Windows XP Delta Edition
xpdelta.weebly.com
xpdelta.weebly.com
I still feel that seeing a XP Desktop screenshot invites to much more experiences (possibly online) than a Win10/Win11 screenshot. It may be with the fact that I associate it to different internet eras as well. With XP I used to browse websits, fansites, blogs, forums, chats, MSN messenger/Yahoo Messenger/etc, whil now everything seems to be the boring social networks where almost everything is generated/shared.
Internet used to be much fun back then, and it may be the reason why most of the people have good memories about XP. I think the main reason (and I wanted to write an "essay" about this for a while) it's that we were offline by default in our lives, and we used to "go online" for a few hours durnig the day. Then you had your experience in the real world and went online to talk about them. Now it is the other way around - we live online by default, sharing photos and videos from a concert almost in real time, photos from a museum, etc. I think it took away its novelty.
That 2005-2009 period was absolutely the swan song of the pre-corporate internet.
Or maybe it's just nostalgia for a simpler time.
Try pre 2000. Nearly every website was made by an enthusiast of some type. Banner ads just barely existed, and you could reach out and talk to almost anyone who was online. There was also an assumption of politeness and civility.
Totally unknown people randomly met on IRC in 1994/1995 would send you CDs of their own music, strangers from other countries would invite you to come and stay a couple weeks at their place (that existed again for a while at the beginning of Couchsurfing), etc.
The level of trust and friendliness was incredible: There was maybe 0.1% of the population online and we were in awe of this new world.
I find that HN roughly equates to that 0.1%, and there are definitely some other high quality corners of the internet where enthusiasts of whatever topic can have excellent discussions, but it's tough to find them among the ever-increasing noise.
Now that roughly everyone is online to some extent, what's the next frontier -- what can provide that sort of hidden community? I don't know that "power user" or "computer nerd" will ever be the means of gatekeeping that it once was, so what's next?
lol teenaged me on IRC did not get that memo.
I think one difference was that you could hide a little friendly community fairly easy and because the meanness and abuse was seen as an expression of real world powerlessness rather than an enforcement of real world power structures.
That was the year I recall netnews turning into something resembling an open sewer. By 1999, I had dropped off netnews completely. It had gone from a wonderful community of spaces for almost any topic imaginable, to a constant stream of trolling and porn.
I used to be like that, posting 50+ albums of beautiful curated adventure photos per year (basically every weekend trips to alps, backpacking plus ie some evening climbing outdoors on mountain nearby and rest of life like concerts etc). Literally tens of thousands of photos at this point, sometimes stuff NatGeo would be happy to use. Backpacking around the world in wild places relatively few visit, always having full frame camera (+ diving cam + often gopro) with me.
I got told I should start Instagram, get followers, create 'brand' etc but never went that way since that wasn't the reason for doing it.
When first kid came, I toned down everything, stopped some things, less time to curate all those photos in lightroom. With second child, I practically stopped using camera and currently use just good phone (Samsung S22 ultra). My public photo stream basically died since I don't feel the need to share my kids/family photos, they feel much more intimate than just myself doing something cool/extreme. Close family still gets quite a few of those, but that's it.
And you know what? I am fine, I don't miss this at all, and I definitely don't miss similar feeds coming from other folks (especially if they go to some place / experience something and then for a week there are photos dripping 1 by 1 about the same single thing, I began to hate that). Actually I am more than fine, unplugging quite a bit, reversing this process, having more time for much more important matters in life.
Unplugged from quite a few social circles around those activities (but not all). So online life became similar kind of novelty you describe.
We’re probably the same age, and I definitely see people matching that description.
Just to note, there’s also a decent number (most I know?) that went almost the opposite way:
“online” was a novelty but also the only place to share their experiences and participate to their community. With a group of friend we pestered the local com. company for broadband and were among the test group when they decided to start, and spend a crazy amount of time on IRC/ICQ/usenet.
I recently met again with some of the old friends, and our facebook accounts are stubs to keep our name. We’re still on other anonymous SNS but it’s clear we don’t want to share more than needed, and don’t want to spend too much time on it overall.
