What the... that's practically my main PC, except that I have a Q9550 and an SSD.

GemCookie wrote on 2024-08-17, 07:55:

What the... that's practically my main PC, except that I have a Q9550 and an SSD.

Pro tip : Don't update drivers on main PC to version 555.xy or newer.

Ok, so current status:

I've pulled off the heatsink and fan/duct assembly, took everything apart, wiped everything down meticulously (paper towels, q-tips, rubbing alcohol and Windex) and got it ready for applying thermal paste.
Applied Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut because I have a couple of big tubes of it and it's what I have. I know it's overkill for a simple CPU, but hey it'll work great for years now.
Reassembled everything. Installed the 750ti and the X-Fi Titanium sound card. Hooked system up and booted.
Windows XP installer blue-screened.
Entered BIOS and changed SATA mode back to Legacy.
Windows XP installed fine. Lacks a valid product key, though.
Downloaded ethernet drivers, video drivers, and audio drivers.
Ethernet drivers installed fine.
Video drivers supposedly needed .NET Framework to run.
Downloaded .NET Framework 4 offline installer.
Installed to system / reboot.
Graphics driver installs fine. Audio driver installs fine.

Can't seem to find a good installer for a working Firefox browser, though. I also am downloading hardware drivers from Dell's website since all web browsers on XP suck donkey bits. Also need a STEAM client installer. Then I plan to copy a "working" version of Steam off of my XP gaming laptop that's been fixed to run and also to not update itself.

agent_x007 wrote on 2024-08-17, 15:59:

GemCookie wrote on 2024-08-17, 07:55:

What the... that's practically my main PC, except that I have a Q9550 and an SSD.

Pro tip : Don't update drivers on main PC to version 555.xy or newer.

I'm lucky enough to have switched to Linux about a month before this was announced.

Ok, so I got Steam to actually log in and start. Cool. Can't download or update anything. So...gotta figure that part out. Also still have to find a working product key and "activate" XP.

DOOM 3, F.E.A.R., and Dragon Age: Origins installed, since those are CD/DVD installed games independent of Steam.

I guess I have some updates to install, since I didn't do a full install of the sound card from the included disc. I just got the driver off of Creative's website. Sound works, of course, but in Doom 3, I don't see any option for EAX extensions, pretty much the very reason I wanted to build this PC.

Maybe it'll be available in F.E.A.R. It wasn't available while I had it hooked up to my TV through the HDMI port on my graphics card. Maybe it'll be there now that I have speakers hooked up to the sound card.

UPDATE: Nope. F.E.A.R. EAX works fine. Kinda interesting how it sounds. I guess there's a DOOM 3 update I need to download and apply. Also, I think I will have a lot of No-CD cracks in my future.

FFXIhealer wrote on 2024-08-17, 22:27:

I guess I have some updates to install, since I didn't do a full install of the sound card from the included disc. I just got the driver off of Creative's website. Sound works, of course, but in Doom 3, I don't see any option for EAX extensions, pretty much the very reason I wanted to build this PC.

Did you apply the latest official patch for Doom 3? From what I remember, EAX support was added in patch 1.3.

As for the sound card drivers, just use the DanielK X-Fi support pack. It has everything you need for gaming, and it works in both XP and Vista. Lastly, you may want to add OpenAL (if it hasn't been installed by the drivers) and EAX Unified 4.0.0.1 since some games require them.

Yeah, I figured that out when I went into F.E.A.R. Also, been doing a bunch of net searches and came across the same thing you said about DOOM 3. I'm also gonna be looking into ways to get a lot of XP-era games to run on here out of Steam. I have a number of them installed on my Windows 7 system, but I guess that install is questionable too now. I can see why people on here bitch about Valve/Steam removing older OS support without giving us one good version that's been pretty much neutered of online capability but lets you play the games you have.

FFXIhealer wrote on 2024-08-17, 21:40:

Ok, so I got Steam to actually log in and start. Cool. Can't download or update anything. So...gotta figure that part out. Also still have to find a working product key and "activate" XP.

just grab any product key off the net, even with a genuine one off an old computer you still wont be able to activate legitimately, there are various ways to activate like "activate by phone" with a key generator, but i've never got it to work, the simplist option is to just run WPA-Kill thats what i use, your antivirus will flag it as it is a crack, since microsoft ended the service this is pretty much your best option. as for firefox try ESR 52.8.0 (32-bit), i use it on win7, should be XP compatible, i like it as some older add-ons dont work on newer versions, some websites might not display properly, especially those with captcha's, vogons works fine!, also good idea to have an alternative like chrome.

