12 ms·

Windows XP Activation: Game Over

248 points by sysadm1n 3y ago

roschdal 3y ago
This is why the world needs Linux.
- pseudosavant 3y ago
  I would bet $50 that it is easier to install Windows XP with an activation 'hack' than it would be to install most Linux distros from 2001. We are talking RedHat Linux 7 (not RHEL) running a Linux 2.2 kernel. Most Linux 'reviews' back then were basically a review on how easy (or more likely, hard) it is to install. Most distros installers faired pretty poorly back then. I succeeded in getting RedHat 7 installed, but could never get Slackware or SUSE to successfully install.
  - dtx1 3y ago
    Yeah but Suse linux existed
    - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
      And CentOS 4.5 (okay that was 2007 but we had both OS running at the same time - mostly because we weren't getting anywhere near Vista [2006]).
    - rootsudo 3y ago
      Mandrake was pretty easy, and even SCO UNIX (not GNU/Linux) had an release - grub worked, fat32/fat16 partitioning was possible and there was previous NTFS windows releases, NT 3.5/4 and 2000 that facilitated it. They all had GUI interactive installers, and had floppy boot disks to boot (too!)
      - gattilorenz 3y ago
        SCO Unix[1] didn’t have a GUI installer. Interactive it was, but only TUI, and generally more challenging than the classic TUI Debian installer - especially if you want to dual boot! Mandrake (9.2 is the version I used the most) was very nice, the GUI installer looked very polished, had nice explanations and package selection was done by answering “what are you going to use this computer for?”. A TUI installer was available as a safe option too. [1] At that time you are in SCO OpenServer territory, SCO UNIX is OLD, but the same applies to OpenServer 5 and 6. It might have been UnixWare (which I only installed once, no memories of it) or maybe SCO Linux (oh, the irony!)
    - hulitu 3y ago
      Oh Suse,where the disk partitioning program had a bug with displaying the partition size in Mebibytes and actually using Megabytes. Tough times.
  - cellularmitosis 3y ago
    WinLinux 2000 (the first distro I ever installed) was a pretty painless experience. It installed as a Windows "app" which rebooted into Linux, and used UMSDOS to share a single filesystem.
  - klodolph 3y ago
    If you're comparing RedHat Linux 7 against Windows XP, you're thinking in terms of the release date of XP. Windows XP was not very good when it came out, and it wasn't until it got the service packs. So if you're going to start with something like Windows XP service pack 3, meaning that you were someone who didn't jump straight to Vista (I'll be a Vista apologist, but people were being reasonable when they didn't jump from XP), at that point, you're comparing it to Linux distros of 2008. That would be something like Fedora 8, Ubuntu 8, or Debian 4. This was the GNOME 2 era and it was a pretty damn smooth experience. If you're thinking a bit deeper in terms of user experience for the early, early 2000s, then you would probably put FreeBSD high up on your list rather than treating Linux as an assumption.
  - jdwithit 3y ago
    I vaguely remember trying to install Gentoo back in the early 2000s. It took more than 24 hours and eventually failed with an inscrutable C compilation failure in some random package. That was quite the eye opening experience. Certainly gave me an appreciation for the relative polish of Red Hat and other packaged distros, despite their warts.
  - optymizer 3y ago
    You couldn't get Slackware or SuSE to install ... ever? or recently?
  - em-bee 3y ago
    that is missing the point. people want to use windows XP in order to run old software that doesn't run on newer systems. (or because they are nostalgic, but those are not helped with linux, so we can ignore them) a modern linux distribution is way more likely to run old linux and windows software than a modern windows version. hence that's why the world needs linux, because it doesn't have the problems that windows upgrades have. you may argue that new linux distributions don't have old libraries either, which is true, but getting older libraries to install and run is way easier than on windows. and it's possible to put an old linux binary (even one for which there is no source) into an environment and make it workable on a modern linux distribution, and with things like flatpak it is also possible to make such an environment easily installable for a non-technical end user. getting old windows binaries to run is even easier because that's exactly how wine works.
    - Dalewyn 3y ago
      My daily driver now is a Windows 11 Alder Lake desktop that I assembled last year, but I still keep my prior machines in working order because neither virtualization nor emulation can hold a candle to execution on real, physical hardware. Specifically said prior machines are: * A Windows 7 Sandy Bridge desktop. * A Windows XP Pentium 4 Northwood desktop. * A Windows 98SE Pentium 2 laptop, with a Yamaha XG MIDI sound card. Microsoft and Windows are downright legendary with their commitment to backwards compatibility, but that becomes even better with access to many versions of Windows and the hardware of their times. Linux would not satisfy my needs and desires in any of my machines, let alone my daily driver. I don't have the time nor desire to faff around with dependency hell and terminal voodoo and maybe get something that half-works (which will immediately bork to a stiff breeze) when Windows instead will Just Always Work(tm) and get me going.
      - em-bee 3y ago