Basically now that “online” can be used anytime from anywhere, there’s no need actively seek it and novelty is gone so we’re more restricting what we do there.
1. I started enjoying things outside of the internet more and more, partially due to how the internet has changed, partially due to how I've changed. 2. There's less FOMO due to as you mention, being able to be "online" anywhere. This creates an entirely different atmosphere, I won't miss something because I'm not at my computer. This actually leads me to being online much less, I can be out and about doing things and get ping by my friends on Discord. Very different than when I didn't want to go out because I couldn't talk to my friends.
To some extend, but I think most people enjoyed XP mostly because it came after 98/ME, and before Vista, which I think are both much worse for different reasons.
I was slightly older than you though, so perhaps that gave me a different perspective.
That's the thing that tipped you off? After the 90s?...
Many people, of age > 0, discover every day that someone isn't a good guy.
It wasn’t until nearly 2003 that I finally moved over to XP.
I also ran NT4 as a fileserver because it had the best SCSI controller support. had almost a year of uptime on that before a blackout took it offline.
Very interesting to hear it from the other side though, thanks.
They also had it configured to receive the Windows XP POSReady security updates, which made the system serviceable long after the general EOL date.
There's a name I haven't heard for a long time. I used to work in POS and remember getting big license packs of POSReady in the MS Gold Partner Program loot packs.
Good times!
Miss those days. Seems like even Linux installs are monsters nowadays.
if you remove all the source files and cruft from a gentoo install when you're done setting it up, the actual system is less than 1GB on disk, and as mentioned, 30-50MB of memory used. Ubuntu is similar, although it does include more helper apps so the disk weight is higher.
https://winworldpc.com/library/operating-systems
I like WinWorld since each file usually comes with a bit of history about the release, as well as nearby serials.
> Why does WinWorld not offer Windows XP or Office 2000?
> Microsoft sent WinWorld a DMCA order to remove Windows XP and 2000. WinWorld complied with this and removed these specific releases.
> Microsoft has asserted their copyright status. WinWorld respects this and therefore will not host Windows XP (or Office 2000).
https://forum.winworldpc.com/discussion/9882/rule-do-not-req...
Additionally, I'm not sure if it's still true, but in 2014 Microsoft offered paid updates for customers who couldn't migrate from XP after EOL. A lot of businesses and governments still used it at that point.
https://www.howtogeek.com/186754/microsoft-is-still-making-s...
https://archive.org/details/MicroXP-0.82
As for piracy, it seems Microsoft just don't seem to care. MicroXP has been on Archive.org since 2019!
I wonder if it has to do with the common practice of using a stripped down windows install as a live bootable environment to run recovery tools?
It's not permanently illegal to access. In the US, there's a constitutional requirement that copyright and patents be time-limited, so eventually all that stuff will be public domain. And the copyright period is current so absurdly long that by the time XP is public domain, it will be hard to find outside of dedicated archives.
Similarly, you will find a bunch of copyright software on there, including for recent DRM-free and cracked video games. Unfortunately, my impression is that the archive managers simply do not care about copyright. Anyone who wants to get something they own taken off the site has to put in quite a bit of work, similar to the old wild-west days of YouTube.
Get the Pro edition then?
What exactly is "common consumer use" of virtualization features?
My point is that they're slowly gating features behind their more Enterprise-y editions, which at some point won't be available to the general population. If they can force you to make a Microsoft account at some point, they will.
> For those who want to use a local account, the best solution is to create a burner Microsoft account for use during setup and then to either create a new local user account or sign out of your Microsoft account once the OS is up and running.
https://www.ghacks.net/2022/05/06/how-to-use-local-accounts-...
If users hate this they can use Apple or Linux.
But the vast majority want online accounts for data backup.
This is the "if you don't like one particular thing your country does you should move to a different country" argument with a couple of the words changed.
Lots of people use applications for which there are only Windows versions. Switching operating systems is not the trivial thing you claim it is unless you only use a web browser.
And in the case of “use Apple” (macOS I guess), it's also quite costly as you'll have to buy a new computer.
