The Windows XP activation algorithm has been cracked | The unkillable OS rises from the grave… Again

[u/chrisdh79]

https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/26/windows_xp_activation_cracked/

[u/itsallfairlyshite]

2024 year of the XP desktop.

[u/turtleboxman → u/itsallfairlyshite]

Oh man, can't wait to see Windows XP beat out Windows 11

[u/TheEthyr → u/turtleboxman]

The bump in the XP trendline is surely going to raise eyebrows.

[u/Geruchsbrot → u/TheEthyr]

News headline in July 2024:

Microsoft reactivates Windows XP registration servers due to massive increase in pirated copies

[u/KinTharEl → u/Geruchsbrot]

I know it's meant to be a joke. But Microsoft is perfectly happy to let pirated copies circle around, especially in third world countries where people often cannot afford a licensed copy. It keeps students and new users attached to the Microsoft ecosystem. So when they become IT professionals, they are used to the Windows ecosystem and demand their companies to purchase licenses. The same thing applies to Adobe.

[u/FuckingNoise → u/KinTharEl]

Adobe certainly doesn't feel that way any longer. They have one of the strictest subscription models of any company for their new products.

[u/tabytha → u/FuckingNoise]

Yeah, no kidding. And they have the "Genuine Software Service" that automatically downloads within any CC product, which sweeps your system and harasses you for the rest of eternity if you've ever had a copy of one of their programs it deems as illegitimate.

[u/smushkan → u/tabytha]

You can actually uninstall that service and CC still works.

Adobe even provide a convenient guide:

https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/genuine/uninstall-adobe-genuine-service.html

Thing is these days you can’t use a lot of the cloud-based AI stuff without a license, as those features require additional files to be downloaded from Adobe’s servers.

And a lot of the illegitimate copies are infinite trials which have some missing functionality, like hardware video codecs.

[u/Zantanimus → u/FuckingNoise]

laughs in autodesk

[u/AlwaysPunchNazisHard → u/Zantanimus]

Is fusion 360 the only product they offer a robust hobbyist / student free version of? Because I use that and it’s great.

[u/Ben78 → u/AlwaysPunchNazisHard]

Can get student logins for other products, my son has Inventor on his laptop. Years ago I had inventor under the same scheme but then they started to verify student status. Fusion does everything I need nowadays - except for frame generator, I miss frame generator so much - but I can't justify the purchase of inventor for something that nowadays is just a hobby.

[u/sombertimber → u/FuckingNoise]

Try the Affinity Photo, Design, Publish suite. $169 for all of them, plus iPad versions—one time purchase (NOT A MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION).

[u/iamtehstig → u/FuckingNoise]

CS6 until I die.

[u/muklan → u/Geruchsbrot]

So there's hope for my Windows for Workgroups network yet?!

[u/kyleh0 → u/muklan]

I've checked all over gopher and all signs point to yes!

[u/Tankh → u/TheEthyr]

And botnets

[u/Scarbane → u/turtleboxman]

I had forgotten that XP had a 64-bit professional version, so maybe it could happen. It would take a monumental effort from grey hat engineers.

[u/HildartheDorf → u/Scarbane]

It was more "Server 2003 for desktops" than "XP for x64"

[u/cuppachar → u/HildartheDorf]

2003 was an excellent desktop OS - 64bit, same drivers as XP, and none of the desktop bloat

[u/toastar-phone → u/cuppachar]

The drivers are the problem, you couldn't use 32 bit drivers for most peripherals, and most vendors didn't provide 64 bit drivers until vista.

[u/_araqiel → u/toastar-phone]

Yep. That driver nonsense was at least half of Vista’s bad reputation, and it wasn’t actually Microsoft’s fault.

[u/toastar-phone → u/_araqiel]

Well most of vista's problems was the "Vista Ready" shit. Companies selling computers that had no business running it. It needed more memory than most people had.

[u/PM_Me_Your_Deviance → u/_araqiel]

That driver nonsense was at least half of Vista’s bad reputation

To clarify for people who didn't live though this, the three biggest issues Vista had were, in no particular order:

1. Vendors didn't want to make drivers for old hardware they didn't support any more. Imagine the annoyance of needing to buy a new label printer when you just paid for a new PC.

2. Microsoft's "certified to run Vista" program was certifying laptops that had the bare minimum system requirements to run Vista. Like... 1GB 512MB of ram. Fucking brutal.

3. Vista is where MS introduced "UAC" - that pop-up that confirms if you want to do something that requires elevated permissions. It wasn't a new concept, but it was new to Windows users and it was popping up way too often. Partially because MS tuned it poorly, but also because existing software wasn't written in a way to minimize these pop-ups and it took a while for software to get written in a better way. For example, keeping your settings file in the wrong folder means you'll get a UAC pop-up every time you change your program's settings. This is a good practice, but it took a while for everything to catch up.

This was all mostly fixed by the time Vista SP1 came out... but by then the damage was done. They had to release Vista SP2 SP3 under a new name: "Windows 7".

[u/quiznex → u/Scarbane]

That would be amazing. But I probably wouldn't use it at all for security alone. If anything for old programs that don't work with modern OSs. Similar to people keeping state of the art windows 98 pcs to keep old games still playable without using compatability mode.

