is best suited as a super-fast Win9x computer. However, I still prefer P3 or Athlon for Win9x builds.

I considered doing a Win2K build last year for fun, but decided against it. The biggest reason why I didn't bother is that it's much easier to apply the updates to an XP system. Microsoft Update still works just fine for WinXP. Doing updates for Win2K after the final rollup becomes a headache that negates any advantages over XP that might have been had, IMO.

Reply 53 of 55, by clueless1

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KT7AGuy wrote:

I considered doing a Win2K build last year for fun, but decided against it. The biggest reason why I didn't bother is that it's much easier to apply the updates to an XP system. Microsoft Update still works just fine for WinXP. Doing updates for Win2K after the final rollup becomes a headache that negates any advantages over XP that might have been had, IMO.

Are there updates after the SP4 rollup that are required? The last time I built a Win2k rig I just installed the SP4 rollup and called it finished.

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Reply 54 of 55, by KT7AGuy

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clueless1 wrote:

Are there updates after the SP4 rollup that are required? The last time I built a Win2k rig I just installed the SP4 rollup and called it finished.

Back in the day when I used to run 2K personally, and also support it at businesses, I seem to recall there being a lengthy list of updates that were available on Windows Update even after installing the post-SP4 rollup. Perhaps I'm remember things wrong, but there is an unofficial SP 5.1 available as well as other unofficial post-rollup update packs. These are what I was referring to when I described the updates as a "headache". They're disorganized and installation is not as simple and straightforward as running "Windows2000-KB891861-x86-ENU.exe".