        you are right of course. if it works, it works, and most times it does. i am specifically talking about those that still use XP because it doesn't work. those cases are few, mostly badly written games i guess. i am curious what kind of programs you still run on those old machines. linux may not satisfy your needs, but not everyone can afford to keep old machines around like you do. and those stories of dependency hell and terminal voodoo are corner cases on linux just as much as they are on windows. especially if someone is going to set up a linux machine specifically to run old windows programs in wine then they most certainly will not run into any such issues. most cases of dependency hell on linux are likely caused by inexperienced users who follow bad advice to install software from the wrong version or a different distribution. don't do that if you don't know how to do it without causing problems.
  - omoikane 3y ago
    I recall installing linux wasn't the difficult part, it's getting your peripherals to work after that.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    IIRC Linux installed pretty well, as long as you were dedicating the whole drive to it. It was dual booting that would get you every time.
  - activiation 3y ago
    I used to install Slackware with a bunch of floppies... I think it was easier then Arch today (although I can do both)
    - em-bee 3y ago
      if you have been installing linux since the early floppy days, sure, by 2000 it was easy. i was there too and i don't remember any problems either. but those new to linux at the time were likely having more difficulties than us grumpy old geeks.
  - thsksbd 3y ago
    I remember trying to get red hat 5 installed. Epic fail. By 2002 I managed to get some district installed, but all I accomplished was having my distro eat my lab report (umount? Wtf?). I didn't really get into Linux until grad school, and then only because i had to use an SGI daily
  - asveikau 3y ago
    Linux 2.4 released in January 2001. I remember circa 2004 I set up my non technical brother with one of the earliest versions of Ubuntu, after he kept getting malware on XP, and he didn't have difficulty with it. I was kind of surprised how easy it was. I was a debian and OpenBSD user at the time.
  - phatbyte 3y ago
    Never had problems installing any major Linux dist, but 15 years ago I still remember the boring and time consuming on patching the kernel with custom patches so that my wi-fi card or gfx card could work. I stopped trying to use Linux as a desktop OS since then. But recently I tried for fun installing Ubuntu and everything just worked out of the box. I still feel Linux is too fragmented, too many package managers, too many UI managers etc...but that's part of the beauty of it I guess.
  - neilv 3y ago
    For people unfamiliar with that era, here's a 1999 installation procedure for Red Hat 6 for a specific site (university lab), including configuring for their particular infrastructure setup (directory service, network filesystem including automounting, email, printing, clock-syncing): https://www.neilvandyke.org/lab-linux-1999/ https://www.neilvandyke.org/lab-linux-1999/
  - badsectoracula 3y ago
    My first Linux was Caldera OpenLinux 2.3[0] in 1999 that i got from a magazine and even at that time the installer was literally a "wizard" where you typed a few things like username, password, etc, selected which graphics card and monitor you have, what you wanted to install (full install ~1GB) in a series of Next, Next, Next, Done. It even had a tetris game you could play while waiting for the packages to be copied in the background. As a kid at the time i installed it on pretty much any PC i could get my hands on - my own, relatives, friends, etc, nobody was safe :-P though they found it interesting anyway since it was chock full of applications and games to play around - and i don't remember ever having issues. I tried it recently in 86box (which emulates old PCs) and it worked as good as i remember. Though in a way it was probably an exceptional case, IMO that CD was basically the best well-put together distro (especially when you consider that KDE was basically beta software at the time). [0] https://archive.org/details/OpenLinux2.3CD https://archive.org/details/OpenLinux2.3CD
  - m463 3y ago
    I vaguely recall installs back then revolved around choosing compatible hardware more than anything else.
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    windows XP wasn't easier to install, especially if you had some hardware (scsi hard drives) that required providing a floppy for the drivers. On linux it is and has always been about choosing hardware that is supported out of the box. Slackware wasn't particularly difficult to install, it was regular step by step based and the defaults were sane. What made it difficult to people was trying to setup a dual boot without deleting their precious data.
  - ForOldHack 3y ago
    FYI: XP installed on my 700mhz Athlon, clock chipped to 950. Redhat was hard, Slackware was an absolute nightmare. Gentoo took weeks. We recompiled everything and discovered that Intel does not create good amd binaries. Never went back to Linux on the back burner for 8 years on an Intel. Microsoft wants your money and your loyalty. I have yet to discover what Linux geeks want except for you to join them in some weird reality distortion field. Two iMacs. One with Mint and one with Ubuntoo. Both just literally crawl. Alpine is so much faster, and we are gaining speed by hook and crook.
- danjoredd 3y ago
  I love Linux as much as the next nerd...but Linux was notorious in the early 2000s. Also this is about using Windows XP for the sake of using Windows XP.
- rejectfinite 3y ago
  This is about using Windows XP because it is Windows XP. Maybe we like it.
haunter 3y ago
>MAS (hosted on their own platform) MAS is awesome. Anyways MS doesn't care about private piracy. They rather have you pirate Windows than leave the platform and use another OS. This is my conspiracy theory about WSL too (which is an actual nice software but still).
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  I've used it to quickly auth XP VMs that were needed to run ancient Navision clients. It works as advertised. I had to whitelist the directory in Windows Security because it makes MSAV grumpy and then uploads it's grumpiness home.
