Who is still using XP as their main OS?

How often do you use Windows XP?

  • I use Windows XP daily as my main OS

    Votes: 10 55.6%

  • I use Windows XP but it's not my main OS

    Votes: 4 22.2%

  • I use Windows XP in a virtual environment (VirtualBox, VMWare, Hyper-V etc.)

    Votes: 1 5.6%

  • I rarely use Windows XP

    Votes: 3 16.7%
  • Total voters
    18
ClippyBeer

ClippyBeer

Moderator
I rarely use Windows XP anymore because it's too much of a hassle finding new software or hardware that will work with it. My Windows XP laptop only gets powered on when I want to test if something will work with XP and occasionally, nostalgia.
 
XP is my main OS, and I only use others to bridge gaps.

It suits my purposes, and I'm protected against MicroSux forced updates and spyware/intrusion. Sometimes I encounter roadblocks, but that's just part of life and problem solving.
 
Just for programs I don’t intend to buy Windows 10/11 versions of. AutoCAD, Revit, Solidworks, Premiere Pro, MicroStation, Inventor, ArcGIS, Mathematica, Blender, Maya and some games that run fine on XP.
 
I use it quite often when on my holidays typing on forums like this one or playing one of my old PC games. I use windows 10 for my college work and ChatGPT when i want to mess around with weird story's.
 
I have three Windows 10 (64Bit) Workstations and two Windows XP (32Bit) Workstations. I hardly ever use Windows XP, however occasionally I will have a mood for playing games then I may spend an entire week on the XP system. I also use a high-end plotter and A3 and A2 Printer/Scanner from my XP system. Automatically picked up by Windows 10 system but with much reduced functionality without software installed.

I have gone to great lengths to replicate every program I have on the XP system on to the Windows 10 system. I have also spent hundreds of hours making my Windows 10 Systems look and feel like the XP Systems with the same functionality. For instance, I would argue it essential to install “ShellFolder FixUI” and “Classic Start Menu” on Windows 10 if you intend using a computer for any serious work.

As for security: Windows XP is obviously more secure out of the box, because Microsoft was so desperate to have a winner after the Windows 8 fiasco, that it forgot all the backdoors (In reality Conditioning) in XP. If one is careful never to instal antivirus software, then one has a totally secure system, if one uses a real Firewall (Hardware) rather than a make believe Firewall, that the computer illiterate seem to imagine does something.

Windows 10 can be totally locked down, so it never updates, or ever tries to reach any IP address without express permission by the human operator. It requires a lot of work. However, I have found my system set up very popular and many friends use it along with my daughter and Madeleine, another contributor on this site.

Contrary to myths spread by people. It is possible to build up the Operating system and a huge amount of Applications, programs etc on one system and then just put the disk in another system. (If you are using serious systems) One of course will need to update drivers for different hardware.

Below: XP compared to Windows 10.

Windows XP.jpg



Windows 10.jpg
 
I use it everytime I get on the computer, which is about every 3 days or so, I do not play any games, just do research online, and to download books and music, go to amazon or walmart online. And to come to this forum ,I love xp :)
 
I keep using XP regularly as my main OS on a stand-alone PC disconnected from the web.
Should that PC kick the bucket before I do, there's an identical one (physically old but still a virgin) collecting dust in a corner of my study.
Then there's also a couple of huge hard drives containing full backups of my OS system disk, my drivers, my UEFI/BIOS, and all the XP-compatible software I may ever need in life, painstakingly downloaded (and occasionally even paid for ;)) over the last 10 years.
Yes, it's a sort of bomb shelter against all possible Mr Nadella's quirks and whims, should he persist in his attempts to creep in with new fancy Microsoft meddleware :cool:

Unfortunately though there's no way to escape the constant MS boycott of their previous offspring to push the last born: drivers disappear, standards and protocols change (without improving the performances), hardware incompatibilities pop out of nowhere, malware software and VPN companies stop supporting abandoned OS's (and I stop supporting them), anything older than a year is proclaimed obsolete...
Which forced me to install a "new" Windows 7 - duly pruned, neutered and in general made as harmless as possible - on a small hard drive of its own, from where I can access the internet through a reliable VPN, protected by a slightly invasive but all in all tolerable Malwarebytes. And every now and then the Win7 hard drive gets restored from an original backup to get rid of any possible garbage that might have crawled inside unbeknownst to me (with the right software it's a matter of just 5 well-spent minutes).