[u/nathhad → u/quiznex]

I've got a couple of bits of ancient design software I need for work that I run in VMs with no network access at all allowed. This is great - I can try upgrading those VMs from Win2k! (I've been using this software for work since 2K and XP were the current, latest and greatest on my machines, so I at least know the software should run on both.)

[u/Gtp4life → u/nathhad]

So why did you wait till now? There's been valid keys easily findable since xp was the latest os. Now we just have ALL of the valid keys.

[u/nathhad → u/Gtp4life]

No real time pressure to upgrade since the 2k VM's have been doing the job just fine, honestly. That's really what it comes down to.

[u/grendel_x86 → u/Scarbane]

It was horrible.

We reverted to 32 bit because the massive slowdown of memory and driver issues weren't made up by having more than 4gb ram.

None of the alias-wavefront products were stable in 64bit. Nvidia Quadro drivers are weird bugs. I'm pretty sure it was never certified by Alias or Autodesk.

Adobe Aftereffects rendered much slower, this was apparently related to how memory tables were organized. It added another lookup table, not expanded the current one.

We revisited every service pack, it never worked.

[u/Sco7689 → u/grendel_x86]

It got way better after two years of patches, but I never tried it with more than 4GBs of RAM.

[u/halohunter → u/itsallfairlyshite]

XP is still required to run the control software for older generation sets on power stations. Fortunately, any power company with a shred of sense will have them airgapped.

[u/itsallfairlyshite → u/halohunter]

That's critical infrastructure too, now imagine how many industrial machines and entire assembly lines are still dependent on WinNT.

[u/PhDinBroScience → u/itsallfairlyshite]

It's honestly not that big of a deal as long as it's on an air-gapped network with no connection to other networks or the Internet.

You only have to worry about physical access from threat actors at that point, but if they have physical access, you have already lost the game.

[u/TminusTech → u/PhDinBroScience]

Yeah and shockingly those systems are super stable when they aren't allowed to touch the internet.

There's a cool video of someone showing a 23 year old desktop working with no issue...

Until he plugs in a network cable.

[u/Chroderos → u/PhDinBroScience]

Until some dum dum plugs in a USB drive…

[u/chmod777 → u/Chroderos]

winNT didnt have usb support - they;d need to install usb drivers, which they;d need to install from a floppy disk.

[u/da_chicken → u/PhDinBroScience]

You only have to worry about physical access from threat actors at that point, but if they have physical access, you have already lost the game.

Yeah, and switching to a more modern OS doesn't fix the problem. You can't secure a computer when someone has physical access to it.

[u/beast_c_a_t → u/itsallfairlyshite]

Several of the CNC mills where I work run on Windows 98, and one of the lathes runs on not-MS DOS loaded from a 3.5 floppy.

[u/Utter_Rube → u/itsallfairlyshite]

I worked in a refinery that was still using Win 3.11 FWG on one of their systems as of two years ago, as well as a couple on Win95.

[u/madhi19 → u/halohunter]

Fortunately, any power company with a shred of sense

You see the problem here...

[u/IndependentDouble138 → u/itsallfairlyshite]

I can't wait to run Napster and WordPerfect again!

[u/Pure_Cucumber_2129 → u/IndependentDouble138]

I loved WordPerfect. On my high school's computers, it allowed me to escape the locked-down environment through the file open dialog and have lots of fun on various network drives.

[u/Dariose → u/IndependentDouble138]

Unfortunately WordPerfect still exists. Lawyers like it.

[u/penis-coyote → u/itsallfairlyshite]

It'll beat the year of the Linux desktop

[u/CynicRaven → u/penis-coyote]

Likely, though the Steam Deck is doing some serious heavy lifting to help Linux out, though to call it 'desktop' isn't entirely accurate unless someone is dropping out of the main interface.

[u/IDUnavailable → u/CynicRaven]

If the Year of the Linux Desktop ever does finally occur, I imagine Valve's contributions to Proton/WINE and Linux gaming in general will have been a big factor in it.

[u/nickfixit]

Fckgw rhqq2 yxrkt 8tg6w 2b7q8

[u/hieronymous-cowherd → u/nickfixit]

FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8

[u/cooldash → u/hieronymous-cowherd]

"Devil's Own"... we have reached the point where vintage software has the same naming scheme as vintage alcohol, and I love it.

[u/MexGrow → u/nickfixit]

I had no idea this was a common key, all I know is that I had it memorized from installing pirated copies of XP into used PCs for resale.

Neat.

[u/MpVpRb]

The article mentions a very important point

A LOT of old hardware, often costing thousands or even millions, still requires the old OS. And no, getting an upgrade is usually not an option, since much of the old hardware is either obsolete or the companies that made it are dead

There are CNC machines running MS-DOS on 286 motherboards

[u/verywidebutthole → u/MpVpRb]

I know someone who never learned any Mastercam version past 9.1. I set up a VM specifically so he can run that software since it doesn't work on anything past XP.

I've heard some people still run machines using punch-cards.

[u/ssort → u/verywidebutthole]

I got a job at a 2 Bil a year company in 1999 doing year 2000 conversions of COBOL code, there was one senior developer that only worked about 4hrs a day, and yet he made about 120k a year when the next highest paid made probably 75k for full time work in the midwest.

