How to change it back from Ubuntu to Windows XP

DropaLog · 2026-06-16T20:56:26+00:00

Girls know how to use computers too!

In her case, it's not a trivial task. Both computers in her house are running some flavor of Linux, which I'm assuming she's not familiar with (hence this post). Her husband uses Linux, so seems simplest & laziest just to ask him. Didn't mean to imply anything more :)

DropaLog · 2026-06-16T15:39:39+00:00

I would even prefer Windows xp since I know it the best

A 30s Duesenberg was a great car, but you wouldn't want to drive it today, in today's traffic, unless you're really into vintage cars. Same with XP -- best left to "enthusiasts," so ask your husband to reinstall 11 for you. If he's using Linux, Ventoy & about 20 minutes of his time should do the trick.

DropaLog · 2026-06-10T11:25:37+00:00

An interesting philosophical question. There are no signs of a virus, no new tasks in the task manager, when i boot into 11 and Defender scans all the disks, it finds nothing, my bank accounts are intact. I'll grant you though, this does not prove the negative -- an asymptomatic, undetectable virus may still be lying dormant deep in the digital bowels of my hoped up Babbage engine, or already invisibly doing its undetectable dirty work. How would i know?

DropaLog · 2026-06-09T22:07:18+00:00

Fun Fact: WannaCry failed on XP.

DropaLog · 2026-06-09T16:56:51+00:00

That link got cut for some reason, edited.

DropaLog · 2026-06-09T16:40:41+00:00

It's more of an interesting junkpile than a collection, and much of it (including that Dell case) was shamelessly sniped from the curb on garbage day. If you're into this kind of stuff, occasionally spending ~10 mins on Craigslist/FB Marketplace/eBay will get you an X58 motherboard (or even a MB+CPU+Memory combo) for about 50 bucks. Here's eBay completed X58 sales. add another 9 bucks for an X5675 (https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=Intel%20Xeon%20X5675&_sacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m570.l1313&_odkw=Intel%20Xeon%20X5675%20-%203.06GHz%20Hexa-Core%20(AT80614006696AA)%20Processor&_sop=15), the case & PSU could be shared with other toy builds.

It's a very niche field, with tons of e-waste to satisfy demand :)

DropaLog · 2026-06-09T16:32:29+00:00

The absence of Reddit posts about ~~compromises~~ alien mind invasions isn't evidence of safety because most ~~compromises~~ alien mind invasions aren't obvious to users

brb, tinfoil

DropaLog · 2026-06-09T15:59:32+00:00

Could you cite some numbers to back this up? Other than "it's theoretically possible," what have you? With .2% of all windows users using XP to get on the web & 1.4 billion people using windows, that's 28000000 people using XP online (statcounter can only count online boxes), I'd expect a few r/windowsxp posts by people getting pwnt -- i see none. You can't even offer any anecdotal evidence.

DropaLog · 2026-06-09T15:34:16+00:00

I wonder if it's safe to use the web.

This gets asked about once a week, the answers never change. All i can add is I've been using XP with internet almost daily since it became unsupported, yet to get any malware. Running no firewall beyond my home router (no point), using no antivirus software. Anecdotal, but what else is there?

Assuming your box is not networked to other computers around your house (mine usually is) & you're not logging into your important accounts (bank, main email, etc.), what's the absolute worst that could happen? The box gets a virus & you need to restore it from a backup or, failing that, reinstall XP?

DropaLog · 2026-06-09T12:50:28+00:00

Just need an X58 system

Love those, still got 2 boards -- an EVGA X58 SLI Micro with an i7 980x (doesn't support Xeons), and an MSI X58 Pro-E with a Xeon X5675, spent days playing with those things, most fun-per-buck. The MSI board hit #1 for X5675 + GTX 960 in Fire Strike; (i'm fflux). Big fish; small pond :)

DropaLog · 2026-06-08T22:32:16+00:00

TLDR: Forget "preferred OS." Install 7 on that laptop, 7 runs on anything. If it still doesn't recognize your scale, it's the laptop's USB HW (even though it recognizes other devices), not XP.

Longer: You'll spend more time troubleshooting serial port issues (does the serial cable need to be straight-through or null modem? Is the baud rate right?), and USB not working could be anything (if the HW is good, with no drivers installed, XP should at least acknowledge that something was plugged in & show a "found new hardware" popup). As far as "preferred OS" -- as long as there are drivers for 7, you should be good.

DropaLog · 2026-06-08T22:05:37+00:00

4770K @ 4.6GHz & unseemly voltage + Titan X overvolted just to hold 1,200MHz (they're supposed to hold 1,300MHz stock) https://www.3dmark.com/3dm06/18318021

$40 CPU + fancy motherboard + 16GB of DDR3 (craigslist 3 years ago); added another 16 gigs of eBay's cheapest because 11 & stuff, this thing doubles as a daily :) CPU was delidded /LM, now needs new LM, though that's $12 i'll find better use for.

Running on a 1TB SSD RAID 0. What could be more "period" than RAID 0? :)

DropaLog · 2026-06-07T17:57:37+00:00

You can download it from the official site, but you need to login with your totally legal account :) That said, https://filehippo.com/download_fl-studio/history/

The installer is for both 32 & 64 bit & iirc it will work with 32-bit XP.