Undeniably the above takes a bit of toil, but all in all it's a fair price for the privilege of using the devil I know (and got duly tamed for over a decade), rather than keeping drawing pentacles around the dubious new stuff a shady company keeps trying to force down my troath :)

And, before you ask: yes I'm aware that also Win7 is falling under Microsoft's anathema. That's why I'm getting acquainted with Linux (where's the emoji for a raised middle finger? :p )
 
Well I tried to get away from Windows and I used Zorin OS for 9 months and eventually I just got fed up with the non ease of use and incompatibility issue between distros ... so I'm back to XP and I use Supermium Browser now and quite enjoy it along with Lun3r browser by @K4sum1 and I'm satisfied with it and glad to be back to windows XP again as my main OS.
 
xperceniol said:
Well I tried to get away from Windows and I used Zorin OS for 9 months and eventually I just got fed up with the non ease of use and incompatibility issue between distros ... so I'm back to XP and I use Supermium Browser now and quite enjoy it along with Lun3r browser by @K4sum1 and I'm satisfied with it and glad to be back to windows XP again as my main OS.
Click to expand...
Could you shed some light on the Lun3r browser ? Is it like MyPal or 360Chrome ?
 

Eclipse Mail, Lun3r, and Hydra, forks of UXP applications for Windows XP!

This started since I wanted Interlink Mail & News but portable. Then I figured since I'm already forking UXP, I might as well build UXP stuffs too. So that's what happened. Eclipse Mail or eMail is my own fork of Interlink Mail & News, or mailnews. Some advantages over upstream are installer...
www.xpforums.com
Keep in mind that these browsers are Firefox 52 based like Roytam's.

RT's Free Soft

Some free/open source softwares, libraries, codes created/modified by me. These projects have no affiliation with any upstream community code sources or organizations.<br> Please direct all support or related questions to here. Comment forms are opened for support request.
rtfreesoft.blogspot.com rtfreesoft.blogspot.com

Stick with MyPal68 (Firefox 83 based) for now although it hasn't been updated since August 4.

github.com

Releases · Feodor2/Mypal68

web browser. Contribute to Feodor2/Mypal68 development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com

P.S. I'm surprised no one has ever used XP in a virtual machine. If you have a good CPU that has virtualization technology you will get hardware acceleration in the XP VM with VMWare/VMWare tools installed.

image.png


Hardware acceleration for games.

image.png


I have read that recent versions of VirtualBox also support hardware acceleration in the VM but haven't tested.

Those of you whom have never used Linux before the easiest way to test drive it without worrying about any changes to your system is a via a virtual machine. You can try different distros and find one you like or even one of the special edition XP ISOs floating around the internets.
 
Last edited:
ClippyBeer said:

Eclipse Mail, Lun3r, and Hydra, forks of UXP applications for Windows XP!

This started since I wanted Interlink Mail & News but portable. Then I figured since I'm already forking UXP, I might as well build UXP stuffs too. So that's what happened. Eclipse Mail or eMail is my own fork of Interlink Mail & News, or mailnews. Some advantages over upstream are installer...
www.xpforums.com
Keep in mind that these browsers are Firefox 52 based like Roytam's.

