this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
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I'm curious what you've been doing with it, what workarounds and fixes you've had to do over the years?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Man, i feel strange still running 10.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

At my current job, W10 is staying for the foreseeable future and we are holding back W11 for as long as it could be possible. Because MS is just charging way too much for an spyware and ad free W11. Last year our purchases team sent a request for a W11 without ads, without tracking (we are privacy and security critical) and without AI, or at least reasonable ways for the ICT team to remove them. That option simply doesn't exists, so it is W10 forever then.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Probably plenty of critical infrastructure and medical systems.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

In 2020 I worked for an MSP and we had to fix a broken Windows 2000 machine because it was the only machine that a certain medial office could use to send a receive faxes. They could not afford to upgrade a more modern system, as it necessitate a forklift upgrade of all their systems that would go into the 5-digit dollars. They didn't have that money and no one could get computers quickly in 2020 so fixing it was the only option. After 20 hours of troubleshooting it got bounced up to me, because managed the team that had to fix it. I went into the office after they closed and everyone was gone, because pandemic. I pulled the machine in question out of the corner of the "server room" (read: poorly ventilated closet) it was in. An old Gateway full ATX tower, it was a sight to behold underneath the dust. Turns out the dust was the problem - it hadn't been cleaned at any point in the last 20 years and there was a literal quarter inch of dust and lint on top of the motherboard. I cleaned that thing till it sparkled, set up back up and turned it on. Worked PERFECTLY, like nothing had ever been wrong. I was happy, the client was overjoyed and my bosses were happy. Good stuff.

The PSU blew 7 months later, taking down the motherboard and drives. Paperweight. So we took the full backup we made after I fixed it, turned it into a VM, set up a USB passthrough and gave it a USB fax modem. I left that job a while back, but to my knowledge it's still working. By the time we had done that we had billed over 30 hours of work to the client at $150/hr. That's a $4500 Windows 2000 fax server with added VM licensing on top of it. Pretty silly at the end of the day.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Don't know whether you mean that as a joke, but I can tell you it is very real thing world wide still.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Yes, I have a 2008-era build running it. It's glorious. Not really many fixes other than installing all the updates up to 2019, and making sure to manually run SSD tools to trim my drive.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

I have a bunch of retro machines, and one of them is running XP. Not long ago I enjoyed No one lives forever on it. Nothing beats the correct hardware.

Regarding fixes, Service Pack 2 is enough. And since Steam is not supporting retro machines anymore there is no reason to connect it to the internet anymore, thankfully gog let's me download the installers, all the more reason to use gog exclusively. At least for my special gaming tastes.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

At work we have one old PC on Windows XP for the ancient PBX phone system we are currently using. It runs fine, it is only there to run specific programs so it's not like we install/run anything else on it. And it's not exposed to the internet.

The hardware will die eventually but until then my boss is too cheap to spend the money to replace the entire phone system.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

One of my machines at work is still running on XP. Runs a CAD/CAM program and talks to the PLC of a fair sized 2D CNC mill. I prefer it to the machine running on Millennium.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

You need to "Office Space" that ME machine. At this point it's a pity killing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

PC load letter?!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I don't know the reference you're making.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

https://youtu.be/N9wsjroVlu8?si=pGD_nDnfKK5_xbmH

That's the scene I'm referencing. They executed a printer that had been making their lives worse.

The movie's name is "Office Space."

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

It's a scene from a movie.

It's quite good, I'd recommend it even now.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

I have an old CNC machine driven by an XP laptop. XP runs great, I just don't mess with it and of course keep it off the internet.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You know i woke up today with a furious urge to buy an old Windows XP computer and play old games on it. Of course i wouldn't ever connect it to the internet.

I suspect i might be setting myself up for major headaches

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

A virtual machine is still an option.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

After my most recent attempt at installing XP on a virtual machine, I am very confident in saying that I don't wanna deal with it ever again.

Getting VMware tools to work on it still doesn't fix the incredibly choppy framerate, activating it is an absolute mess, getting software to run on it oftentimes leads to a crash, increasing the DPI settings to match my monitor's resolution makes it look even worse than it does in the default settings, oh and speaking of looks, the Luna theme is garbage.

I'm pretty sure I never had any of these problems as a kid, so I wonder how it got so buggy. Even Vista doesn't work as intended (it always worked amazingly in my experience). I ended up sticking with Windows 7 on my virtual machine, since once I installed VMware tools, it works perfectly.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I have an XP VM that I spin up from time to time to run an old version of AutoCAD.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

I've got a couple of old laptops running it. Play a few old games on them occasionally. My only workaround is to never connect them to the internet!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Every single relevant government office I've been to. How I wish not every single piece of machinery was from 20 years ago.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

My neighbour is. I hear the boot sound about once a week. No idea what he's using it for, but I hope it's not connected to his network.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I was using the Windows 95 boot sounds on my Windows 7 computer for a while. It's not necessarily a smoking gun, it might just be a nostalgia trip.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I used to throw the old AOL instant message and "you've got mail!" WAVs on my incoming message alerts every so often for a laugh. It got old more quickly every time I did it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Yeah, I did the same. You soon discover why we stopped using them. 😆

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Occam's razor 😅

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

i don’t necessarily use it, but i mess around with an xp vm a lot. for web browsing there’s mypal (which is old but still mostly functional firefox) and supermium which is somehow chrome 122 on xp. there’s also one core api for running more modern apps, but i haven’t ever tried it.

overall, xp is surprising usable for most people considering “usable” means “there is a modern web browser” but i still wouldn’t recommend it since xp is 23 years old.

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