I found xp_activator_x32 dot exe on the internet and it let me activate it without even having to have a product key. So that's taken care of.

Now I gotta muddle through seeing if it's even possible to get Steam apps updated and working on an old Steam on XP. That way I can just have it all in Offline Mode after that.

GemCookie wrote on 2024-08-17, 07:55:

What the... that's practically my main PC, except that I have a Q9550 and an SSD.

What the! This is practically my main PC from 2008 till 2018, except that it has a QX9650, 2 BD-RE, larger hard drives, oh, and it's not a DELL. 😀

I've upgraded that PC from Vista to Win7. I'm contemplating a dual boot with XP at some point for retro gaming. At the time, I had plenty of other XP computers, so didn't feel the need to have yet another one, but one by one, those PCs have been retired, or have simply become too slow to be useful.

DudeFace wrote on 2024-08-17, 23:30:

the simplist option is to just run WPA-Kill thats what i use, your antivirus will flag it as it is a crack, since microsoft ended the service this is pretty much your best option

For XP, my best method was to start with a volume license key that does not require activation. I even used it on some laptops with a valid COA, simply to avoid the hassle of official restore media and all the bloat. However, I'm not sure I remember how to convert to a VLK if you didn't use it to install in the first place.

So today I found RIGHT HERE on the Vogons.org site the way to get the OG version of Half-Life 2 games installed using some kind of Steam launcher emulator. Gonna try that. Installing from my original "Game of the Year" and "The Orange Box" right now to attempt that.

How to install and run vanilla Half-Life 2 without Steam

I got Doom 3 updated to 1.3.1 and F.E.A.R. came updated to 1.8 right off of my Gold Box installer, so they both have wonderful EAX audio, though I think Doom 3 is just room reverb effects. Benchmarks on this system show that F.E.A.R. has a MINIMUM framerate of 72fps with everything set to MAXIMUM, including 16x Anisotropic Filtering. Max frame rate over 200fps. Doom 3 was even higher than that on max settings. This gaming PC is ridiculous for these games!

Other STEAM games I want to try to get working without Steam that I own (bought on Steam):
Call of Duty (2003)
Call of Duty 2
Far Cry
Far Cry 2
Return to Castle Wolfenstein (should be super-easy as I was able to copy it to my Windows 98 PC and it ran fine, albeit REALLY slowly)
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition

Good thing my copy of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was DVD installed, so no Steam requirement.

FFXIhealer wrote on 2024-08-18, 14:21:

I got Doom 3 updated to 1.3.1 and F.E.A.R. came updated to 1.8 right off of my Gold Box installer, so they both have wonderful EAX audio, though I think Doom 3 is just room reverb effects.

Positional audio in Doom 3 is also more precise when using EAX, though that's mostly noticeable when either using headphones or surround sound speakers. IIRC, there are also some occlusion effects when standing near doors or windows while monsters are on the other side.

Also, the RoE expansion pack for Doom 3 has been designed with EAX 4.0 from the ground up, so the soundstage is a bit more immersive there.

Yeah, I also have the Expansion, I just haven't installed it yet. And I played a good little bit of Doom 3 last night with headphones on and I can hear people coming in the next room and which direction, which is cool. I did miss out on playing Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3, though. I didn't notice the game until after it was damaged from the "invasion" and couldn't play it anymore.

Current updates:
I have installed Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and the Half-Life 2: Game of the Year box. I have also gone ahead with a no-DVD crack on both CoD4 and Dragon Age: Origins. I also had to edit a config file to enable all the DLC content installed with Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition, since it also came with Awakening and several DLC packs that were all complaining about logging into some EA account to enable. Turns out you just turn a bunch of RetailContent="1" to ="0" to enable it all if it's installed, so that's fully functional.

Haven't started on troubleshooting Half-Life 2 yet. I have to keep stoping to take the dogs outside or to do some cleaning around the house and what-not. We can't spend all day, every day doing retro stuff like this, huh? It'll be even worse tomorrow since I have to go to work and do a job and be a productive person like "normal people".