I'd have expected to see a lot more along that theme by now. Windows's biggest opportunity and problem was always backwards compatibility, and the more hardware gets virtualization-ready, the easier it is to shift compatibility burdens to sealed-box VM images.
I could imagine a future Windows that finally achieves the vision of "only modern apps and APIs" by packaging everything else into sealed VMs running a predictable steady-state "classic Windows" install.
> The entire idea of Core Isolation is that your OS will segregate critical core processes from the rest of the other normally running ones in order to defend against hostile or ill-natured software/driver or malware. You can think of it as a vault that only the allowed have access to, something that is not open to everyone. Windows achieves this feat by using its virtualization technology.
https://feedthecuriosity.com/windows-os/what-is-core-isolati...
Since 7 we've had what could only be described as horrendously unusable and ugly.
Some audio tweaks here, some kernel tweaks there, we've been through a lot together already this OS and I :D
They were too late too market and lost developer mindshare with the Windows Mobile to Phone transition.
Maybe I should see how XP runs on it.
Office XP and Visual Studio.NET had their own variations of flat widgets that also looked fantastic and seemed true to Luna. For a few seconds, Netscape 6 also had a really nice flat design that was replaced with bulbous, XP-esque chrome.
It would have been great if Microsoft would have stuck with that flat design language. It was original, very true to their brand, and looked “professional”. I would love to hear why it was scrapped in favor of what shipped.
From a nostalgia perspective, I'm likely to view even Windows 3.11 clones in a positive light.
Really, though... harboring no specific ill will toward any OS developer, I just hope that L/indo/nix figures out how to properly interoperate, and we get a computing ecosystem that allows for new users to quickly and accurately figure out what kind of system they want to live in.
I feel like this was the last OS where Microsoft gave a damn about you as the user.
Will definitely try this one and see if it will work for my purposes!
https://linux.softpedia.com/get/Desktop-Environment/Metacity...
It's not meant to make it usable, just fun.
I would rather use Linux with WINE.
Windows 7 pretty much fixed all the brokenness of XP, granted much of that brokenness was XP being a victim to the progress in hardware buses.
Yes, Windows Vista was a hot mess, which carried over into the first release of Windows 8, though by the second release of Windows 8, it was pretty solid, but still tainted by the stench of Vista.
But Windows 10 completed so much of what Windows 7 started. Everything in '10' was so much better. The network stack, particularly WiFi. Printer drivers. USB support. All of it really.
When I think how far forward 10 moved from XP, and having lived with Windows from '95' on forward, including writing NDIS network drivers for NT, I just don't have any nostalgia for XP at all.
And I know a lot of people hate Windows 11, but I have to say, USB support for Linux under WSL2 in Windows 11 is good, so it has that going for it.
My very first customization was to always set it to the silver theme.
With a proper BIOS PC or CSM enabled, you can partition a SSD for a few MBR-layout partitions, then format the first partition FAT32. Following partitions can be formatted NTFS.
Windows 98SE can then be installed to the volume if your BIOS can enable ATA mode (for HDD access to complete the boot process), otherwise you still can manually install the plain DOS (which underlies W98SE itself) to the FAT32 volume, but that way you only boot to the bare metal command line.
DOS is simple enough where the BIOS or CSM can transparently handle access to the ATA, SATA, or USB drives, keyboards and mice without drivers or anything. Sound is not so easy though.
DOS will usually work with the full amount of modern memory still physically installed, but W9x not, so excess memory might need to be disabled in BIOS or physically removed beforehand for full W9x use.
If you have a (empty) WINDOWS folder already on your FAT32 DOS volume before you try to install W9x (or WXP) on it, then you will be given the option of putting the new install into a differently named folder if you wish, I would choose for a WIND98 folder rather than WIN98 since the latter was almost like a keyword.
To a fresh FAT32 DOS volume without any of its few files in actual folders (directories) at that point, when you installed W98 it created your first 3 folders; Documents and Settings, Program Files, and your main Windows OS folder (which was either the default WINDOWS or your chosen alternative such as WIND98).
When you upgraded from DOS to W9x the bootsector no longer loaded simply IO.SYS, but WINBOOT.SYS then which brought in the whole Windows GUI on top of DOS.
