XP on a new computer

[John1397]

If one buys a new computer and installs XP will all the programs run like excel 4.0 that run on older machines?

[patio]

Yes

[Mark.]

I would be more concerned in making sure there are still XP drivers for the new PC's hardware.
then consider whether it's better to get XP 32 or 64bit.
32bit will only access a max of 3GB of your RAM.

also do some research on XP and the SSE instruction set.
I have a feeling that I recall reading something about XP only supporting up to SSE2 (but could easily have that wrong) but it'll be worth digging deeper.

[DaveLembke]

Curious if unused copies of XP exist anymore for use on "NEW" PC licensing wise. But Mark brought up a good point on driver support for newer hardware might not be there for sound, video, and network adapter etc.

[camerongray]

In a situation like this (needing to run older applications) it's almost always a better option to run a modern version of Windows on the bare machine and use that for most stuff and then run a virtual machine for XP and run the legacy applications inside that.  That way you can still take advantage of the modern hardware support and the security improvements in a modern OS and only use XP for the stuff that absolutely requires it.

[DaveLembke]

That being said... Virtual environment is good for most non graphically intensive applications. So you wont want to play video games or movies through it, but other than that everything else usually runs fine virtual.

 It would be nice if there was a virtual environment that worked better for games. I have an older Pentium 4 running XP for playing some older games that freak out with newer Windows or newer hardware.

Some games I have found some work arounds to get them to play on newer hardware such as:

UT99 - I have to set core affinity to run this game on a single core on multicore CPUs otherwise I get surge framing and lag.

Diablo - The game looks like an acid trip on newer Windows 7 with newer hardware and requires a trick with the display to get it to look normal.

Carmageddon - This game has the same acid trip problem on newer Windows 7 that Diablo suffers and requires the same display trick to get it to look normal.

*Note: The display trick to get rid of acid tip graphics is this if anyone runs into it with older games on 7. Not sure if this will also fix it for 8 and newer, havent tested on 8 or newer:

taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe

Then run the game. Then when done restart explorer.

start explorer.exe

[patio]

Get it with Win 7...there is an XP compatibility pack available Free at MS...

[strollin]

Get it with Win 7...there is an XP compatibility pack available Free at MS...

Make sure it's Win 7 Professional, Ultimate or  Enterprise in order to use the XP mode feature.

[patio]

Good Catch strollin...Thanx.