- gymbeaux 3y ago
  It’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s well-known that Microsoft’s “M$ <3 Linux” campaign is propaganda. It’s classic anti-competitive Microsoft behavior that started with IE in the 90s.
  - tracker1 3y ago
    I think a lot of it is the writing on the wall... long term, it's software as a service model that will be their recurring revenue streams. I'm not sure what they're making in terms of just Windows licensing, but can guess that M365 is probably as much or more per year. In the past 6-7 years most of the applications I've worked on, even those using Visual Studio, C#, etc. Have been tested/deployed on Linux more than Windows.
  - sterlind 3y ago
    (Disclaimer: I work at MS, but not on WSL, opinions are my own.) I don't see how WSL is embrace-extend-extinguish. Embrace, yes. Extend? No. There's basically nothing that only runs on WSL and not real Linux. Only QoL integrations with the Windows shell like X11/Wayland and Explorer integration. The point of WSL is backend dev. If WSL were on an EEE path, you'd expect to see MS adding Windows-only integrations, and encouraging people to run WSL server instances. Instead, MS has never positioned WSL for prod use, and instead cautions against using it for non-dev activities. Even internally, we don't use WSL to host Linux stuff. We use CBL-Mariner instead [1], which is completely FOSS. The whole point of WSL was that Windows lost to Linux for backend. Unlike Ballmer, Satya didn't want to waste resources fighting a losing battle, so he pivoted the company towards Azure and dev tooling and away from Windows Server. And that succeeded, and it's why we're not irrelevant like IBM - we ditched our mainframes, as it were. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBL-Mariner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBL-Mariner
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
For a use case of a new XP install, I have clients with DVR systems, with a webui that only works in IE. However, IE mode in Edge comes with 1) an unremovable banner warning you to stop using IE mode and 2) an automatic 6 month expiration of sites you put in the IE Mode whitelist (supposedly overrulable by a GPO - but it's commonly broken). It turned out to be less trouble to spin up an XP VM and make IE available to network users as a Remote App.
- scq 3y ago
  There are still ways to use the IE engine on current Windows, aside from Edge's IE mode. Namely, there's the WebBrowser ActiveX control, which uses the IE engine on all Windows versions. Easily embeddable in a .NET app: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/winforms/controls/webbrowser-control-overview https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/winforms/co...
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    This could be really promising but I seem to be lacking the background to grok it easily. I'll get myself edumakated.
- hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
  You could drop a reverse proxy infront which rewrites the user agent, this will probably fox many of the issues. I’d be cautious about using a DVR for any sensitive situation if it’s unmaintained if the Dvr is used in sensitive scenarios. There would be a significant amount of reputational damage if it’s ever hacked, particularly if ugly workarounds are used to bypass software being totally EOL’d.
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    > You could drop a reverse proxy infront which rewrites the user agent, this will probably fox many of the issues. The user agent thing makes me think you're trying to fool the DVR. The DVR requires a browser that is running it's ActiveX plugin. IE is the only browser that runs them. > I’d be cautious about using a DVR for any sensitive situation if it’s unmaintained if the Dvr is used in sensitive scenarios. External access to the DVR is limited (by the firewall) to 1 external IP address. If it were hacked, someone would have breached the firewall and the DVR would be the least of our issues.
willcipriano 3y ago
> Microsoft will see fit to release an official XP activation tool for posterity. Free Idea for Microsoft: Windows XP PCs but like those mini consoles[0] that have been released recently. Could be preloaded with games from the era and intended to be used offline so patches don't matter. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Classic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Classic
- rootsudo 3y ago
  Ah, yes, link the example that was considered a failure and had bestbuy and other big block retailers sell them for $15-20 less than 6 months after release. (Maybe 3 months?) I bought quite a few of them when they were slashed back in 2019. $15, free shipping, quite a value. The scene is largely ran by 2 redditors now.
- rejectfinite 3y ago
  >Could be preloaded with games from the era So, only Microsoft published ones then. You realise that right? You can buy and play Windows XP era games on Steam and run them just great on Windows 10/11. FEAR is a great one, released in 2005, still looks and plays amazing. https://store.steampowered.com/app/21090/FEAR/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/21090/FEAR/ So I have no idea what you mean :)
  - MrFoof 3y ago