As mentioned WXP can also be installed to a FAT32 volume, works great but it was never a mainstream approach. You can search much faster when its a FAT32 volume.
XP install CDs usually also need to use ATA mode rather than SATA (AHCI) mode in the BIOS unless the proper SATA drivers have been slipstreamed into the ISO.
Maybe this Delta edition handles that well.
If you install XP to your FAT32/DOS/W9x volume which still contains your (intentionally empty) folder named WINDOWS, you will again be given the option to choose an alternative OS foldername such as WINXP. The WINXP choice was the actual XP default at the very beginning (W2k used WINNT foldername just like NT3 & NT4) before reverting to WINDOWS foldername for most XP PCs and newer.
This would not be a recommended approach for users who were not comfortable renaming an existing Program Files folder used by Win9x to something else such as Prog98, otherwise installing XP over W9x would overwrite a number of the default Windows 98 programs in the Program Files folder with NT versions. Better to just hide the W9x Program folder and let XP write a whole new Program Files folder for itself when it installs. Either Windows version then boots using just its own uniquely named Windows folder. W9x doesn't care if the Program Files folder is from a newer version of Windows, it will still boot. When booted to W9x some of the common programs in the XP Program Files folder will only run under NT and you will get an error for that, but to workaround you could set a shortcut to your renamed Prog98 folder in that case.
This NT install also overwrites the DOS volume bootsector so upon bootup it searches for NTLDR rather than DOS bootfiles, but it also makes a backup of your DOS bootsector first saving it as c:\bootsect.dos so if you want to you could use your new NTLDR to still boot to DOS or W98 if present (since it's FAT32 anyway) by adding the line c:\="DOS from W98" to your boot.ini text file. In boot.ini "c:\=" syntax in this case is shorthand for "c:\bootsect.dos=". Quite convenient and un-necessarily deceptive at the same time.
IOW for advanced MBR operators who want to sometimes boot to Linux from a Windows-formatted volume using the NT bootloader, you need to back up the NT bootsector (disk editor is good for this), prepare a Linux bootsector using GRUB or Syslinux then save it as a file named something like c:\bootsect.lin. Then you can replace the NT bootsector to the volume from backup. Then in your boot.ini add a line such as c:\bootsect.lin="Linux on type 83 partition 4" for instance.
Anyway with DOS, W9x and Wxp in the FAT32 bare metal root, WIND98 folder, and WINXP folder respectively, sharing the same FAT32 volume you could ideally choose any one of them (even further choose Linux or Windows installs on different partitions/filesystems if you went there) from the regular Windows NT multiboot menu which will appear upon PC startup.
It has also been seen that on an NTFS volume already containing W10, if the Windows 10 Program Files folder was renamed to something like Prog10 beforehand, XP could still be installed afterward to a folder other than WINDOWS and share the same volume as long as the HDD was set up using MBR layout rather than GPT and you have a good BIOS or CSM, with SATA or plain ATA handled accordingly. Carefully, W10 can also be booted from the NTLDR bootmenu if you had saved a copy of the W10 NTFS bootsector as a file such as c:\bootsect.nt6 beforehand. Then address that in your boot.ini. Which you would need the W10 bootsector backup file anyway normally, to restore to the partition (after XP has "downgraded" it) so you can go back to using the original W10 NT6 BOOTMGR instead of the older NTLDR from XP. You then have to manually add an NTLDR bootentry to the modern NT6 BOOTMGR bootmenu to boot XP from there.
But that's kind of backwards, ideally things like Vista, W7, W8, W10 & W11 would each be installed on their own remaining NTFS partitions without sharing the volume with any other OS. As each of these OS's is installed to its partition on an MBR-layout HDD it writes its additional bootentry to the NT6 bootmenu within the standard BOOT folder on your "Active" MBR partition, typically the FAT32 volume on your first partition which is often small in drive space and considered reserved for boot files alone. Alternatively, as we have seen, regular DOS can easily format as much as a 32GB FAT32 volume so there can be plenty of room for things like DOS, W9x, or Wxp to be also installed and function right there beside the active boot files. And the boot files can access other partitions too.
