Windows XP 2021 - system build for the modern PC

Lance1 · 25 Jan 2021

From 2000 through 2005. My primary job was building Servers, Workstation and Surveillance systems. I was the primary installer and setup guy of the surveillance system. My primary clients were Pubs and Liquor Stores. Coat quite a few bad guys with my systems. To bad it was illegal to copy and save the videos that were taken and bring them home. As I look back I think those 5 years were the funniest year.

Steve C · 26 Jan 2021

Lance1 said:

Long and very detail post. I have an XP build but I never use it any more. I saved this thread in a PDF for a read at another time. I doubt anyone in this forum would want or need XP anymore. But it was great in it's day!

I use still use the excellent MS Money from 2005 which still works in Windows 10. Last year I created a Windows XP VM using Hyper V and a Windows XP SP3 installation file I kept plus my original license code. It worked fine and is simpler than using the above method. I'll only need to use Windows XP if MS Money stops working in Windows 10.

Berton · 26 Jan 2021

Have you seen this?
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/down....aspx?id=20738

pparks1 · 26 Jan 2021

I still use MIcrosoft Money as well. Been working fine for me for years. As a standalone application that doesn't really need security patches as it's not used at all on the Internet, I feel comfortable doing this.

Steve C · 26 Jan 2021

Berton said:

Have you seen this?
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/down....aspx?id=20738

I know about that thanks. I use the last UK version of Money which is installation file Money2005-UK-QFE2.exe. The Money transaction files are not transferable between the country versions and I don't want to scrap 15 years of finance data!

Steve C · 26 Jan 2021

pparks1 said:

I still use MIcrosoft Money as well. Been working fine for me for years. As a standalone application that doesn't really need security patches as it's not used at all on the Internet, I feel comfortable doing this.

I agree since the web functions don't work. I use the excellent cheap utility MSMoneyQuotes Gaier Software - Restore Microsoft Money Online Quotes with MSMoneyQuotes to grab price data for MS Money but that doesn't seem to be a security threat.

freemann38 · 26 Jan 2021

PC hardware:
OS - Windows XP mod 2020 (32-bit)
Motherboard - Asus Apex XII with Z490 chipset
Processor - Intel i9-10900K (10 cores @ 3.7GHz)
RAM - 2x16 GB DDR4 memory
Graphics cards - RTX 3080 (not working in WinXP), GTX 980TI.
Drives are a bunch of SSDs + 1 NVME.

Everything works with drivers except Ethernet (alas, couldn't find x86 driver for Intel I225-v Ethernet Adapter), there are only 64 bit ones ported from Win10. Well, no driver for RTX 3080 respectively either. Everything else works fine, sees all drives including NVME.

When installing from the ISO, there is a peculiarity: doesn't recognize AHCI chipset drivers at the installation stage, although after installing all the drivers are installed and seen by the Windows. But on my motherboard there is also Asmedia ASM1061 controller (SATA_E1 and SATA_E2 ports). The drivers are integrated into the image, so during the installation phase the disks connected to these ports are seen without problems. In the same way NVME disks are detected without problems and it is possible to install XP on them. That is why both ssd/hdd and CD/DVD-Rom drive should be connected to Asmedia controller ports, otherwise we will get an AHCI driver 7B error. So Windows XP SP3 x86 on Z490 chipset (specifically in my case Asus ROG Maximus Apex XII. My bios is version 0088 (not factory default).

Build is based on WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL SP3 X86 - INTEGRAL EDITION 2020.9.9.