    >You can buy and play Windows XP era games on Steam and run them just great on Windows 10/11. Or older (pre-Steam) games in a virtual machine. Hyper-V comes with Pro versions of Windows. VMWare has a Player that is also free (plus there's full Workstation). There's also VirtualBox, which sometimes is the packaged solution for very old titles sold on platforms like GOG. Never mind the solutions for Mac OS, Linux and BSD. Recently my jam is going back to 1994 and playing a game from the Windows 3.1/Windows 95 transition era, rife with 16-bit libraries -- Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol. A game in which it was likely a lot of older folks here played the crap out of the demo, but never bought the game because it involved sending a check in the mail -- and because even the demo could provide hundreds of hours of enjoyment. Though you can legitimately buy it online from its current IP owner for about $10 (more if you want a boxed copy!), and it's just as fun as I remember it 30 years ago. And setting it up in a virtual machine? Very straightforward, save for digging up some third-party audio library the game wanted. I actually just have a 40GB Windows XP VM I just maintain with all my old games from DOS and Windows 3.1 through 2002 or so. I can move it between hypervisors, between host OSes, etc. Just works. All my old games always ready to go.
ungruntled 3y ago
I've been using Windows XP VMs without activation, or even a prompt to activate. I didn't know they even needed activation. Does anyone know what activation is needed for?
- cellularmitosis 3y ago
  I actually just ran into this the other weekend. After a certain amount of time (30 days?), Windows will prompt you to activate, and if you don't, it kicks you to the login screen.
- EscapeFromNY 3y ago
  Normally Windows XP would lock you out completely after a while if you don't activate. But there are a lot of exceptions, like volume license keys, certain OEM install discs, certain VM images released by MS, and ahem unofficial ISOs with things like AntiWPA slipstreamed into the install.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > I've been using Windows XP VMs without activation, or even a prompt to activate. If you go into properties, does it show XP isn't activated? IIRC, early XP releases didn't nag from the tray. I've also seen some Dell installs that auto activated after pulling the key from BIOS.
  - ungruntled 3y ago
    It says it's activated. I think this is because I was using one of those Windows XP compatibility isos that Microsoft made available for download a long time ago (as far as I remember).
  - ridgered4 3y ago
    There was an update, Windows Genuine Advantage, that was not part of the original XP installers that did the nagging about you using a shady key IIRC. The trick was to not install it, which was easy enough since you had total control of updates back then.
- 3y ago
rejectfinite 3y ago
I Remoted/Teamviewered into a Windows XP laptop a few years ago form my Windows 10 work PC. And WOW the XP machine was so fast. They installed XP on a new-ish Intel i3 and 4GB RAM for some reason, probably old software. And the UI just flew, so smooth, even over Teamviewer. They wanted it on corp wifi however... that was a no-go
EMIRELADERO 3y ago
Shame that it's a closed-source tool. I hope somebody reverse-engineers it and releases a web version.
xupybd 3y ago
This will be a big win for industrial machines. I work with some that required Win XP to run very old and niche cards that interface with CNC machines. You can run newer computers but they only just work and cost way more than they're worth. It's a real shame you end up in a situation where it's cheaper to replace a machine than keep it going just because the software is so hard to get working on a new PC and PC hardware has a limited life. It's effectively bricking a 6 meter CNC machine. That is a lot of machine.
- mobilio 3y ago
  I have similar experience with expensive CNC machine that runs on Windows98... ONLY on Windows 98. That machine costs like $150k or similar and was purchased 99/00 as i remember. Few years ago PC was destroyed. Don't ask - long story because fan stop working due dust. So company purchased 2 PCs with similar configuration just to be sure that they have backup plans. New CNC machine costs over $250k.
  - EuropeOverlords 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - Szpadel 3y ago
    what about something like pcem? would it be possible to use that to run os and software?
    - magnat 3y ago
      Usually these machines come with obscure hardware interface cards (ISA card if you are lucky) and software which talks directly to those cards. Even though you can find a modern PC with ISA slot, passing through ISA devices to a VM/emu is the hard part.
      - nyanpasu64 3y ago
        I wonder if the MISTer FPGS running AO486 is fast enough, or the CPU is too low-spec and emulated slowly, or doesn't support physical ISA peripherals.
tinglymintyfrsh 3y ago
Worth noting Microsoft product keys are/were tied to the channel they were sold through, and the difference being 2-3 files on install media. PS: VLK XP doesn't suffer this problem. Edit: Nice utility to extract product keys from a live system. https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html
tommek4077 3y ago
Why the hassle and not just FCKGW-.......?
- kotaKat 3y ago
  FCKGW was blacklisted VERY early on with Windows Genuine Advantage updates and later service-pack-integrated media would block that key in the installer, even.
felixfurtak 3y ago
Can still use OEM SLIC and bin bios mod I think?
- EuropeOverlords 3y ago
  [flagged]
deleted 3y ago
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EuropeOverlords 3y ago
[flagged]
nevster 3y ago
FWIW I successfully performed a phone activation on Jan 1 (2023)
voldacar 3y ago
What are the best tools out there for activating windows 7 and 10?
- tharos47 3y ago
  There is a link in the article to MAS and even a story where Microsoft support used it to activate a legitimate windows10 install.
  - voldacar 3y ago
    I see, thanks. I'm a windows noob but I have to install it soon on some VMs and I was dreading doing that.
SillyUsername 3y ago
Tldr links; is there an open source version?
dippo 3y ago
How was this done? Did they steal the key from Microsoft, or perform some cryptanalysis to crack it, or something else?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