When I asked why he was paid and treated so different than everyone else, I found out that they had this one government report that had to be filed twice a year, and they had this old legacy punch card system from the 60s that did this, and he was the only guy that still knew how it worked and could alter it with the input through punch cards.

I don't know why they never modernized it as to me it would have been a lot more economical in the end, but he had taken advantage of the situation and negotiated this killer deal instead of retiring. The rest of the year he would just do report writing for the top executives exclusively, and some minor formatting tweaks to reports so they could be displayed on our in house info screens.

Cushiest job I ever seen, he probably worked at most 20 hours a week for what now would be probably a 250k a year job.

[u/TopAce6 → u/ssort]

What an absolute legend, a true hero of the working man.

Damn I'm jelly.

[u/ChasingReignbows → u/ssort]

Not exactly the same but I want to tell this story and it's tangential enough.

Where my dad works they had an IT guy that had been around a good while. At some point he decided, for the sake of job security, to splice wires together so only he knew what things did.

As in, a blue cable spliced into a red cable, a yellow cable that has a green end, that kind of stuff. The way the wiring for their servers and everything was set up this made it pretty much impossible to know what was going where, so he was the only one that could make any changes or do any maintenance on that.

He had it going well until they realized he kept the diagram for everything he changed on his work computer. They found that and fired him the next day.

If you're going to be malicious be smart

[u/nyaaaa → u/ChasingReignbows]

That is literal sabotage.

[u/lucidludic → u/ChasingReignbows]

Tbf it was a work related document. What was he supposed to do, store it on his personal computer? That’s against company policy!

[u/impy695 → u/ssort]

I don't know why they never modernized it as to me it would have been a lot more economical in the end, but he had taken advantage of the situation and negotiated this killer deal instead of retiring.

Upgrading systems for a company of that size would be millions of dollars easily. The software itself is probably 6 figures up front with high 5 figures or low 6 figures yearly maintenance cost. It'll take months to implement (which means employees doing a lot of work that's not their main job), likely require major hardware upgrades which I can't guess how much they'd cost, and chances are the new software doesn't do things quite the way they need or want which is either an annoyance that kills employee buy in or something that requires paying for custom changes to the software at as high of an hourly rate as they can get away with.

And that's if everything goes well. There's a very real possibility that the project just fails 6 months in. It's a surprisingly risky and expensive endeavor

[u/ssort → u/impy695]

That's the thing, it didn't interface with anything else, it just made this Bi-Annual report to the government and that is all that it did, so at least in theory it should have been easy to replicate and update it.

My only thought is it was somehow grandfathered in where it was financially beneficial for the company so that as long as they used this super old system, they were still covered by some old laws that saved the company a ton of money verses if they updated it, they would then no longer be covered and thus cost a ton more than he was charging them yearly salary.

[u/Ben78 → u/verywidebutthole]

I've used a machine that could accept punched tape rolls. It had those nixie tube numbers for position readout. At some stage it had been upgraded to run off some x86 system and used 3.5" floppies when I used it. All stored in drawers behind the machine with zero dust protection, kinda sad as there was so much history in the collective manufacturing stored there.

Would have been cool to see that machine fired up on the rolls though!

[u/TimmyOneShoe → u/Ben78]

I ran one a pretty big gantry 5 axis mill that used punch cards, was retrofitted to be able to take machine code upload character by character. Took really long lol.

Edit: looking back at Fanuc wiki: I think it was 6B controller. Machine has since been torn down unfortunately. Lots of history.

[u/stormhunter2 → u/MpVpRb]

There are CNC machines running MS-DOS on 286 motherboards

and processing schematics using floppies

[u/pm0me0yiff → u/stormhunter2]

In 2011, I helped install a radar system for the USAF that used floppy disks.

This was a brand new installation and will probably remain in use for 40+ years. It replaced a radar system that was originally installed in the 70's.

[u/resonantSoul → u/pm0me0yiff]

I remember seeing an article about the air force retiring floppy disks around that time. They weren't going to start using anything that required them.

I think the article said it was 5¼", but I could be misremembering any number of things about it.

[u/lelduderino → u/resonantSoul]

You're giving them way too much credit. It was actually 8 inch floppies, and late 2019!

https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/25/20931800/usa-nuclear-8-inch-floppy-disk-solid-state-transition

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a29539578/air-force-floppy-disks/

[u/oilchangefuckup → u/lelduderino]

I don't know how true this is, but I'd heard that a lot of those old systems work. The code works, and upgrading to a new system, new OS, new code means it might not work, and so part of keeping the legacy stuff around is just keeping working systems that work, vs introducing errors and bugs.

Again, not sure how true that is though.

[u/pen_is_mightier → u/oilchangefuckup]

thats pretty much the reason across the board for most of the older bits of electronics in the military. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" I haven't been in the Navy in 15 years now, but i could fix most HF/UHF/SHF systems on any ship because they hadn't changed since sometime between Korean War and Vietnam for the most part, except SHF.

[u/flecom → u/MpVpRb]

we have million dollar machines running on embedded 486 boards running dos 6.2, I wish we could use XP

[u/themanfromvulcan → u/MpVpRb]

Lots of medical equipment runs in older Operating Systems because it’s far too expensive to replace and works fine. And changing anything would require recertification. And the software or hardware isn’t compatible with newer OSes.

