It is possible in Windows 8's Task Manager. But when did Process Hacker come about? It also shows that, though these days you have Process Hacker on steroids called System Informer.

I wonder how what percentage of XP users today use Actual Window Manager. XP's shell is way too primitive for my taste without that program.

UCyborg wrote on 2024-12-15, 13:30:

It is possible in Windows 8's Task Manager. But when did Process Hacker come about? It also shows that, though these days you have Process Hacker on steroids called System Informer.

I wonder how what percentage of XP users today use Actual Window Manager. XP's shell is way too primitive for my taste without that program.

If i need some window arrangment stuff i prefer to use auto hot key and write some scripts, and yes, Process Hacker is amazing, i replace task manager with it, like i replace regedit with regitry workshop for example

I found opposite, after XP all windows/explorer things became a regresion it take too much time for everything i do so fast in XP/2000/NT/9x, in my taste classic windows shell is a peak in usability

Some print shops still use it to run old versions of photoshop and indesign software. Also used to run old industrial ink printers and plotters and programs.
I used an old Black Dell Optiplex tower with Pentium-4 and learn Photoshop, indesign, Adobe Suite, Microsoft Office, etc.
It’s still a good educational Operating system.
Just upgrade your PC with a SSD and 1gb of RAM or More
You can use XP with Antivirus software and Novell Netware.
It’s great for playing old DOS games too.
I have XP running on several old laptops. Great for playing games.

The increased number of service hosts on Windows 10/2022 make it hard to keep tabs on any unexpected processes running on the system. The list is too long. Process Explorer shows which service is under which service host on Windows 7. I like this program, but I don't replace Task Manager because TM should be small. I have hacked it to run with realtime priority to make it show as quickly as possible.

Registry Workshop has many quality of life features like copying keys, browsing reg files graphically, undo, search & replace, jump between user and machine, two or more views/tabs for copying data between keys. I've tried other registry editors, but they rarely brought anything new. Transferring file associations from another computer is much easier now. The program seems not being developed anymore. I'm glad it still works on new Windows, and hasn't grown in size.

XP is also good for early multi-processor PCs or servers.
It allows using them with modern software and Windows 9x software.
Just keep in mind that ordinary XP Pro has limit for 2 physical processors.
The enterprise, server or data center versions might not be restricted as much.

Datacentre is at least 32.maybe 64.I forget.
Not that it's going to be a limit anyone here will face

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2024-12-16, 02:04:

It’s great for playing old DOS games too.
I have XP running on several old laptops. Great for playing games.

Are you implying NTVDM is great for DOS games?

Jo22 wrote on 2024-12-16, 06:05:

Just keep in mind that ordinary XP Pro has limit for 2 physical processors.
The enterprise, server or data center versions might not be restricted as much.

myne wrote on 2024-12-16, 06:09:

Datacentre is at least 32.maybe 64.I forget.
Not that it's going to be a limit anyone here will face

Windows XP is available as Home, Professional, Professional x64 Edition and 64-Bit Edition (for Itanium) - all other derivatives are based on these. Home supports one CPU, the others support one to two CPUs. But this isn't really a restriction, because the number of cores isn't limited and desktop/workstation boards seldomly support more than two sockets/slots.

Enterprise and Datacenter are derivatives of Windows Server 2003 (R2) which have the following CPU support:

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Web Edition -> one to two CPUs
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (R2) Standard Edition -> one to four CPUs
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition -> one to eight CPUs
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition -> 8 to 64 CPUs
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Datacenter Edition -> 8 to 32 CPUs (!)
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 x64 Datacenter Edition -> 8 to 64 CPUs

source: https://web.archive.org/web/20051224003405/ht … qs/default.mspx

kind regards
soggi

”Windows XP is a Beast”.
I Had WinXP Pro running on a liquid cooled HP z400 and z800 workstations

Specs:
Dual Xeon ( 12 cores, 24 threads
64gb ECC Memory
Sata SSD
Raid controller
Bluray drive
GTX 960

Post Link:
HP z800 ( WinXP Beast ) ( 12-cores, 24-threads )

Post Link:
Re: Terratec Attack

It was a Beast and Performed Rock Solid.
Never Crashed or Hung up.
Very Reliable computer.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2024-12-17, 08:28:

”Windows XP is a Beast”. I Had WinXP Pro running on a Water cooled HP z600 and z800 workstations […]
Show full quote

”Windows XP is a Beast”.
I Had WinXP Pro running on a Water cooled HP z600 and z800 workstations

Specs:
Dual Xeon ( 12 cores, 24 threads
64gb ECC Memory
Sata SSD
Bluray drive
GTX 960

Post Link:
HP z800 ( WinXP Beast ) ( 12-cores, 24-threads )

Post Link:
Re: Terratec Attack

It was a Beast and Performed Rock Solid.
Never Crashed or Hung up.
Very Reliable computer.

Love this computer, i really wish i can build one like this!

Sadly here i live electricity is terrible expensive, no choise, i need to have a low powered PC

I decide to have a NEXCOM-NDiS166, 100% pasive low power PC, but powerfull enought for my daily use

https://www.sirkom.com/es/producto.php?id=375

Really love to have 2 serial ports, sadly no parallel, but serial is great for all my old pda and rom burners

What I've also liked about XP was its ability to run off FAT32 partitions.
As a former Windows 98SE user, this was such a relief. I could switch to Windows XP without bothering about NTFS permissions.
All files and directories were accessible to all users and OSes.

Jo22 wrote on 2024-12-17, 15:29:

What I've also liked about XP was its ability to run off FAT32 partitions.
As a former Windows 98SE user, this was such a relief. I could switch to Windows XP without bothering about NTFS permissions.
All files and directories were accessible to all users and OSes.