Evening post. I ended up giving up and downloading a working Half-Life 2 from a torrent. Dangerous, I know, but I risked it. It actually worked when I copied it over. So Half-Life Source, Half-Life 2, etc. are working. Still looking for a good no-DVD crack for Morrowind. So far, the project is going well. Tomorrow I'll be back at work and I should be able to source another 500GB used hard drive that I have personally wiped.

My main PC is almost exactly like yours!
Q9650 + 8Gb RAM on Abit IX38 QUADGT with 2XSSD, 2xHDD, 1XDVDRW. Only the video card is older: geforce 560ti. Runs Windows 7 & 8.1 beautifully! It is incredible how long lasting Core2 is; I can work in office for hours and it feels just like my modern PC at work.

Regarding XP internet browsers: try the latest version of Mypal that's based on the Firefox Quantum engine. It requires XP SP3, but runs very much like modern Firefox would on a modern PC, if not better (since Mypal doesn't do all of the auto-updating and have all sorts of telemetry / reports / feedback / statistics reports enabled like FF does.) It's my go-to browser for XP. Serpent and New Moon are also good viable options (especially New Moon if trying to get a very old PC with CPU without SSE2 to go online.)

dr_st wrote on 2024-08-18, 08:16:

For XP, my best method was to start with a volume license key that does not require activation. I even used it on some laptops with a valid COA, simply to avoid the hassle of official restore media and all the bloat. However, I'm not sure I remember how to convert to a VLK if you didn't use it to install in the first place.

Yes, converting to a VLK is not possible AFAIK after installation. Also for XP, converting an OEM or Retail disk is not possible (or not as simple) like it is for Windows 2000. For Windows 2000, you just edit the setupp.ini of the image before burning it onto the CD to what version you want, and that's it. For XP, I think you can only swtich between OEM<->Retail, but not VLK. I don't know if there was a way to do it, either. Then again, I don't have to - I have a legit VLK CD I got from a former workplace. Basically, I was good friends with the IT director, and when the organization switched from XP to Win 7, boss said, "just take it, no one will miss it... but just don't abuse it". And so that's how I have my XP VLK.

nd22 wrote on 2024-08-20, 10:39:

It is incredible how long lasting Core2 is; I can work in office for hours and it feels just like my modern PC at work.

Yeah, I did notice. You could get away with a Core 2 Duo all the way through Windows 7/8. Once Windows 10 released, I didn't really trust it with anything less than 4-cores for actual real work. I know it DOES work as my younger sister proves with her ancient C2D based computer, but she does complain that Zoom tends to make her computer slow down and stutter from time to time. I think she really needs 4 cores for the computer to operate smoothly. I'm getting her another old office PC with at least an Ivy Bridge i5 or a Haswell i7 in it and 16GB of DDR3 memory. That should last her through the rest of Windows 10's lifespan and probably a bit longer after that.

For myself on this XP project, one of the first things I did was install MyPal browser. Perhaps not the latest version, of course, but a version anyway. It allowed me to finally go on-line and download/install Firefox. Now I have 2 working browsers. I also have "Legacy Update" installed and it works using Internet Exporer 8. I used it to install nearly 200 patches. And I installed Windows XP Home SP3 initially, so I didn't have to deal with installing Service Packs.

I also remember how Windows XP used to run fine with 256MB of RAM and 512MB of RAM until SP2 came out - then it became awfully slow. It turns out, you really need at least 1 GB for SP1 to run smoothly. So I always go overboard and put in 2GB if I'm going to be running SP2 or SP3. 2GB is the limit on my Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 laptop. I haven't tried putting in anymore than that, but since old-ass memory is cheap now, I could probably try it out with 4GB. Who knows. It's not like I use the laptop for much anymore. It sits in its backpack over in the corner and gets no love.

The thing about it is that hardware has long since blown past what OSs need to operate. The last time an OS came out and hardware was an issue was Windows Vista. Ever since, the hardware is so fast and powerful now that you'd have to deliberately mis-build an OS to run like crap. That's why lately OSs are getting bloated and less optimized - same with video games. Does ANYONE actually optimize code anymore?

FFXIhealer wrote on 2024-08-19, 00:44:

Evening post. I ended up giving up and downloading a working Half-Life 2 from a torrent. Dangerous, I know, but I risked it. It actually worked when I copied it over.

This is what I did for the only 2 games I own on steam.
Both games work perfect on Windows 7 and I have no desire to upgrade to a newer version of windows just for the steam client.