[u/Peakomegaflare]

Mechwarrior 2 ran like a beast on that OS.

[u/danisaccountant → u/Peakomegaflare]

I only ran that one in MS-DOS

[u/SonOfMcGee → u/Peakomegaflare]

So many fond memories of that game.
I would load every square inch on a mech with ER-PPCs and one-shot my enemies. Granted, pressing the trigger a single time would overheat my mech to the point of shutdown to prevent self-destruction. But a one-shot is a one-shot.

[u/AhrimTheBelighted]

I both love and miss XP, so many great memories of video games and Pinball.

[u/swizzler → u/AhrimTheBelighted]

The pinball source was reverse-engineered, it's even on linux now

[u/matthewmspace → u/swizzler]

Yep, I’ve got it on my Steam Deck.

[u/teokun123 → u/matthewmspace]

Wow. That's a deal. Will buy a deck now.

[u/toastar-phone → u/teokun123]

They are pretty pimp, I healed a wow raid from the pub last night on one.

[u/xSTSxZerglingOne → u/toastar-phone]

Can you bluetooth M/KB on them? If so I'm buying one 5 minutes after you confirm.

[u/swizzler → u/xSTSxZerglingOne]

yes you can, it's a pc, so it can do everything a PC can do. I'm typing this on my steam deck right now. (docked to a nexdock so it just looks like a laptop with a steam deck setting beside it)

[u/xSTSxZerglingOne → u/swizzler]

Aaaaand purchased.

Edit: FUCK it's been 10 minutes.

[u/MysticalKittyHerder → u/swizzler]

Android version here

https://github.com/fexed/Pinball-on-Android/releases/

[u/diox8tony → u/MysticalKittyHerder]

Omg. Don't use the "left" and "right" buttons. They are tiny and behind the tilt buttons. (I was about to report a bug or go fix it myself) You can just click around the actual paddles to operate them. That was not clear.

Also, someone posted a playstore version below

[u/MysticalKittyHerder → u/diox8tony]

Also, someone posted a playstore version below

That's a new version clone, "Unlock ship parts and complete missions by hitting different areas." wasn't a feature in the original

[u/Gengar0 → u/MysticalKittyHerder]

It's also missing the "any student seen loading pinball on the school library computers will receive detention" feature

[u/dontbeanegatron → u/swizzler]

Now all I need is Earth Worm Jim and I'm back in the early aughts.

[u/Plz_DM_Me_Small_Tits → u/AhrimTheBelighted]

Plus not being spied on with everything you do.

I forget who did the video, but someone compared XP to 10/11 and found that the only time XP connected to the internet of it's own volition was when looking for updates. The newer ones are connected 24/7 sending out little bits of anything and everything.

[u/FappingFop → u/Plz_DM_Me_Small_Tits]

I really need to get a Pi-Hole.

[u/battery_go → u/FappingFop]

Confirmed to block Win10/11 telemetry? It was just ads last time I checked...

[u/ImCorvec_I_Interject → u/battery_go]

You can configure it to block anything that’s blockable with DNS filtering.

Here’s a post someone made with a Windows 10 Telemetry blocklist: https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/comments/fa8w8i/blocklist_for_windows_10_telemetry_based_on_dws/

[u/split_vision → u/battery_go]

You configure it to block whatever you want, as long as you can get the list of domains to block. A lot of people who make block lists include Microsoft telemetry in there.

I use the Windows firewall to block a lot of telemetry, but the pihole should catch a lot of what can't be easily blocked that way.

[u/dvdanny → u/Plz_DM_Me_Small_Tits]

If you are connecting windows XP to the internet and actually trying to access any modern websites (assuming it would even work), either someone is absolutely going to be spying on you or your xp machine will join one of the vast botnets out there within a reasonable amount of time. It won't be Microsoft of course so that could still be a win if you wanna look at it that way.

I have two XP test machines at work, they are air-gapped for a good reason. Outside of hobbyist and niche professional applications XP really doesn't have a place in consumer computing and it's hilarious when people wax poetic about it. It's not even remotely stable (or maybe the old equipment isn't stable anymore, who knows), ridiculously insecure and has at best extremely limited compatibility with modern systems.

[u/earlyviolet → u/AhrimTheBelighted]

I just want my desktop sheep back.

[u/Fwest3975 → u/AhrimTheBelighted]

Yeah bro but have you ever tried Windows 3.11 for workgroups?

[u/ekkidee]

Wouldn't mind using XP in a sandboxed VM. Any idea where I could download a copy?

[u/Forgotten_Gravitas → u/ekkidee]

Archive.org?

[u/DontCareBoutReposts → u/Forgotten_Gravitas]

Archive.org is literally our Lord and savior, amen.

[u/MairusuPawa → u/DontCareBoutReposts]

It may cease to exist soon thanks to corporate greed

[u/DvineINFEKT → u/MairusuPawa]

I've heard this twice in the last few weeks suddenly - does anyone have any idea how can it be supported to avoid this? Or is this just legal shit that we're bound to just watch happen and be able to do nothing about?

