Got an old Windows XP Machine? Here's an idea.

[CommanderLiamTHX]

I'm sure that a lot of you out there still have machines running Windows XP, and it's hard to upgrade. But, why not downgrade? Here's the plan: everyone that has an XP machine that they're just going to throw away or replace, downgrade to Windows 2000 or lower. (But make sure you're connected to the internet!) Once Microsoft gets the results of how many people were running old operating systems, they'll panic! Instead of a lot of Windows XP PCs, there will be a lot of Windows 98 or Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0! Join the COWXPUTASOMSRTDBTTMTU (Clan of Windows XP users that are sick of Microsoft ruining their day by trying to make them upgrade!) Because who doesn't want to see Microsoft go nuts trying to figure out why everyone's using Netscape and Windows 3.1 all of a sudden?

 

[mac_mogul]

shut up and upgrade already.

 

[carnageX]

I 100% guarantee they wouldn't do anything about it.

 

[CommanderLiamTHX]

shut up and upgrade already.

Oh, I already upgraded

 

[maarten]

I'm sure that a lot of you out there still have machines running Windows XP, and it's hard to upgrade. But, why not downgrade? Here's the plan: everyone that has an XP machine that they're just going to throw away or replace, downgrade to Windows 2000 or lower. (But make sure you're connected to the internet!) Once Microsoft gets the results of how many people were running old operating systems, they'll panic! Instead of a lot of Windows XP PCs, there will be a lot of Windows 98 or Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0! Join the COWXPUTASOMSRTDBTTMTU (Clan of Windows XP users that are sick of Microsoft ruining their day by trying to make them upgrade!) Because who doesn't want to see Microsoft go nuts trying to figure out why everyone's using Netscape and Windows 3.1 all of a sudden?

Even your "old" PC, may have hardware that is too NEW to support Windows 2000 or older. If you want to install Windows 2000 on a system that uses SATA for instance, be prepared to insert a floppy disk - yes a floppy disk - with the correct SATA drivers during the install. (Press F6 when it prompts for it). Otherwise it won't even install.

Depending on how "new" or "old" the PC is, there may be some other hardware that doesn't work. Windows 2000 supports multiple CPU's, but beware: It does not support multiple CORES, and will simply run everything on core 1, even though it will detect them as separate CPU's. Windows XP was the first Windows OS to support multiple cores, but Windows XP was limited in running it's own system files only on core 1, and since most games also run only on core 1, it would still cram too much on the 1st core. Windows Vista was the first Windows OS that really knew how to utilize multiple cores properly, and of course that was more tweaked and fine tuned in 7 and 8.

I have recently upgraded 4 PC's (3 desktops and 1 laptop) of a small business to Windows 7. All 4 machines had 4 GB, and had only 3 GB usable with Windows XP. They were bought when Vista was the OS of choice in 2009, before windows 7 was released, and all run Windows 7 beautifully.

Downgrading is dumb, and you will only cripple your PC more. Upgrade to Windows 7

 

[strollin]

Even your "old" PC, may have hardware that is too NEW to support Windows 2000 or older. If you want to install Windows 2000 on a system that uses SATA for instance, be prepared to insert a floppy disk - yes a floppy disk - with the correct SATA drivers during the install. (Press F6 when it prompts for it). Otherwise it won't even install. ...

This assumes that you can even find a Win 2000 or older compatible driver for the SATA controller. Fortunately, most (all?) machines have the ability to change the SATA mode from AHCI to IDE in the BIOS to get around this.

However, the whole idea of switching from XP because support has just ended to another OS that hasn't been supported in many years makes no sense whatsoever. Given the choice of sticking with XP vs downgrading to Win 2000 or an even earlier MS OS, I would simply stick with XP.

Personally, I upgraded the last machine I had running XP, an Acer Aspire One netbook, to Win 8 about 8 months ago. It has since been upgraded to Win 8.1 then 8.1.1. It runs Win 8.x better than it ever ran XP.

 

[carnageX]

This assumes that you can even find a Win 2000 or older compatible driver for the SATA controller. Fortunately, most (all?) machines have the ability to change the SATA mode from AHCI to IDE in the BIOS to get around this.

Nope, not all. I just got an HP dc5800 small-form factor system (a business upgraded to all new machines and was getting rid of a bunch), and it doesn't have any option to switch the SATA mode - I believe it defaults to ATA mode (which IMO is dumb...but whatever).

 

[bob442]

I'm sure that a lot of you out there still have machines running Windows XP, and it's hard to upgrade. But, why not downgrade? Here's the plan: everyone that has an XP machine that they're just going to throw away or replace, downgrade to Windows 2000 or lower. (But make sure you're connected to the internet!) Once Microsoft gets the results of how many people were running old operating systems, they'll panic! Instead of a lot of Windows XP PCs, there will be a lot of Windows 98 or Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0! Join the COWXPUTASOMSRTDBTTMTU (Clan of Windows XP users that are sick of Microsoft ruining their day by trying to make them upgrade!) Because who doesn't want to see Microsoft go nuts trying to figure out why everyone's using Netscape and Windows 3.1 all of a sudden?

Do you work for the US government or something?

 

[strollin]

Nope, not all. I just got an HP dc5800 small-form factor system (a business upgraded to all new machines and was getting rid of a bunch), and it doesn't have any option to switch the SATA mode - I believe it defaults to ATA mode (which IMO is dumb...but whatever).

That's exactly why I put a question mark next to "all" since I know the second I say "all", someone will come along to disagree. Regardless, I now know of at least one system that doesn't provide the ability to switch the SATA mode in the BIOS.

 

[carnageX]

That's exactly why I put a question mark next to "all" since I know the second I say "all", someone will come along to disagree. Regardless, I now know of at least one system that doesn't provide the ability to switch the SATA mode in the BIOS.

That's mainly why I stated it, because it took me forever, and a lot of googling, to find out what SATA mode it was defaulted in. Even after a BIOS update... so stupid it doesn't have the option for AHCI...but oh well. It was free.