248 points by sysadm1n 3y ago

roschdal 3y ago

This is why the world needs Linux.

pseudosavant 3y ago
I would bet $50 that it is easier to install Windows XP with an activation 'hack' than it would be to install most Linux distros from 2001. We are talking RedHat Linux 7 (not RHEL) running a Linux 2.2 kernel. Most Linux 'reviews' back then were basically a review on how easy (or more likely, hard) it is to install. Most distros installers faired pretty poorly back then. I succeeded in getting RedHat 7 installed, but could never get Slackware or SUSE to successfully install.
- dtx1 3y ago
  Yeah but Suse linux existed
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    And CentOS 4.5 (okay that was 2007 but we had both OS running at the same time - mostly because we weren't getting anywhere near Vista [2006]).
  - rootsudo 3y ago
    Mandrake was pretty easy, and even SCO UNIX (not GNU/Linux) had an release - grub worked, fat32/fat16 partitioning was possible and there was previous NTFS windows releases, NT 3.5/4 and 2000 that facilitated it. They all had GUI interactive installers, and had floppy boot disks to boot (too!)
    - gattilorenz 3y ago
      SCO Unix[1] didn’t have a GUI installer. Interactive it was, but only TUI, and generally more challenging than the classic TUI Debian installer - especially if you want to dual boot! Mandrake (9.2 is the version I used the most) was very nice, the GUI installer looked very polished, had nice explanations and package selection was done by answering “what are you going to use this computer for?”. A TUI installer was available as a safe option too. [1] At that time you are in SCO OpenServer territory, SCO UNIX is OLD, but the same applies to OpenServer 5 and 6. It might have been UnixWare (which I only installed once, no memories of it) or maybe SCO Linux (oh, the irony!)
  - hulitu 3y ago
    Oh Suse,where the disk partitioning program had a bug with displaying the partition size in Mebibytes and actually using Megabytes. Tough times.
- cellularmitosis 3y ago
  WinLinux 2000 (the first distro I ever installed) was a pretty painless experience. It installed as a Windows "app" which rebooted into Linux, and used UMSDOS to share a single filesystem.
- klodolph 3y ago
  If you're comparing RedHat Linux 7 against Windows XP, you're thinking in terms of the release date of XP. Windows XP was not very good when it came out, and it wasn't until it got the service packs. So if you're going to start with something like Windows XP service pack 3, meaning that you were someone who didn't jump straight to Vista (I'll be a Vista apologist, but people were being reasonable when they didn't jump from XP), at that point, you're comparing it to Linux distros of 2008. That would be something like Fedora 8, Ubuntu 8, or Debian 4. This was the GNOME 2 era and it was a pretty damn smooth experience. If you're thinking a bit deeper in terms of user experience for the early, early 2000s, then you would probably put FreeBSD high up on your list rather than treating Linux as an assumption.
- jdwithit 3y ago
  I vaguely remember trying to install Gentoo back in the early 2000s. It took more than 24 hours and eventually failed with an inscrutable C compilation failure in some random package. That was quite the eye opening experience. Certainly gave me an appreciation for the relative polish of Red Hat and other packaged distros, despite their warts.
- optymizer 3y ago
  You couldn't get Slackware or SuSE to install ... ever? or recently?
- em-bee 3y ago
  that is missing the point. people want to use windows XP in order to run old software that doesn't run on newer systems. (or because they are nostalgic, but those are not helped with linux, so we can ignore them) a modern linux distribution is way more likely to run old linux and windows software than a modern windows version. hence that's why the world needs linux, because it doesn't have the problems that windows upgrades have. you may argue that new linux distributions don't have old libraries either, which is true, but getting older libraries to install and run is way easier than on windows. and it's possible to put an old linux binary (even one for which there is no source) into an environment and make it workable on a modern linux distribution, and with things like flatpak it is also possible to make such an environment easily installable for a non-technical end user. getting old windows binaries to run is even easier because that's exactly how wine works.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    My daily driver now is a Windows 11 Alder Lake desktop that I assembled last year, but I still keep my prior machines in working order because neither virtualization nor emulation can hold a candle to execution on real, physical hardware. Specifically said prior machines are: * A Windows 7 Sandy Bridge desktop. * A Windows XP Pentium 4 Northwood desktop. * A Windows 98SE Pentium 2 laptop, with a Yamaha XG MIDI sound card. Microsoft and Windows are downright legendary with their commitment to backwards compatibility, but that becomes even better with access to many versions of Windows and the hardware of their times. Linux would not satisfy my needs and desires in any of my machines, let alone my daily driver. I don't have the time nor desire to faff around with dependency hell and terminal voodoo and maybe get something that half-works (which will immediately bork to a stiff breeze) when Windows instead will Just Always Work(tm) and get me going.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      you are right of course. if it works, it works, and most times it does. i am specifically talking about those that still use XP because it doesn't work. those cases are few, mostly badly written games i guess. i am curious what kind of programs you still run on those old machines. linux may not satisfy your needs, but not everyone can afford to keep old machines around like you do. and those stories of dependency hell and terminal voodoo are corner cases on linux just as much as they are on windows. especially if someone is going to set up a linux machine specifically to run old windows programs in wine then they most certainly will not run into any such issues. most cases of dependency hell on linux are likely caused by inexperienced users who follow bad advice to install software from the wrong version or a different distribution. don't do that if you don't know how to do it without causing problems.