[u/Competitive_Fudge_96 → u/Forgotten_Gravitas]

Archive.org has some extremely good OS, but for Windows XP, it wasn’t any good. I was trying to fix a corrupted OS in a 18 year old laptop that my dad owned. I had fond memories of it. My dad couldn’t find the bootable disk that came with it so I was searching for image files online.

Archive.org didn’t have the one I wanted, sadly. I did find it on some random shady website (thankfully, no issues) but I cannot remember the website name now. This was a year ago.

[u/snb → u/ekkidee]

The article has a link to archive.org with a WinXP SP3 iso.

[u/rollicorolli → u/ekkidee]

Win7 had "XP Mode". It created an XP VM with an open license that only 7 could open. Change the extension and Hyper-V will read it just fine.

Edit: Terminology

[u/sfgisz → u/rollicorolli]

There has to be an easier way than to setup Windows 7 to create a XP VM...

[u/Intrexa → u/sfgisz]

Yeah, Win7 itself is past EoL. But, to get the Win7 up and running, you can use Win8 to...

[u/ooshtbh → u/Intrexa]

and that's the beautiful part, when wintertime rolls around Win8 will simply freeze to death

[u/DerKeksinator → u/Intrexa]

Now I want to upgrade to win 11 to run a win 10 VM, running a win 8 VM, running a win 7 VM, running a win Vista VM, running a win XP VM. Insanely stupid, but I kinda want to do this.Then I want to see if crysis still runs.

[u/tremens → u/sfgisz]

You don't need to set up Windows 7. You can just run it straight in Hyper-V or whatever; "XP Mode" is just a pre-packaged VHD of an XP install that doesn't require activation, and it will run in any hypervisor that supports VHDs.

The official Microsoft download links for it at dead, but you can still grab it from archive.org and such.

Or, ya know, do the thing in the original article and use the regular XP ISO.

[u/WildWeaselGT → u/ekkidee]

I have one. It’s actually a bit difficult to play with since the certs are hard to update and browsers are ancient.

[u/algae_man]

Phone activation absolutely works. Had to set up an XP machine for an ICP-MS that the PCI comm board won't work with newer version. Through an oops in setting the BIOS clock, I ended up exceeding the 30 day activation window. Had to call the 800 number. It's super clunky and takes about 3 tries to get it to work, but it definitely worked in the end.

[u/Mr_ToDo → u/algae_man]

Judging by the reddit thread the article links to the network activation still works too if you update your certs.

Also from the looks of it the utility is probably nothing new. The guy who posted it(9 months ago) isn't even the origin, and doesn't remember where they got it from other than "an old torrent I'd guess".

[u/VIPERsssss → u/algae_man]

I've used the phone activation twice this week for the same type of situation (old machinery). Open the link the auto attendant sends, enter the codes, boom you're in.

866-421-7141

[u/daikatana]

I'm building an XP machine right now, this should come in handy.

[u/bitemark01 → u/daikatana]

I used to use TinyXP which had all the extras stripped out, don't know if it's still kicking around anywhere.

I keep it installed on one of those tiny notebooks from the 2010s, for router maintenance.

[u/gv92 → u/bitemark01]

Is it those old eeePCs? I loved those things and had one as a low power device for seeding torrents

[u/bitemark01 → u/gv92]

Haha that's exactly it! They were really good for what they were. Underpowered though, and that's why I got TinyXP

[u/MisterSquared → u/bitemark01]

Ah the "netbook" era. I think I still have my HP Mini 110 somewhere.

[u/nickstatus → u/MisterSquared]

I remember when they were given away for free like everywhere. I got like 4 free netbooks over the course of a couple of months. I bought a monitor at Staples and they gave me a free netbook. I signed up for Clear internet, and they gave me another free netbook. My kids' preschool gave them each a netbook.

[u/Stilgar314 → u/bitemark01]

I remember a Windows Salamander, in which every Windows library with a free equivalent was substituted. There were crazy homebrew WinXP "versions" back in the day.

[u/Ucla_The_Mok → u/bitemark01]

eXPerience was the man. Loved his Tiny Server 2003.

[u/Skindkort → u/bitemark01]

That OS was as basic as it could get compared to modern OS, what else can you strip off of it?

[u/bitemark01 → u/Skindkort]

Off the top, no Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, or Windows Update, but there's lots more. They also pack in more essential drivers. Basically the install was trimmed from 600mb to under 200mb. It would boot and run faster in general as well.

[u/Pauly_Amorous → u/bitemark01]

Basically the install was trimmed from 600mb to under 200mb.

And to think, Vista needed about 15gb. WTF did they add to that monstrosity, that took up so much more space?

[u/thefonztm → u/Pauly_Amorous]

Aids. Lots of Aids. For Grandma. Grandma needs aids. Please, give Grandma aids. She wants aids. She needs aids. Let her have aids.

[u/birracerveza → u/thefonztm]

Aids = Telemetry

Because telemetry is aids

[u/highbrowshow → u/birracerveza]

Freddy Mercury died of telemetry

[u/AsleepNinja → u/thefonztm]

EVERYONE HAS AIDS

[u/Fleabagx35 → u/bitemark01]

Does it still have Space Cadet? I need my pinball game back.