With WinXP-IE Optional Patch Integrator v2.4.0b3 and NLite the following is integrated into the image:
- ACPI.sys version 5.1.2600.6666 of 18.10.2020, compatible with Z490 chipset
- Microsoft USB 3.0 xHCI driver (Backported Win8 driver) universal driver, all USB ports work without problems.
- Samsung NVMe driver (Backported Win7 driver), an NVME driver for Samsung drives. Disks are detected during installation (also if GPT partitioning) and it is possible to install XP directly to NVME disk.
- PAE 128GB RAM Patch (May have stability issues), an address space patch which allows a 32-bit system to see more than 4GB of RAM. Possible compatibility problems with drivers above version 332 for NVidia video cards.
- Kernel-Mode Driver Framework 1.11 (Backported Win7 driver). Driver needed for Microsoft's universal USB driver.
- UAS/UASP driver (Improves USB storage device performance)
- The Intel xHCI controller driver from Stavros. Allows WinXP to detect devices connected to the Intel SATA ports on the motherboard (Sata1-6) after the system installation. (Alas, the Intel RSTe AHCI/RAID driver v4.7.0.1117, recommended as the best AHCI driver for Intel on XP, produces BSOD 0xdeadbeef when integrated into the image in spite of editing the dosnet.sif and txtsetup.sif image files according to the instructions. However after installing the system you can without problems replace the driver from Stavros with Intel RSTe AHCI/RAID driver v4.7.0.1117.)

Installation process:
1) Installed only from CD/DVD-Rom, all my attempts to install the image from a USB flash drive failed due to the many and varied errors, as I have not tried. WinSetupFromUSB , Easy2Boot, Firadisk + Firahelper, Yumi - none of these allowed to install the image from the flash (maybe the problem lies in the bios). In all cases the image (either full or ISO) stored in RAM, passed two steps with F6 and F2 sentences, and then when start should start installation files from RAM, errors appeared (most often ntkrnlmp.exe error code 7, errors in TXTSETUP.SIF line, or just some corrupted files).

In my opinion it has something to do with bios and memory reading errors (even though memory passes all error tests and is absolutely fine). May be the problem with memory capacity or something else, I don't know. Anyway, I have absolutely no problem to install the same image from my DVD-RW, what I recommend for you, to avoid various headaches during the installation. Second option (for those, who have no disk drive) - attached installation image of TIBX format, taken from ready installed system by Akronis 2020. Just use this image for booting or in bios to select this drive as bootable. There should be no problem.

2) The disk you want to install, and drive in case you install from CD/DVD, must be connected to ports of ASMedia Asm1061 controller (in case of my motherboard these are SATA-E1 and SATA-E2 ports). If you plug either the drive or the drive into an Intel controller port (even though ahci drivers for Intel are integrated in the image), you get bsod 7B during the install. For some reason all devices connected to the Intel controller ports are not detected during the Windox XP install. Only the ASM106x and Samsung NVME drives are detected during the installation. Nevertheless, after a successful system installation you are free to switch the SSD to the Intel controller port and WinXP boots from it without any problems.

3) After installing system, Device Manager will look like below screenshot. Drivers for 3 PCI Device as well as SM Bus can be installed via Snappy Driver Installer (SDI).

4) Summary view in case of using integrated Intel AHCI driver from Stavros (located in IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers branch)

5) In the case of updating the Intel AHCI driver from Stavros to Intel RSTe AHCI/RAID driver v4.7.0.1117 (the driver is moved to the SCSI and RAID controllers category.

Solutions to the video driver problem:

After installing and restarting the video driver I get black screen. The driver is 368.81 last supported by XP, I modified inf to let installer see 980ti. My first system had PAE 128, I thought it was because of that. Then I rolled the system with PAE 4 and it was the same. Now the last try without PAE at all.

The problem was solved. Everything works on PAE128. The problem is in the drivers, more specifically in the available resolutions and refresh rate. The native resolution of my monitor is 3860x1600, although it is displayed, but trying to activate it leads to a black screen. The same situation with all resolutions that use a refresh rate of 75Hz instead of 60. As a result, only working resolutions with 60Hz refresh rate, like on the picture below from nvidia panel list. Maybe this problem is also caused by the fact that Windows only sees 4GB of video memory even though it has 6GB. Everything else works. I left it at 1920x1080. Then it turned out that the problem was in the GTX 980ti video card display port - it has 1.2, and my monitor needs 1.4, hence the fuss. Switched to HDMI and it worked fine as HDMI bandwidth allows - 2560x1080 120Hz

