Is anyone else still using Windows XP in 2017+?

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It's 2017, and I still run Windows XP as my main operating system on three computers in my house. Windows XP is fast, stable, and secure. I run malware scans every once in a while, and haven't gotten a virus in years. It takes less than 4 GB of hard drive space, and boots up in 15-20 seconds. Windows 10 on my newer computer uses up 20 GB of hard drive space and takes at least twice as long to boot. I can still run the latest Firefox, the latest Adobe Flash Player, Word 2003, and all of my retro PC games.

I miss XP, but it doesn't have good support for modern systems or programs. Both of my main PCs have 8GB of ram or more, as well as hardware that I'd be surprised to see decent XP drivers for. Nowadays I run Manjaro Linux pretty much full time, though I'll occasionally fire up an XP virtual machine to play Magic the Gathering: Shandalar.

Yes, I spend most of my time either in XP or in Puppy Linux...and the only trouble I have had is in not being able to find SATA (SSD) drivers for certain Dell notebooks/laptops made before 2.5" SATA drives had become common. So, I do have Windows 7 available also...and I have absolutely no interest in ever running Windows 10.

Getting XP to work with SATA drives can be a pain. The best thing to do is find the so-called "textmode" SATA driver for your motherboard and use nLite to slipstream it into the installation image. Then, you press F6 when the installer begins to load the SATA driver. The way Microsoft intended Windows XP to be installed on SATA drives was to put the driver on a floppy disk, boot up the installer, and load it by pressing F6, but in practice, floppy drives became obsolete, and most newer computers that have SATA don't have floppy drives, so you're forced to slipstream. Any Intel chipset that is Ivy Bridge or older should fully support Windows XP. I think AMD extended their XP support a bit longer.

The two machines in question for me are the Dell 1150 notebook and the Dell 1737 laptop, and I am fairly certain no XP SATA drivers were ever written for those Intel chipsets. Then, the notebook has the additional problem of no Win7 graphics drivers although I did find a custom driver someone had written so a friend could at least get native resolution with 256 colors. It would be nice to be able to run XP on this 1737 laptop, but the only way I could do that would be by setting BIOS to not use AHCI...and then that would have an ill effect in Win7.

If you're talking about the Dell Inspiron 1150, I think that was released in 2004, when XP was the newest version of Windows, so I'm fairly certain it supports Windows XP, though I don't think that laptop had SATA. I believe the Dell Studio 1737 has an Intel GM45/PM45 chipset, which should support Windows XP in SATA mode, though finding the drivers is hard since Intel totally fscked up their website, and it's difficult to find things anymore. I found this guide to be extremely helpful when I installed XP on my laptop. http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-O ... d-p/114120 If you've already got Windows 7 on there, then you should be able to run CPU-Z to find what chipset you have.

I have an old multimedia computer. It was bought in 2005, and still runs many of my old games and Windows XP. Some of the computers that run various pieces of scientific equipment still run XP. In fact, one of them even runs Windows 95.

My ideal version of Windows would basically be 2000 Professional with 64-bit support, and support for newer APIs and libraries like DX10/11/12. I'd also want it to include all the "fun stuff" from 95, 98SE, XP, Vista, and 7. As well, I'd want full application sandboxing/virtualization, a Bash-compatible command line, and full-system package management for application installs and updates. I'd make it so that every application has its own registry and libraries, and has tweakable compatibility parameters for things like Soundblaster or 3DFX Voodoo emulation.

Basically, I want a hypervisor that looks like Windows 2000 and acts like Linux, but with 100% Windows API compatibility.

You shouldn't continue to run such an unsupported operating system with internet connection, unless you are somehow perfectly content with the possibility of anyone easily running arbitrary code in kernel mode on your machine.

Is this a problem if you're using the POSReady 2009 updates?

If you might be able to elaborate a bit, I would gladly listen...but is that not a bit like suggesting a suit of armor is needed for walking in public? Anyone's and everyone's first line of defense is at the fingertips, and the only time I have ever had a problem was the one time when I made the first move by clicking something.

I love xp

Let me see now I've got DOS 3.3 in an old IBM with an old Cedar Creek golf game.
Also Protext a very good word processor, Microsoft's Word Star c--- engineered it's demise
(its now in the loft)
2000 Professional on a 32 bit machine that just sits in the corner,
with Paintshop 7 pro on, just waiting for a call back into action.

I keep a couple of old XP laptops around. One of them goes back to 2004 and was quite a high end multimedia machine in its day:
https://www.cnet.com/products/hp-pavili ... 0z/review/

At the moment, I'm in the middle of repurposing a hand-me-down PC tin with 256MB RAM, AMD Athlon processor (1.6Ghz) and an Nvidia GeForce FX440 graphics card to play MS-DOS/95/98 games. I've installed Windows 98 and it's just a question of getting the sound and video drivers onto the system which is proving difficult because Windows 98 won't read my CD-Rs.

Win98 shouldn't have trouble reading CD-Rs. What you should probably do instead is install a different disc drive. Also, if you're gonna be playing DOS games, make sure you have a compatible sound card. Compatibility with non-ISA cards is spotty in DOS.

I'd recommend checking out VOGONS, another forum I frequent. They know a lot about old hardware. https://www.vogons.org/

I run a dual-boot setup with XP on one side and Windows 7 on the other. The XP side is for software I can't get to run reliably on 7. The XP side is 32-bit, the 7 side is 64-bit.