[u/delrioaudio → u/bitemark01]

Right? We considered xp very bloated back in the day.... if we only knew how bad it could get.

[u/gamecat666 → u/Skindkort]

loads of stuff if you are never going to use it. printers, fax, modem stuff?

[u/Krutontar → u/Skindkort]

Not as much as you would from modern Windows but I remember using nLite a lot to make custom ISO's. Mainly to get certain settings pre-configured and drivers.

[u/wellmaybe_ → u/daikatana]

thats cool, but i want my OS have 20 bing search bars and a permanent suggestion of apps i might want to install from that shop that nobody uses. oh and a button with weather and news that only opens when my mouse tries to click the button next to it. thats how i like to work on desktops

[u/Sideshow_Bob_Ross]

I still have one single XP workstation that's running a laser particle sizing machine from the 90s. It uses a proprietary PCI card so drivers aren't available for later OS. I wish we could replace it, but new particle sizing hardware is close to six figures.

I get regular requests to bring it onto the network so the engineers don't have to sneakernet it, but I give them a big old HELL NO. Airgap that fucker like the Grand Canyon.

[u/jakuu → u/Sideshow_Bob_Ross]

I know you didn’t ask for this advice and chances are you thought of this but figured I’d mention it just incase.

I assume you’re having the engineers using thumb drives and things to upload files to the PC. Have you thought about using something like a raspberry pi that is connected to your network using something like samba for file sharing and then on the XP machine having it plugged into the pi as well but not giving it any thing other than access to the share on the pi?

It should then be easily mappable as a network drive on the XP machine, and if you lock down the network stuff it should have no actual access to the network.

Obviously a small bit of work needs to go into this and depending on your network’s security and everything might not even be possible.

But as someone that had to maintain a similar system in the past, it solved a lot of issues that we had with users always trying to work around the other method.

[u/m-m-m-m-moped-music → u/jakuu]

Wow, that actually seems pretty easy...

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/338294/260730

That's to make the pi act as a flashdrive. Then the pi could host an SMB server so the device wouldn't have access to the internet..

[u/dinominant → u/Sideshow_Bob_Ross]

I have implemented a Layer 7 proxy to solve the sneakernet problem for legacy industrial systems that require network access to files.

It is actually running on a Raspberry Pi too.

[u/m-m-m-m-moped-music → u/dinominant]

Interesting, do you mind explaining a little more of what that means for the layman? Could you not just block the certain devices from accessing the internet from the firewall?

[u/dinominant → u/m-m-m-m-moped-music]

The main problem with really old systems is they are extremely insecure. Anything that can directly interact with them over the network will provide a way to totally compromise them. Some of the network protocols they use are so broken that you can remotely root a system by simply communicating with it in special ways.

A Layer 7 Proxy, which is a term I made up for this, is a proxy server that operates on OSI Layer 7. Think of it like an intermediary system that can communicate with the world over the network and the insecure legacy system.

The legacy system has absolutely no network access whatsoever. Packets are not forwarded, mangled, translated, or anything.

It's like a clean room airlock. The data is passed from you to the proxy server. And the legacy system accesses the proxy for the safe data. There is no path for the legacy system to reach into the internet for anything and no path for the internet to reach into the legacy system.

[u/Plus-Command-1997]

Arise XP arise.

[u/Majik_Sheff → u/Plus-Command-1997]

Billy-Witch-Doctor.com work mostly with XP.

[u/STGMavrick → u/Majik_Sheff]

One convenient locations...in Africa.

[u/ALurkerForcedToLogin → u/STGMavrick]

Laughing in athf

[u/Ravenfall7 → u/Majik_Sheff]

Chicken Arise!!

[u/_Lizzy_Wizzy → u/Ravenfall7]

Arise chicken, arise!

[u/Helpful_guy → u/Majik_Sheff]

Maybe stick.. upside-down. Ok

ARRRIIIIIIIISSEE

[u/thetyler83 → u/Helpful_guy]

I think that's ultra mega chicken.

[u/The_Sands_Hotel → u/Majik_Sheff]

I am

sofa king

we todd ed

[u/UnsolvedParadox → u/Plus-Command-1997]

Somehow, XP returned.

[u/meltman → u/Plus-Command-1997]

Wait for fog machine

[u/SuperCoupe]

Windows Media Center is back on the menu boys!!!!

[u/megalomaniac71 → u/SuperCoupe]

It’s all about Winamp and dat llama’s ass.

[u/lostraven → u/megalomaniac71]

You joke, but I’m still running Winamp 5.666 with a modern higher-res skin called Winamp Classic Modern by Victhor. Works great on my Windows 10 machine with ultra widescreen.

[u/GoogleDrummer → u/megalomaniac71]

Pretty sure Winamp is still in development and supported on current OS's.

[u/ASatyros]

Ok, everybody is saying that it should not be connected to the internet, but I wanna know what exactly happens!

Are there just bots that scan the internet and attack every vulnerable machine?

[u/QuesoMeHungry → u/ASatyros]

Yes, there are bots scanning through every IP address poking at everything all the time. If you put a Linux box out on the web with SSH access that no one knows about, in a few hours you’d have access denied entries in the logs within a few hours of bots trying default credentials.

