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[Paxiecrunchle]

I recently found out that one of my older laptops was still funtional, and given it is now the only funtional device that I own I use it fairly regulary, mostly with firefox 53.0 if I recall correctly, however certain websites and online features(such as certain gifs and rotating avtars, special characters and whatnot) do not function. Would it be worthwile to try and shift it to windows 7 or such if possible, the system is from around 2008 or so I belivee.

[Starver]

I'm a big fan of XP, still. I've got XP machines still running. Also Win2k. They're mostly isolated, as it happens, and I probably wouldn't use them in a perma-online sense (precautionarily), and I currently only connect them with USB keys/drives moving data to and from them in a sufficiently safe (if slow) method, as and when I've got use the sneakernet method to shuffle things about.

But I'm finding that several things are stopping working on XP.  DF is Ok (except if it hits the 32-bit memory limit), but the latest versions of Therapist won't work at all (maybe if recompiled, on a more legscy compiler, but currently seems to want something that doesn't get used in the post-XP world of APIs and/or DLLs, but not present at all within XP) and even LCS fails on me (similar reasons, I suspect).

Windows 7 is the one I'd go for, if I was in your position.  Vista is just...  Nope.  Win8 likewise, but then I'm maybe snobbishly against the UI revamp. And Win10's additional bells and whistles probably would cause problems on ex-XP hardware. (Jumping to 7 is a small risk, and keeping it on 7 has been a problem, with the auto-update-to-10, thing, which I think has expired now.) I still haven't done too much with my own 10 machines, to be honest, and I'm put off a bit by the number of times I've had to support other peoples' 10 installations with niggly problems (but when they work Ok, I don't get to see them!)...


Though while I have all the materials and utilities I need to do an off-line complete re-install (and 'verify') of an XP system (completely valid and legal, OEM key or otherwise, according to the box concerned, just fudging the callback-to-MS bit for practical reasons) to satisfy my own needs to occasionally redo the install from scratch for housekeeping purposes, I'm a bit lacking in the similar utilities to do the same (offline, completely clean reinstall) for my post-XP machines without jumping through the hoops that MS has valid reasons to ask of me, to make sure I'm not a licence-pirate or whatever.


Just had a quick look at the place I last bought my MS OSes from, and it seems they're all out of XPs/not selling them any more.  And the sole OEI version of 7 (Pro) is going for more than any of the three versions of 10 that they're willing to dispatch (half as much again as the cheapest of the 10s). Depending on how you're getting hold of your upgrade, you might want to factor that in. Might be cheaper, in the long run, to do a mass upgrade of as much as you could. Though laptops are a bad place to start trying to upgrade from, so...


I have no idea why GIFs would not work on your system. If they're truly GIFs and not actually HTML5 objects based on original animated GIFs, or somesuch, in an attempt to remove Shockwave Flash plugins and objects, etc, out of the ecosystem. Unfortunately, it seems that (as with compilers) a lot of up-scaling efforts to make things use the very latest paradigms seems to have decided it's easier just to say "I'm not supporting old systems" as if there'd be something wrong in maintaining sufficient operability with the older kit.

[nenjin]

FWIW, I work with a multimillion dollar company whose database and production server still runs XP. Pisses off their IT team something fierce.

As long as you’re not doing any real browsing on the internet with it, or using it as a web server, you’re probably ok.

[Antioch]

Since xp isn't supported any more you are opening yourself up to tons of security issues.

[wierd]

Again, it depends on what you use it for.

However, since this has a browser involved in the mix, that means it is on the internet, and that is bad juju.

XP machines should never be on the internet.

[gimlet]

If you mostly use it to websurf and watch videos, what about trying a live-linux - that's linux you run off a USB thumb drive?   You can try it out without destroying the xp partition.   The linux is free, an 8 or 16G thumb drive would be more than enough to run it.   That way you could use an up-to-date security patched linux for online stuff...

[Timmi]

Try some lazy newbie Linux OS! I myself am using deepin OS and it's not complicated at all! I installed it on all my retire notebooks!

[Paxiecrunchle]

If you mostly use it to websurf and watch videos, what about trying a live-linux - that's linux you run off a USB thumb drive?   You can try it out without destroying the xp partition.   The linux is free, an 8 or 16G thumb drive would be more than enough to run it.   That way you could use an up-to-date security patched linux for online stuff...

Have a tutorial for setting up something like that?

[wierd]

Just about any distro in LiveCD form, made into a bootable USB using something like linux live usb creator.

https://www.linuxliveusb.com/

Theres little check boxes and sliders to add persistent storage options to the live USB stick that gets generated.  You can use just about any distro in the universe to make such a thing.

[feelotraveller]

There are actually quite a few options. 

I prefer Rufus.

https://rufus.akeo.ie/

Worth grabbing a copy now for XP use as this version is the last for backwards compatibility.

[Funk]

The internets is fine but have never any money or banking.
But really if your PC is that old new hardware is what your looking at.

[Mesa]

New hardware, or a low-end hardware-friendly Linux distribution, like {X,L}ubuntu or Puppy Linux.

[Bumber]

Just about any distro in LiveCD form, made into a bootable USB using something like linux live usb creator.

https://www.linuxliveusb.com/

Theres little check boxes and sliders to add persistent storage options to the live USB stick that gets generated.  You can use just about any distro in the universe to make such a thing.

I tried this with Mint (64-bit, MATE) but the persistence doesn't seem to work. Using the utility in Windows 7, I gave it a 4GiB FAT32 partition on my ~120GiB usb stick, with 2GiB of permanence. When Linux boots, I get the desktop with the default mint user. I create a folder on the desktop and restart. The folder is gone. Tried again with Mint 17.2 just to be sure. LinuxLiveUSB doesn't recognize the .iso as being the exact same thing it has a config for, and still no good.

I created a separate installation on a partition at the other end of the usb, using these instructions instead (20GiB casper-rw partition), then removed the first one. Same result.

I redo the first installation with no permanence, then reformat the second non-boot partition. I try to use the first to directly install mint on the second. 6 hours later the installation fails near the end. I don't remember the details.

I've seen some posts on editing different files, but at 12+ hours wasted already I'm not really willing to gamble on them.

[Paxiecrunchle]

Thannnk you all soooo much!