- omoikane 3y ago
  I recall installing linux wasn't the difficult part, it's getting your peripherals to work after that.
- bombcar 3y ago
  IIRC Linux installed pretty well, as long as you were dedicating the whole drive to it. It was dual booting that would get you every time.
- activiation 3y ago
  I used to install Slackware with a bunch of floppies... I think it was easier then Arch today (although I can do both)
  - em-bee 3y ago
    if you have been installing linux since the early floppy days, sure, by 2000 it was easy. i was there too and i don't remember any problems either. but those new to linux at the time were likely having more difficulties than us grumpy old geeks.
- thsksbd 3y ago
  I remember trying to get red hat 5 installed. Epic fail. By 2002 I managed to get some district installed, but all I accomplished was having my distro eat my lab report (umount? Wtf?). I didn't really get into Linux until grad school, and then only because i had to use an SGI daily
- asveikau 3y ago
  Linux 2.4 released in January 2001. I remember circa 2004 I set up my non technical brother with one of the earliest versions of Ubuntu, after he kept getting malware on XP, and he didn't have difficulty with it. I was kind of surprised how easy it was. I was a debian and OpenBSD user at the time.
- phatbyte 3y ago
  Never had problems installing any major Linux dist, but 15 years ago I still remember the boring and time consuming on patching the kernel with custom patches so that my wi-fi card or gfx card could work. I stopped trying to use Linux as a desktop OS since then. But recently I tried for fun installing Ubuntu and everything just worked out of the box. I still feel Linux is too fragmented, too many package managers, too many UI managers etc...but that's part of the beauty of it I guess.
- neilv 3y ago
  For people unfamiliar with that era, here's a 1999 installation procedure for Red Hat 6 for a specific site (university lab), including configuring for their particular infrastructure setup (directory service, network filesystem including automounting, email, printing, clock-syncing): https://www.neilvandyke.org/lab-linux-1999/ https://www.neilvandyke.org/lab-linux-1999/
- badsectoracula 3y ago
  My first Linux was Caldera OpenLinux 2.3[0] in 1999 that i got from a magazine and even at that time the installer was literally a "wizard" where you typed a few things like username, password, etc, selected which graphics card and monitor you have, what you wanted to install (full install ~1GB) in a series of Next, Next, Next, Done. It even had a tetris game you could play while waiting for the packages to be copied in the background. As a kid at the time i installed it on pretty much any PC i could get my hands on - my own, relatives, friends, etc, nobody was safe :-P though they found it interesting anyway since it was chock full of applications and games to play around - and i don't remember ever having issues. I tried it recently in 86box (which emulates old PCs) and it worked as good as i remember. Though in a way it was probably an exceptional case, IMO that CD was basically the best well-put together distro (especially when you consider that KDE was basically beta software at the time). [0] https://archive.org/details/OpenLinux2.3CD https://archive.org/details/OpenLinux2.3CD
- m463 3y ago
  I vaguely recall installs back then revolved around choosing compatible hardware more than anything else.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  windows XP wasn't easier to install, especially if you had some hardware (scsi hard drives) that required providing a floppy for the drivers. On linux it is and has always been about choosing hardware that is supported out of the box. Slackware wasn't particularly difficult to install, it was regular step by step based and the defaults were sane. What made it difficult to people was trying to setup a dual boot without deleting their precious data.
- ForOldHack 3y ago
  FYI: XP installed on my 700mhz Athlon, clock chipped to 950. Redhat was hard, Slackware was an absolute nightmare. Gentoo took weeks. We recompiled everything and discovered that Intel does not create good amd binaries. Never went back to Linux on the back burner for 8 years on an Intel. Microsoft wants your money and your loyalty. I have yet to discover what Linux geeks want except for you to join them in some weird reality distortion field. Two iMacs. One with Mint and one with Ubuntoo. Both just literally crawl. Alpine is so much faster, and we are gaining speed by hook and crook.
danjoredd 3y ago
I love Linux as much as the next nerd...but Linux was notorious in the early 2000s. Also this is about using Windows XP for the sake of using Windows XP.
rejectfinite 3y ago
This is about using Windows XP because it is Windows XP. Maybe we like it.