There was a video way back in the early 2000s I think on TechTV where they put a fresh unpatched install on XP on a PC connected directly to the internet with no firewall and I think the whole computer was compromised and virus infected in about an hour.

[u/tom21g → u/QuesoMeHungry]

Honeypots

That’s a word I remember was used to describe that vulnerability exactly: an unprotected pc, connected to the internet (but isolated from other networks) to demonstrate how quickly it could be found and infected

I’m not sure if security companies did that to test their malware detection methods or if honeypots were used only as demonstrations to prove the point

[u/Kirsle → u/tom21g]

They were also used to identify new threats on the Internet. Honeypots weren't simply vulnerable machines put up to see what happens, they also oftentimes were loaded with analytics and logging of every tiny detail that happened on them.

I'm not sure what Windows honeypots looked like, but some Linux honeypots would actually just be SSH emulators and not real Linux systems - something that listens on the SSH port, has a weak password (or, lets you in automatically on your 3rd guess no matter what password you tried, so the bot thinks it cracked a password), and it would present a bash shell and a plausible filesystem and set of programs (wget, tar, unzip, etc.). So what they'd do is just log the overloving shit out of every command run on that system so they'd know not only that they were hacked, but what website they downloaded their payload from and what commands they ran to extract and compile it or whatever it was that the attacker is doing.

So if it was a brand new worm going around the internet for the first time, security researchers could see it in action and see exactly what it did once it compromised their honeypot, in order to better design mitigations to stop it.

[u/tom21g → u/Kirsle]

Thanks for that explanation, that’s very interesting.

[u/spidenseteratefa → u/ASatyros]

Are there just bots that scan the internet and attack every vulnerable machine?

Basically, yes. Every time a new remote vulnerability is known about, someone is going to start searching for vulnerable IPs.

For XP, it was especially bad before Service Pack 3, where Microsoft finally turned on the firewall by default. There was a period of time where you could install XP, connect it to the internet to download updates, and have it get infected before the system would finish downloading the updates.

[u/Kirsle → u/spidenseteratefa]

A whole bunch of years ago, when earlier Windows NT systems were still viable to run, I had installed Windows 2000 on my laptop because I liked how slim it was compared to even XP (I think from a fresh install it only took 400 MB of disk space for the OS itself).

But as Windows 2000 was from far before Windows XP SP3 it was still vulnerable to that "messenger service" vulnerability -- remember when you would get random alert box popups on your screen? It looked like any other regular alert box with an Ok button but the text would be some nonsense spam. It used to hit Windows XP machines in the earlier years and if you were on a school network you could run a command prompt command to broadcast messenger service popups on every machine on the network.

Anyway: only about 5 minutes post install of my Windows 2000 machine, I got greeted with random messenger service spam! This was probably somewhere between 2008 and 2010 so long, long after Windows XP had patched that out but there were still bots out in full force spamming messenger alerts to old Windows systems on the internet!

[u/kobeh49601 → u/ASatyros]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaster_(computer_worm)

There was a point where if your computer was "live" on the internet you could start installing XP and before it was even finished it would be infected from this worm.

[u/KakariBlue → u/ASatyros]

If you're unfirewalled and it's anything like when these were coming out, check out Sasser, mydoom, dcom exploits.

Basically the machine was a bot within minutes.

[u/Techquestionsaccount]

Windows XP and 7 are the best. I'm tired of all this telemetry and adware.

[u/chunes → u/Techquestionsaccount]

7 has the same telemetry as 10. They backported it like 7 years ago..

[u/zap_p25 → u/Techquestionsaccount]

Windows LTSC

[u/SnooHesitations8849]

I hope MS just stop BS in Windows 11. Just stop making stupid unusable setting UI and focusing on important thing like stability and clean up the old stuff

[u/SpaceChimera → u/SnooHesitations8849]

I wanna know what the right click menu did to piss off Microsoft to get this sort of treatment

Oh I have to shift right click to get anything useful? What a quality improvement

[u/tyroswork → u/SpaceChimera]

Their focus seems to be "hide everything important from the user and make it difficult to find"

[u/b0w3n → u/SpaceChimera]

UX/UI teams having to justify their employment to the executives essentially.

It's sort of like budgets, if you don't use it you lose it, so these teams justify their existence by trying new things. Some are winners, most are stinkers. Live tiles? Winner. UX change by forcing tablet mode on productivity users and PCs in windows 8? Stinker.

Win11 as a whole is probably going to go the way of a stinker release just like ME/Vista/Win8 before it.

[u/pm0me0yiff → u/b0w3n]

UX/UI teams having to justify their employment to the executives essentially.

And minimalism is still a hot buzzword in those design circles.

Personally, FUCK minimalism in UI. I want all the options! I want all the things! I want as many of them as possible crammed into the same screen, so I can see and use all of them at once!

And that's why I use KDE now, lol!

[u/dizao → u/SpaceChimera]

Renaming files is such a freaking chore now. And no, clicking exactly on the file name to enable renaming is not good enough.

[u/SpaceChimera → u/dizao]

F2 my friend

[u/BastetFurry]

And if you need a browser that can open modern websites with modern SSL for XP, check out the Firefox fork Mypal.