With a BOOT folder this beefy, and NTLDR in the mix you may now have DOS, W9x, NT5, NT6 and even Linux on the bare metal at your fingertips.
Next adding a new similarly beefy EFI folder to the FAT32 volume will provide an additional, alternative way to boot the same OS's on the same partitions, but on non-BIOS PCs only the OS's modern enough to support UEFI booting will be available (for booting) when a proper CSM is not enabled.
UEFI alone is supposed to support booting from either MBR or GPT layout on the HDD, as long as a readable useful EFI folder is on a recognizable FAT32 volume.
When not using a BIOS or CSM, UEFI can't really boot into DOS, W9x or Wxp any more, but when they are on the bare metal anyway you can still use them in a VM inside a modern OS, from right where they are if you do it right.
> Windows XP Delta Edition
> Windows XP Delta Edition
> Windows XP Delta Edition
> Windows XP Delta Edition
> Windows XP Delta Edition
> Windows XP Delta Edition
This makes Win 10 so much more pleasant for me:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer]
"DisableSearchBoxSuggestions"=dword:00000001After all, it ran on twenty year old computers, and quite usable, too.
Thus it must be legitimate!
The many Service Packs that have been applied later to Windows XP have improved a lot its stability, but I have not used Windows XP for enough years to reach a Service Pack version where Windows XP would never need periodic reboots. I have stopped using Windows XP in 2005, maybe later revisions have solved the remaining bugs.
I have used Windows 2000 on much less computers and for much less time than Windows XP, so the accumulated experience might be insufficient, but with Windows 2000 I have not encountered any situation when I was forced to reboot the computer, like it was needed from time to time with Windows XP. Even so, the improvement in stability between Windows 98 and Windows XP was huge.
Simultaneously with using Windows XP on many desktops/laptops, I was managing a large number of FreeBSD servers. Those were rebooted exactly once per year, in order to do a kernel upgrade, even if that could have been skipped without problems.
I had been using hibernation instead of shutdown on my desktop computer during (which was on service pack 2), and it wasn't uncommon to not reboot for months.
It's just a sad chilling legal regime that rules us. Control is prioritized over fun, for fear that the fun get out of hand or come to not reflect well on the corporate image.
Q: What is the product key?
A: One is not provided so the project stays legal.
What if I installed a copy of WinXP from my CD with my bought key and it doesn't activate because WGA servers are long offline?
Same, but I use any WGA activation hacks?
Same, but instead of MS copy I used "Delta Edition" distrib?
And by the way, "working" in quotes because even if you have the key - the product key itself doesn't mean nothing except the way to allow installation process to succeed. It even doesn't guarantee what it would accuse you of pirating the said software (see WGA).
> This looks like a lot of effort for pirated software, unless I'm missing something.
This is false. Whatever law may protect Microsoft from people being awesome & investing enormous effort improving their products for them- and I'm sure there are plenty such laws- this claim of piracy seems false.
I do not see any product keys on the download page. These folks have no interest in helping piracy.
It's awesome to me that no one can clearly state what this is a violation of, but we all tend to agree, yes, a rag-tag group of product-loving enthusiasts absolutely have no right to go poke around & make things awesome & cool & to improve the product. That's absolutely not ok. We agree. But we also don't even know why or how we got here & why that is.
It's still not piracy.
I get that you think this project is cool and the authors are doing admirable work. I don’t necessarily disagree there but the reality is this is not legally defensible. It is a violation of copyright to redistribute software without the copyright owner’s permission. That is the definition of software piracy. Whether or not Microsoft pursues legal action is a separate matter.
Other than that, Microsoft has always been fairly relaxed about copying CDs/ISOs (not sure what the license says about it). It's the product key that matters.
You may have clicked the 'Extras Pack' link where there is no serial.
So you'd understand how HN, for instance, has little responsibility with what you post in your comment. I can't claim that "Hackernews posted [your comment]".
That extends to Archive.org and the owners of this project.
That's not true: there is no product key listed on the download page. It sounds like there is a link somewhere on the page that goes to another site that hosts the product key.