I use FAT32 on all PCs I build for emulators, that have CF as hard disk, for example, thin clients like Futros, is much faster than ntfs, and for this I really don't need any security functions. Sadly, fat32 has proven to me over the years to be unreliable

theelf wrote on 2024-12-17, 15:46:

Jo22 wrote on 2024-12-17, 15:29:

What I've also liked about XP was its ability to run off FAT32 partitions.
As a former Windows 98SE user, this was such a relief. I could switch to Windows XP without bothering about NTFS permissions.
All files and directories were accessible to all users and OSes.

I use FAT32 on all PCs I build for emulators, that have CF as hard disk, for example, thin clients like Futros, is much faster than ntfs, and for this I really don't need any security functions. Sadly, fat32 has proven to me over the years to be unreliable

Emulators. That reminds me of VMs. When I started using VMs with Virtual PC, I couldn't open NTFS hard disk images but FAT32 hard disk images.
So all my XP VMs had used FAT32 formatting for the option of inserting/extracting files with WinImage.

Reliability has a price.
That price is journalling.
I'm fairly sure that's the main reason for any performance differences.

What about those of us who don't like where Windows is going, don't like legacy Windows, don't like Linux, what then? Throw computer out the window and run it over with a truck?

myne wrote on 2024-12-18, 03:34:

Reliability has a price.
That price is journalling.
I'm fairly sure that's the main reason for any performance differences.

I've learnt to value XP's NTFS. NTFS 5.1, that is.
I'm using for years for my backup HDDs, even under Linux/Mac with the Fuse/MacFuse driver.

With NTFS, you can pull the USB cable or power cord almost anytime and have no or little data loss.
Not that this recommended, but sometimes an application or background service keeps using the NTFS drive and it can't be unmounted.

All the other filesystems didn't offer same robustness, I think.
I had bad memories of Ext2, HFS+ without Journaling enabled had lots of data loss too. With Journaling it should be okay, but I don't like to gamble.
The old NTFS seemed like a good alternative, thus. IFSs were available for years and most OSes had built-in read-only support, at least.

Still, FAT32 is fine for hassle-free use. It's not as good as exFAT, though.
The file size limitation is annoying these days, for example.
It's variable size of certain parts is bad for SSD use, too.
It's hard to perform a 4k alignment.

UCyborg wrote on 2024-12-21, 18:44:

What about those of us who don't like where Windows is going, don't like legacy Windows, don't like Linux, what then? Throw computer out the window and run it over with a truck?

I haven't thought about it, but it sounds like a good idea.

Edit: Aren't we technically living in so called Post-PC era by now? 🤷‍♂️
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-PC_era

Edit: Seriously, though. From circa 2017 onwards I was stranded for several years on a Raspberry Pi 3/4 when Windows 7 was near EOL.
There was no way out. New PCs were closed-platform (UEFI/no-CSM, secure-boot) and pretty much Windows 10-only. So not worth to acquire.

So I had to hold out with that Raspberry Pi as a temporary solution. Asmy daily driver.
That's when I've learnt about the many bugs of Raspberry Pi OS and Linux, for the matter.
Then the Mac Mini with the M processors were released and I finally had a new "PC" again.

It's still not an ideal solution. macOS sort of is a golden cage, but at least everyone is aware of it and the OS doesn’t bother so much.
Money is made with the expensive hardware, rather than the OS.

Current Windows is, um, different here. Microsoft nolonger is that predictable Behemoth it used to be.
In the 80s/90s, MS did at least keep face, acted as if it was responsible and the software was customizable.
Now the company is a lot like its home country. You don’t know what to make of it.

That being said, I did consider using niche OSes like Haiku and AROS.
But as a daily driver? For home banking and productivity software? 😟

UCyborg wrote on 2024-12-21, 18:44:

What about those of us who don't like where Windows is going, don't like legacy Windows, don't like Linux, what then? Throw computer out the window and run it over with a truck?

You drink the koolaid, bow down and let Apple tell you how your supposed to use your PC.

SScorpio wrote on 2024-12-21, 19:23:

UCyborg wrote on 2024-12-21, 18:44:

What about those of us who don't like where Windows is going, don't like legacy Windows, don't like Linux, what then? Throw computer out the window and run it over with a truck?

You drink the koolaid, bow down and like Apple tell you how your supposed to use your PC.

Well, as someone who had no digital "home" for years, I think there are just three options.
Windows, Linux .. and macOS.

The rest are niche OSes that run on outdated hardware and have no device drivers for current hardware.

Okay, ArcaOS could be promising. If we had modern counter parts to an IBM PS/2 Model 80.
In short, a robust PC with highly standardized parts and proper documentation (industry standard).

Edit: BSD (several flavors) and Minix 3 have some marketshare, I could imagine.
But they run on server type hardware, not PCs built upon what's basically random laptop hardware.

Edit: My old main PC is an Mac Pro, running Windows XP by the way.
I'm using it as my PC for emulators and VMs. It's barely usable to surf the net anymore, though.
The browser is too old to even log-in into my e-mail account, even.

Jo22 wrote on 2024-12-21, 19:31:

Well, as someone who had no digital "home" for years, I think there are just three options.
Windows, Linux .. and macOS.

The rest are niche OSes that run on outdated hardware and have no device drivers for current hardware.

You're forgetting the current most popular OSes, iOS, Android, and ChromeOS.

You can get full documentation for ARM and RISC-V computers to let you completely roll your own OS. And both Linux and the Linux derived Android are open source to let you do whatever you want with them.

Or just bite the bullet and have a ChromeOS machine setup as a Internet terminal to let you do your online tasks in an up to date and secure manner. And keep your legacy gear to tinker.

I like stuff running on Windows though, so non-Windows doesn't gain me anything. Open-source by itself doesn't mean much unless you have expertise and time.