haunter 3y ago

>MAS (hosted on their own platform) MAS is awesome. Anyways MS doesn't care about private piracy. They rather have you pirate Windows than leave the platform and use another OS. This is my conspiracy theory about WSL too (which is an actual nice software but still).

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
I've used it to quickly auth XP VMs that were needed to run ancient Navision clients. It works as advertised. I had to whitelist the directory in Windows Security because it makes MSAV grumpy and then uploads it's grumpiness home.
gymbeaux 3y ago
It’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s well-known that Microsoft’s “M$ <3 Linux” campaign is propaganda. It’s classic anti-competitive Microsoft behavior that started with IE in the 90s.
- tracker1 3y ago
  I think a lot of it is the writing on the wall... long term, it's software as a service model that will be their recurring revenue streams. I'm not sure what they're making in terms of just Windows licensing, but can guess that M365 is probably as much or more per year. In the past 6-7 years most of the applications I've worked on, even those using Visual Studio, C#, etc. Have been tested/deployed on Linux more than Windows.
- sterlind 3y ago
  (Disclaimer: I work at MS, but not on WSL, opinions are my own.) I don't see how WSL is embrace-extend-extinguish. Embrace, yes. Extend? No. There's basically nothing that only runs on WSL and not real Linux. Only QoL integrations with the Windows shell like X11/Wayland and Explorer integration. The point of WSL is backend dev. If WSL were on an EEE path, you'd expect to see MS adding Windows-only integrations, and encouraging people to run WSL server instances. Instead, MS has never positioned WSL for prod use, and instead cautions against using it for non-dev activities. Even internally, we don't use WSL to host Linux stuff. We use CBL-Mariner instead [1], which is completely FOSS. The whole point of WSL was that Windows lost to Linux for backend. Unlike Ballmer, Satya didn't want to waste resources fighting a losing battle, so he pivoted the company towards Azure and dev tooling and away from Windows Server. And that succeeded, and it's why we're not irrelevant like IBM - we ditched our mainframes, as it were. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBL-Mariner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBL-Mariner

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago

For a use case of a new XP install, I have clients with DVR systems, with a webui that only works in IE. However, IE mode in Edge comes with 1) an unremovable banner warning you to stop using IE mode and 2) an automatic 6 month expiration of sites you put in the IE Mode whitelist (supposedly overrulable by a GPO - but it's commonly broken). It turned out to be less trouble to spin up an XP VM and make IE available to network users as a Remote App.

scq 3y ago
There are still ways to use the IE engine on current Windows, aside from Edge's IE mode. Namely, there's the WebBrowser ActiveX control, which uses the IE engine on all Windows versions. Easily embeddable in a .NET app: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/winforms/controls/webbrowser-control-overview https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/winforms/co...
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  This could be really promising but I seem to be lacking the background to grok it easily. I'll get myself edumakated.
hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
You could drop a reverse proxy infront which rewrites the user agent, this will probably fox many of the issues. I’d be cautious about using a DVR for any sensitive situation if it’s unmaintained if the Dvr is used in sensitive scenarios. There would be a significant amount of reputational damage if it’s ever hacked, particularly if ugly workarounds are used to bypass software being totally EOL’d.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > You could drop a reverse proxy infront which rewrites the user agent, this will probably fox many of the issues. The user agent thing makes me think you're trying to fool the DVR. The DVR requires a browser that is running it's ActiveX plugin. IE is the only browser that runs them. > I’d be cautious about using a DVR for any sensitive situation if it’s unmaintained if the Dvr is used in sensitive scenarios. External access to the DVR is limited (by the firewall) to 1 external IP address. If it were hacked, someone would have breached the firewall and the DVR would be the least of our issues.

willcipriano 3y ago

> Microsoft will see fit to release an official XP activation tool for posterity. Free Idea for Microsoft: Windows XP PCs but like those mini consoles[0] that have been released recently. Could be preloaded with games from the era and intended to be used offline so patches don't matter. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Classic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Classic

rootsudo 3y ago
Ah, yes, link the example that was considered a failure and had bestbuy and other big block retailers sell them for $15-20 less than 6 months after release. (Maybe 3 months?) I bought quite a few of them when they were slashed back in 2019. $15, free shipping, quite a value. The scene is largely ran by 2 redditors now.
rejectfinite 3y ago
>Could be preloaded with games from the era So, only Microsoft published ones then. You realise that right? You can buy and play Windows XP era games on Steam and run them just great on Windows 10/11. FEAR is a great one, released in 2005, still looks and plays amazing. https://store.steampowered.com/app/21090/FEAR/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/21090/FEAR/ So I have no idea what you mean :)
- MrFoof 3y ago
  >You can buy and play Windows XP era games on Steam and run them just great on Windows 10/11. Or older (pre-Steam) games in a virtual machine. Hyper-V comes with Pro versions of Windows. VMWare has a Player that is also free (plus there's full Workstation). There's also VirtualBox, which sometimes is the packaged solution for very old titles sold on platforms like GOG. Never mind the solutions for Mac OS, Linux and BSD. Recently my jam is going back to 1994 and playing a game from the Windows 3.1/Windows 95 transition era, rife with 16-bit libraries -- Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol. A game in which it was likely a lot of older folks here played the crap out of the demo, but never bought the game because it involved sending a check in the mail -- and because even the demo could provide hundreds of hours of enjoyment. Though you can legitimately buy it online from its current IP owner for about $10 (more if you want a boxed copy!), and it's just as fun as I remember it 30 years ago. And setting it up in a virtual machine? Very straightforward, save for digging up some third-party audio library the game wanted. I actually just have a 40GB Windows XP VM I just maintain with all my old games from DOS and Windows 3.1 through 2002 or so. I can move it between hypervisors, between host OSes, etc. Just works. All my old games always ready to go.

