Flash has only recently stopped working and as Firefox support for XP finishes this year I've decided to upgrade to Windows 7.

Didnt work for me. Just got a defender update that was all. I am dual booting so dont use XP much.

In reply to a post by Banger:

Didnt work for me. Just got a defender update that was all. I am dual booting so dont use XP much.

If you got an update then it's working

I discovered this almost two years ago. I downloaded an .iso of XP containing all the patches at the time compiled by a Greek guy calling it XP - SP4 !
Never had any problems with it on 4 or 5 PCs most of which are now XP/W10 dual boot.
Although I don't bother with auto updates, just a manual one from time to time as I am not risk averse.

Opera and Chrome too are leaving the XP dinosaurs behind as well but of course the old versions will still work. I am using a chinese browser Maxthon which is still XP friendly.

A quick google for "XP - SP4" shows it's still available

The thing I like about it is I'm running it in a 5GB VM with 1GB free space and it's not hogging resources.

Batboy,

Are you saying then that Microsoft NEVER DID end support for XP?

And are we talking about 32-bit Windows here, or 64-bit (memory considerations)?

In reply to a post by meditator:

Batboy,

Are you saying then that Microsoft NEVER DID end support for XP?

That's right, but usually only if you were a company willing to pay lots of money for support.

However, Microsoft released a version of XP for point-of-sale terminals called POSReady and POSReady will be supported until April 2019. All the simple registry hack does is tell Microsoft your version of XP is actually POSReady so you get the updates.

And are we talking about 32-bit Windows here, or 64-bit (memory considerations)?

Sorry, I don't know.

I'm kinda understanding better now - but still not convinced that the Registry hack of which you mention doesn't also perhaps come with some disadvantages, security-wise. Still, I've no special interest in it because I've long since switched to the Apple platform instead. The only reason that I still keep my WinXP machine alive at all is to be able to still run an expensive photoeditor on it (without photoeditor updates) that happens to be a Windows-version only.

I was aware that many commercial organisations, both big and small around the world, who were still using Windows XP in the first part of this decade complained en mass when Microsoft first announced that it was going to terminate support for XP in 2013. As I recall, that then caused a rethink by Microsoft, and they extended support for about a further year. Thereafter, I vaguely recollect getting little or no response from the Windows Update website. From that point on I lost all interest in XP and Windows machines and decided to switch to Apple instead.

Are you sure this 'permanent' extension has perhaps applied only to the Professional version of XP? That's the version, I'd imagine, that most commercial organisations would have been using. Also, with generally use of working memory increasing these days beyond the 4GB limitation of 32-bit Microsoft machines, it possibly wouldn't have been worthwhile for some organisations with 32-bit-only machines to struggle on with XP, and my guess therefore is that a good many will have bought new hardware and upgraded to Windows 7, 8 and beyond.

Edited by meditator (Thu 05-Jan-17 15:05:51)

Dunno. It works for me which is really all I care about and has given me some breathing space before having to upgrade my XP VM's. I was just sharing the joy of my rather belated discovery