The ultimate "Nostalgia" experience.
retroComputing entertainment windowsXPI recently installed Windows XP x64 SP2 on a PC of mine,
installed the drivers and… Everything worked correctly, which is rare for me, everything usually crashes on the first try anyway. Here are some screenshots.
Below I will leave a list of programs I used to get everything working fine… I even got Windows Update working! :)
[WARNING] Windows XP stopped receiving security updates long ago, use at your own risk. XP is deprecated and its vulnerabilities are well-known. You shouldn’t store sensitive information in it, your social security number, id cards, banking information, passwords, and other personal things that hackers may be after.
Here’s the list of resources I used to get everything working good enough to daily drive(Be cautious, this system doesn’t have security updates anymore, use common sense as your antivirus)
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I downloaded the ISO from Internet archive: https://archive.org/details/windows-xp-all-sp-msdn-iso-files-en-de-ru-tr-x86-x64
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I am using https://clamwin.com/ as my antivirus, which is… Not that good for most users, I use it mainly because is lightweight, and Open Source + I use Common sense as my antivirus and the antivirus to check that I’m using it. IDK if you can still use avast on XP but if you can and have more than 3GB of RAM, you should use it
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I’m using this browser on Windows XP, it’s based on Firefox(Which is already the fastest and greatest), https://www.mypal-browser.org. Also, you can find builds of Open Source browsers compatible with XP here, they were patched to work on XP and are up to date with sources, they get updated every week, http://rtfreesoft.blogspot.com/search/label/browser. Also, the raw repository, or directory listing: https://o.rthost.win/. I recommend you use the latest release of this browser https://o.rthost.win/boc-uxp/
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I’m using 7-zip.org
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And I’m using K-Lite codecs to get Windows Media Player and some sites on the web that require codecs that aren’t included with common browsers. Here’s the link to the last version working on XP; https://codecguide.com/download_mega_old.htm#xp_last_version
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And I installed One-Core-API after installing all the updates of XP and then disabled automatic updates completely, One-Core-API is a compatibility layer that lets you run some programs that aren’t fully compatible with XP or were never intended to run in it. It is highly unstable at is current state, don’t take for granted it’ll work with every program you want. https://github.com/Skulltrail192/One-Core-API-Binaries
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[EDIT] I didn’t know this existed but I found it pretty useful. A community driven project to help you fix Windows Update on old Windows versions. http://legacyupdate.net/.
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[EDIT2] Here’s a cool webpage with useful links and resources. http://retronetwork.net/.
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Here’s the tool I used to make a bootable USB http://www.winsetupfromusb.com/downloads/
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I used this tool to get all drivers installed and updated https://sdi-tool.org/download/, you should use SDI FULL if you can, I recommend you download it to a 2.0 USB, if you can’t you’ll need to use SDI Lite which will require an internet network(Not recommended if you don’t have the network driver already installed & working).
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I advise you use Windows XP x64 edition SP2 to get more speed and some newer programs working
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Below I leave you the guide I used to get automatic updates working
Here are the links from the video (I updated some URLs for the x64 bit edition)
- Windows XP Service Pack 1
x86 (32-Bit)
- Windows XP Service Pack 2
x86 (32-Bit)
x64
- KB936929: Windows XP Service Pack 3
x86 (32-Bit)
- Windows Update Agent
x86 (32-Bit)
http://i430vx.net/files/wsusstuff/NT5x/WindowsUpdateAgent30-x86.exe
x64 (64-Bit)
http://i430vx.net/files/wsusstuff/NT5x/WindowsUpdateAgent30-x64.exe
- WSUS Registry File
x86, x64 (32-Bit and 64-Bit)
http://i430vx.net/files/wsusstuff/wsus.reg
- RootSUPD (Root Certificate Updater (Use On Old XP Installations))
x86, x64 (32-Bit and 64-Bit)
http://i430vx.net/files/wsusstuff/NT5x/rootsupd.exe