RT's Free Soft

Some free/open source softwares, libraries, codes created/modified by me. These projects have no affiliation with any upstream community code sources or organizations.<br> Please direct all support or related questions to here. Comment forms are opened for support request.
rtfreesoft.blogspot.com rtfreesoft.blogspot.com

Stick with MyPal68 (Firefox 83 based) for now although it hasn't been updated since August 4.
Click to expand...
That is my recommendation for XP. I more so see Lun3r and Hydra as test beds for e10s and WebExt. However it might be better to fork Basilisk/Serpent 55 and try to turn that into a pseudo UXP with PM UI due to the e10s and WebExt improvements it has over the UXP 52 base. Or maybe de-Rust Waterfox Classic, or make my own 55 fork, however I don't have the time or skill for any of that.

ClippyBeer said:
P.S. I'm surprised no one has ever used XP in a virtual machine. If you have a good CPU that has virtualization technology you will get hardware acceleration in the XP VM with VMWare/VMWare tools installed.
Click to expand...
Most of my XP usage is inside a VM, however most of my XP usage is to test compatibility with programs, so it's the most convenient to do this. I haven't tried to main XP or play games inside a VM as it can still be slow though. There's also issues with trying to directly connect USB or hardware devices to the VM and complex games that require a lot of GPU power won't work well. This can be kinda bypassed with the right hardware and a Linux or other VFIO supporting hypervisor, but that's pretty involved and would still require hardware old enough to have XP drivers. The most recent time I needed XP on hardware to test was getting Minecraft 1.21 running on XP. It just would not run in a VM.
 
I've been using both MyPal and 360Chrome, as my main browsers for XP. I'm actually using the last 3 versions of MyPal, because every version seems to work differently. LOL Some websites run better on one version, while others run better on another, and so on. Waiting for one version that all websites will work properly on. :) 360 has been pretty good, too, but will it ever be updated ? I did try Supermium, but it runs a bit slow on my system, and I lost patience with it. Shame, cuz it is a very nice browser.
 
boss1968 said:
I've been using both MyPal and 360Chrome, as my main browsers for XP. I'm actually using the last 3 versions of MyPal, because every version seems to work differently. LOL Some websites run better on one version, while others run better on another, and so on. Waiting for one version that all websites will work properly on. :) 360 has been pretty good, too, but will it ever be updated ? I did try Supermium, but it runs a bit slow on my system, and I lost patience with it. Shame, cuz it is a very nice browser.
Click to expand...
Hi there, boss..

Did you try to rebase chrome.dll as I suggested? This could go a long way to improving speed of supermium.

A Number of Portable Browsers

Thank you for these! I will have to try them out when I get a chance. :)
www.xpforums.com

Ok. so. I tried with the newest Supermium and I found this didn't help much. However I had better success with the following rebase to:

0x6af00000

rebase.exe -b 0x6af00000 chrome.dll

I'm able now to start up Supermium in 18 seconds rather than before at almost 30 seconds to load. Maybe it will help you but on my Pentium D and 3GB ram what can I even expect.

Good luck
 
xperceniol said:
Hi there, boss..

Did you try to rebase chrome.dll as I suggested? This could go a long way to improving speed of supermium.

A Number of Portable Browsers

Thank you for these! I will have to try them out when I get a chance. :)
www.xpforums.com

Ok. so. I tried with the newest Supermium and I found this didn't help much. However I had better success with the following rebase to:

0x6af00000

rebase.exe -b 0x6af00000 chrome.dll

I'm able now to start up Supermium in 18 seconds rather than before at almost 30 seconds to load. Maybe it will help you but on my Pentium D and 3GB ram what can I even expect.

Good luck
Click to expand...
No, since I am not very tech savvy, I tend not to do much in the way of updating files on my system, etc. I don't even know what rebase means. LOL I'll just stick with MyPal and 360 and look forward to any updates on those browsers. I also use the Avast browser, as well. Many sites still run on it, and it was always my fave browser, before it went the way of every other browser that does not support XP anymore.
 
boss1968 said:
Yep. XP is my main OS. I'm just not able to upgrade my system. And quite frankly, I don't know if I would want to. I love XP.
Click to expand...
I have a laptop from 2012 running 64 bit version of xp with 8 gigs of ram and superium web browser and mypal 68 and its my main os everything i need works great.
 
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