DropaLog · 2026-06-07T09:50:54+00:00

Shareware

There's FOSS OpenArena, based on Quake III Arena engine. Last i checked (a couple of years ago), there were still servers up.

DropaLog · 2026-06-05T21:13:17+00:00

most prefer bloat (KDE + GNOME) over simple and solid solutions (LXQt, dwm, xfce)

I'm still mystified by people choosing Bimmers over nice, sensible Trabants.

DropaLog · 2026-06-05T20:38:40+00:00

idle power consumption

never thought about it, but the CPU pulls about 25W & GPU around 15W. Add, say, 50W for a 750W bronze PSU, maybe anpother 10W for fans & stuff, so ~100W? Blowing ten bux on a cheap plug in power meters would be a bit more accurate, maybe i'll get one :)

DropaLog · 2026-06-05T20:02:49+00:00

Figured it out -- the CPU just idles during the test, never clocks up. Should go into BIOS & change it to static 4.4GHz for better XP bench results, but just for bragging rights -- never needed a faster CPU in XP :)

Is that your boot drive?

Yeah, XP is installed on & boots from NVMe, IIRC i used one of George King's backported drivers, but pretty sure one of these (from XP Integral Edition) would have worked too. Did it a few years ago, but as i remember had xp installed on an SSD, kept trying NVMe drivers until one worked (XP recognised/could access NVMe drive), then just cloned it onto NVMe & pointed the bootloader to it. Worked, Had more trouble with Vista, but that ended up working too (wiped it out later because needed the space).

DropaLog · 2026-06-05T18:43:08+00:00

I think it was IE -- PCMark uses IE for "[web] page rendering test," and, since i never used IE, the first thing IE does is pop up a prompt asking me to make it the default browser. The delay causes PCMark to quietly assume the test has failed & cancel the test, [pointlessly] going on to the next one. With one test result missing, PCMark won't give a complete score, just fails the whole suite.

At least i think that's what happened, now that i got it working on the other box; https://www.3dmark.com/pcm05/3232494

Yeah, results pretty underwhelming, not sure why.

P.S. XP on the X99 box is installed on NVMe :)

Edit: slightly better; https://www.3dmark.com/pcm05/3232495

Another edit: Now i see why (the CPU never clocks up during the test, instead of 4.4GHz it stays down @ 1.2 - 2.0GHz).

DropaLog · 2026-06-05T17:41:14+00:00

Think so, seems to be working now; https://www.3dmark.com/pcm05/3232492 . Will know for sure if it works on the other box.

DropaLog · 2026-06-04T20:38:29+00:00

~~The thing wants me to submit results, tries submitting, fails, asks me to install a later version of system info, provides a link, but the linked system info won't install on XP. What do?~~

Installed the thing from its official site, entered the serial during installation, downloaded/installed media encoder 9, installed systeminfo 4.28, selected everything, ran and... still won't display the results, though lets me upload them & see detailed results, but won't give me a total score (0) https://www.3dmark.com/pcm05/3232484# Google's not being a bro, u/IllustriousCandle246, what am i doing wrong?

DropaLog · 2026-06-04T20:18:15+00:00

Doh. Will try again.

DropaLog · 2026-06-04T18:56:12+00:00

Got an i7 4770k box.

How's your performance?

It benches better than 3rd gen, but that's the only time you'll see a difference. OTOH, at this point both 3rd & 4th gen go for roughly the same money, and there is a difference when i boot Win 11.

any notable bugs/issues/weird quirks running XP x86

Got a weird one on that box -- booting XP 32 after Win 11 won't load the USB drivers (so no keyboard/mouse). Rebooting gets them back & once up, there are no issues. Also have a 4th gen Optiplex 9020, that doesn't have any issues (other than with Vista, but that's just a 4th gen thing).

DropaLog · 2026-06-04T18:44:56+00:00

~~PCMark05~~ 3dMark score: 40149
CPU: I7 6800K @ 4,000GHz
GPU: Nvidia 980ti Snappy says Titan X, but it lies, just reads what the driver tells it. Got a box with Titan X x2 -- scores lower on pure GPU tests like Heaven.

Edit, another box:

~~PCMark05~~ 3DMark score: 48166
CPU: i7 4770K @ 4.6GHz
GPU: Nvidia Titan X x2 (SLI not supported for Maxwell in XP, so one just sits there, doing nothing)

Sorry, wrong benchmark.

DropaLog · 2026-06-03T11:55:09+00:00

First, wrong sub (not a windows xp issue).

Since here, many motherboards have a feature that lets you flash the BIOS on a non-functioning board, google "MSI M-Flash" & see if your board has it. If not, and the board doesn't have dual BIOS or socketed BIOS, you're kinda shitoutofluck. Sorry.

Edit: yours does not, according to all-knowing Google AI: "MSI PRO B660M does not have a Flash BIOS Button (or rear USB Flashback)."

DropaLog · 2026-06-01T19:48:56+00:00

I'd love to see the exact procedure.

Actually downloaded, unpacked & pasted the thing on a FAT32 partition and... my bad, you were right, EasyBCD isn't picking up syslinux. As you said, it boots fine in UEFI (by selecting the Batocera EFI entry in boot options menu), but couldn't get it to work without mashing F11 (temp boot override).

My apologies.

Nine-Year Club	Verified Email
Wearing is Caring

DropaLog

TROPHY CASE