Video on how to turn Windows 10 interface into Windows XP

The video is informative in that the guy keeps repeating that there is no way to get the full XP look out of the 10. Then he shows how to make the interface "closer" by using a bunch of third party programs, but you can't get the normal Windows XP style look.

jimbo45 · 26 Jan 2021

Hi folks
I'm running Windows XP Pro (32 bit) on a Linux HOST system using VMWare workstation concurrently with a Windows 10 VM on KVM/QEMU -- the XP system is running among other things a professional Minidisc recorder (the one that doesn't have sony's nasty DRM stuff which probably killed minidiscs for home consumers).

I also have some VINYL record cutting and recording software too which only runs on XP -- I'm not replacing brilliant legacy still functioning hardware which would cost 1000's of USD's / EUR's to replace -- have a nice little "side business" cutting bespoke vinyls for people -- so for me as far as XP goes "There's life in the old dog yet"

I will try and convert the vmware workstation version to KVM/QEMU --it's do-able - and these days I can't travel to mainland Europe or UK currently for client side work without having to "self isolate" in hotels for ??? --rules everywhere seem to change every 5 mins. !! so working remotely as a load of people are of course these days.

Firefox works fine as well as network access. You can see the MD simple burner program on the XP desktop image shown.
.
I'm also using the Black Luna theme with a jaguar as the wallpaper -- I wish W10 had a "Luna Black" theme like XP !!!

I'd be interested in getting that Luna Black theme on to W10 !!!

Windows XP 2021 - system build for the modern PC-screenshot_20210126_112853.jpg

There's still plenty of reasons why people are still using XP-- not just for nostalga. Best though on a VM of course.

Cheers
jimbo

dekayd · 26 Jan 2021

@jimbo45, I had belonged to Neowin years ago and back then I use to try different themes. There is a program people used TuneUp Utilities to get it to work. May or may not get you in the right direction.

Luna Element v5.1 Vista Port - Tips, Tweaks & OS customization - Neowin
Luna Element Black Vista Port by Satukoro on DeviantArt
Luna Element v5.1 Black by Jamush on DeviantArt

I am still trying to understand why anyone wants an to have an operating system installed that will never receive any security updates using newer hardware

Posted on a Windows 10 forum?

jimbo45 · 26 Jan 2021

dekayd said:

@jimbo45, I had belonged to Neowin years ago and back then I use to try different themes. There is a program people used TuneUp Utilities to get it to work. May or may not get you in the right direction.

Luna Element v5.1 Vista Port - Tips, Tweaks & OS customization - Neowin
Luna Element Black Vista Port by Satukoro on DeviantArt
Luna Element v5.1 Black by Jamush on DeviantArt

I am still trying to understand why anyone wants an to have an operating system installed that will never receive any security updates using newer hardware

Posted on a Windows 10 forum?

Hi there
@dekayd

I think I answered that : Legacy - and very expensive hardware that works on XP but doesn't work on anything later -- using it as a Virtual Machine allows the legacy hardware to be used -- you can use the Virtual Machines as "dedicated systems" so they don't need Internet access and hence they don't need any security updates etc.

I think people have to realize about using old OS'es that there's a huge difference between running an OS as an "Everyday modern system" to one that essentially is there to provide a dedicated task.

For example there's still XP systems around running incredibly expensive machine tools -- that hardware has a life span of maybe 50 years or so e.g Road building gear , JCB's, power station control switch gear, etc , etc and costs maybe 250,000 USD or more !!! -- why should people chuck that sort of hardware "in the bin" if its still working perfectly -- road diggers etc don't need the latest and greatest modern CPU's to function !!!!

Another sort of example as to why old hardware is "not thrown away" : Musicians can still use incredibly ancient instruments for classical concerts (if they can get their hands on them) - e.g Strad violins !!! even though there are a lot of modern electric instruments available these days !!!

Cheers
jimbo