ungruntled 3y ago

I've been using Windows XP VMs without activation, or even a prompt to activate. I didn't know they even needed activation. Does anyone know what activation is needed for?

cellularmitosis 3y ago
I actually just ran into this the other weekend. After a certain amount of time (30 days?), Windows will prompt you to activate, and if you don't, it kicks you to the login screen.
EscapeFromNY 3y ago
Normally Windows XP would lock you out completely after a while if you don't activate. But there are a lot of exceptions, like volume license keys, certain OEM install discs, certain VM images released by MS, and ahem unofficial ISOs with things like AntiWPA slipstreamed into the install.
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> I've been using Windows XP VMs without activation, or even a prompt to activate. If you go into properties, does it show XP isn't activated? IIRC, early XP releases didn't nag from the tray. I've also seen some Dell installs that auto activated after pulling the key from BIOS.
- ungruntled 3y ago
  It says it's activated. I think this is because I was using one of those Windows XP compatibility isos that Microsoft made available for download a long time ago (as far as I remember).
- ridgered4 3y ago
  There was an update, Windows Genuine Advantage, that was not part of the original XP installers that did the nagging about you using a shady key IIRC. The trick was to not install it, which was easy enough since you had total control of updates back then.
3y ago

rejectfinite 3y ago

I Remoted/Teamviewered into a Windows XP laptop a few years ago form my Windows 10 work PC. And WOW the XP machine was so fast. They installed XP on a new-ish Intel i3 and 4GB RAM for some reason, probably old software. And the UI just flew, so smooth, even over Teamviewer. They wanted it on corp wifi however... that was a no-go

EMIRELADERO 3y ago

Shame that it's a closed-source tool. I hope somebody reverse-engineers it and releases a web version.

xupybd 3y ago

This will be a big win for industrial machines. I work with some that required Win XP to run very old and niche cards that interface with CNC machines. You can run newer computers but they only just work and cost way more than they're worth. It's a real shame you end up in a situation where it's cheaper to replace a machine than keep it going just because the software is so hard to get working on a new PC and PC hardware has a limited life. It's effectively bricking a 6 meter CNC machine. That is a lot of machine.

mobilio 3y ago
I have similar experience with expensive CNC machine that runs on Windows98... ONLY on Windows 98. That machine costs like $150k or similar and was purchased 99/00 as i remember. Few years ago PC was destroyed. Don't ask - long story because fan stop working due dust. So company purchased 2 PCs with similar configuration just to be sure that they have backup plans. New CNC machine costs over $250k.
- EuropeOverlords 3y ago
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- Szpadel 3y ago
  what about something like pcem? would it be possible to use that to run os and software?
  - magnat 3y ago
    Usually these machines come with obscure hardware interface cards (ISA card if you are lucky) and software which talks directly to those cards. Even though you can find a modern PC with ISA slot, passing through ISA devices to a VM/emu is the hard part.
    - nyanpasu64 3y ago
      I wonder if the MISTer FPGS running AO486 is fast enough, or the CPU is too low-spec and emulated slowly, or doesn't support physical ISA peripherals.

tinglymintyfrsh 3y ago

Worth noting Microsoft product keys are/were tied to the channel they were sold through, and the difference being 2-3 files on install media. PS: VLK XP doesn't suffer this problem. Edit: Nice utility to extract product keys from a live system. https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html

tommek4077 3y ago

Why the hassle and not just FCKGW-.......?

kotaKat 3y ago
FCKGW was blacklisted VERY early on with Windows Genuine Advantage updates and later service-pack-integrated media would block that key in the installer, even.

felixfurtak 3y ago

Can still use OEM SLIC and bin bios mod I think?

EuropeOverlords 3y ago
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EuropeOverlords 3y ago

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nevster 3y ago

FWIW I successfully performed a phone activation on Jan 1 (2023)

voldacar 3y ago

What are the best tools out there for activating windows 7 and 10?

tharos47 3y ago
There is a link in the article to MAS and even a story where Microsoft support used it to activate a legitimate windows10 install.
- voldacar 3y ago
  I see, thanks. I'm a windows noob but I have to install it soon on some VMs and I was dreading doing that.

SillyUsername 3y ago

Tldr links; is there an open source version?

dippo 3y ago

How was this done? Did they steal the key from Microsoft, or perform some cryptanalysis to crack it, or something else?

deleted 3y ago
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