[u/rees-maxwell]

Worked as MS tech support back in the Win98 and NT days. For Win98 their license “algorithm” was simply checking if the long string of license numbers was divisible by 7. If I needed to have them parallel install a copy I’d have the user use a string of seemingly random numbers that I knew was divisible, to try to keep secret this knowledge. But the guy next to me would always tell them, “just type in 77777777” (or however many digits were needed). 😂

[u/jerekdeter626]

We're still running xp on 4 of our computers at my lab. Older instruments need them.

[u/iamweseal]

I am curious if any of the information that David plummer showed in his YouTube had any impact on hints to do it. Could be coincidence and it has been two years.

[u/Hatsjoe1 → u/iamweseal]

I love watching David's videos and had to scroll way too far down to find anyone even mentioning him. This video was the first thing that popped in my head when I saw this post.

[u/TossNoTrack]

XP PRO, 2KPRO, (W7 Ultimate (main squeeze))

[u/RandallOfLegend]

I have some very old specialzed equipment that is sitting on an isolated network, but it requires XP and we've been terrified if the PC dies. So I'm kind of excited to see if we can put together a backup PC.

[u/_Bob_A_Feet_]

I miss the days of using apps to probe the activation server to find valid keys.

Let it run for a few hours and you would get a txt file with 20-30 valid pro keys.

[u/SillyOperator]

God imagine connecting an XP machine to the internet right now. It would be like taking a newborn into a bat cave.

[u/narsty]

even though Microsoft has turned off all the activation servers.

they have not, you can still activate XP era stuff, you do however have to update the root certificates

either do them manually like this kind of thing

https://support.globalsign.com/ca-certificates/root-certificates/update-globalsign-root-certificate-windows-xp-windows-2000

and no I don't know which exact ones to update for the windows activation to work off hand

I'v used cert_updater_v1.6.exe on windows 2003 retail server fairly recently (you can't change to OEM channel like you can on newer windows, therefore you are forced to use a retail key)

https://msfn.org/board/topic/175170-root-certificates-and-revoked-certificates-for-windows-xp/page/24/

Cert updater requires it be on the internet, it's just a script to download/install certs really

but ya, get XP/2003 on internet, run updater, can activate windows

[u/[deleted]]

[removed] — view removed comment

[u/wndrbr3d]

Everyone in here lining up to stroke Windows XP, but no love for Windows 2000? Honestly -- Windows 2000 was *PEAK* Windows. Minimal enough, very little bloat, ran everything XP did, great SMP support, etc.

[u/nectaris2089 → u/wndrbr3d]

Fellow 2K fan. To me it still has that feel of a late 90s OS (because it was), with the look and layout of the 9x/Me line but with NT internals. An OS that just does what it's supposed to do reliably without getting in your way.

[u/[deleted] → u/nectaris2089]

[removed] — view removed comment

[u/yonderbagel → u/[deleted]]

Retirement home

[u/car_go_fast → u/wndrbr3d]

2000 definitely did not run everything XP did. Most things worked, but it was an Enterprise OS and there were occasional compatibility issues with consumer software, mostly involving drivers.

[u/swifty84 → u/wndrbr3d]

I remember when I installed 2000 as a teenage on my pc and my friends were confused that I could run games and all the same stuff on 2000 that they had on xp.

[u/dizao → u/wndrbr3d]

I used win2k until windows 7 released. Then I switched to xp

[u/LifeIsOnTheWire → u/wndrbr3d]

I was also a Windows 2000 fan, but it was not great for everyone. It was a business/enterprise OS, and it was not meant for home use (or gaming use).

When Windows 2000 released, it was awful for gamers for at least 1-2 years after launch. Driver support for GPUs was missing, some hardware vendors never released drivers, and most games were designed for Windows 9x technology, so many of them couldn't even run on Windows NT technology.

After about 1 year of using Windows 2000, I could play Half Life, and Quake 3, and that was about it. All of my games designed for DOS and Win9x were not playable.

And DOS games were not that old when Windows 2000 launched in 1999. I had several DOS games released in 1997 and 1998, so they were only 1-2 years old by then.

Windows NT technology wasn't ready for home/gaming use until Windows XP launched.

[u/akurgo]

I'm holding out for when Reactos is as good as XP. Should only take a decade or so.

[u/mspk7305]

All these people going on and on about how great xp was and how it was "peak windows" as if that's actually a thing are completely ignoring that windows 2000 existed. Before XP.

[u/McRedditz]

For some reason my brain just played that XP shut down tone as soon as I read the title.

[u/kobeh49601]

What? I'm pretty sure it was cracked the day of release. I was using cracked copies since the FCKGW serial number.

[u/ShopObjective → u/kobeh49601]

I'm still technically riding the old version of XP, I upgraded (for free) from the cracked Win XP to Windows 7 then to 10 and now 11, all for free

[u/asafum → u/kobeh49601]

I actually had a "hack" that was kinda hilarious, I'd install windows then use the "upgrade" code I had from a friend. Windows would tell me it's invalid since it's only an upgrade code so I'd use the windows installer I just used to "upgrade" the new install I just did and it would recognize it lol used it for years that way.

[u/Decihax]

Progress on ReactOS has been glacial. :(

[u/SuperAleste]

Doest this include XP64?