Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Should I keep XP around?

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Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 06-24-2014, 07:11 PM:

I have two laptops. The main one is newer, and it runs Windows 7. And then there's an "extra" one that I like because it has a built-in COM port. That laptop is a Dell Latitude D520 running Windows XP.

Should I upgrade the older one to Windows 7?
Will Win7 slow it down, or will it run okay?
Is there any setup software (Dolby, etc) that can't run on Win7?

In other words, is there a reason to keep Windows XP?

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 06-24-2014, 08:07 PM:

Keep the older one with the real com port on XP. Until you test each program you might use, there is no telling what might not work right in Windows 7. I just had to connect up to an SDDS unit a few days ago...but I had XP and a real com port available. [Smile]

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 06-24-2014, 08:29 PM:

I'm in exactly the same situation, Manny.

I have several useful diagnostic and LED sign configuration programs running
on my old laptop, many of which do not have Windows 7 or 8 versions or
drivers avalable. It's also loaded with dozens of PDF equipment manuals.

Although it's used mostly off the WWWeb, I've beefed up the anti-virus
& firewall programs on it, 'just in case'.

If something does happen, I have that entire drive mirrored on a backup device, so
I can restore the whole system & data if necessary. But for now, I have no plans
of dumping the older laptop. I just have too much useful 'stuff' on it.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 06-24-2014, 09:39 PM:

You folks might want to look at Virtual Box. The price is right (free), it works really well and it's dead simple to set it up. At least it is on Linux; I assume it would be much the same on MS Windows.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 06-24-2014, 09:59 PM:

There are many reasons to keep XP, but don't use Explorer as your main browser since it's now vulnerable for virus attacks and similar.

In fact, delete it, or delete the shortcut so it won't be used anymore

Use other browsers, especially Firefox and Chrome since they're still receiving protection updates from Google and Mozilla.

I'm the same: DELL Inspirion 6000 with XP PROsp3. I did try Win7 in the thing, but XP ran faster.

But, could switch over to Ubuntu 14.10 with excellent results.

EDIT: after looking at the virtual box website, be kind of interesting to load OS/2Warp and have some fun with that old program once again.

-Monte

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 06-26-2014, 11:05 AM:

Yea, older computers won't run W7 very well or in some cases even allow you to load it. W7 is written for completely different chipsets then XP is written for.

Mark

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 06-26-2014, 11:28 AM:

Actually, I've had completely the opposite experience with W7 on older machines. I recently installed it on my father-in-law's two computers: a desktop from 2003, and a laptop he bought in 2007. It installed without any problem, and I was able to find drivers for all the onboard stuff and peripherals. If anything, he thought that W7 was actually faster and more reliable than XP in both cases (though this is probably at least in part because the XP installations it replaced had many years of patching and crud accumulation behind them). I did put more memory in both machines (upgraded from 500mb to 2GB in both cases), but DDR2 is now so cheap that this only cost around $25.

Vista was the opposite extreme - there were so many bits of hardware for which there was simply no driver that would work and other software problems. Replacing XP with Vista on a machine was a crapshoot as to whether it would even barely function. In contrast, all the XP to 7 conversions I've done have gone fine, with only minor glitches if any.

Agreed with the general point that upgrading any one software component risks breaking others that depend on it, though. For that reason I'd be inclined to take a system image, e.g. using Clonezilla, before then rewriting the partition table and starting over with W7 (and if it were me, I'd create two partitions and set up a dual boot, e.g. using Easy BCD, into Windows plus a desktop Linux package - for one thing, the latter is very useful for reading ext2 DCP drives).

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 06-26-2014, 01:40 PM:

If you keep a notebook or desktop with XP around, make sure you keep its installation as clean as possible and have the installation backed up with something like Norton Ghost.

If you perform a clean install of Windows XP on an old computer you're not going to get any patches from Microsoft. They removed everything related to Windows XP from their Windows Update website.

I found this out the hard way. We have an old PC controlling a vinyl cutter. Its registry was getting corrupt, bogging the computer down to a crawl. So I performed a factory reset, which wiped the c: partition and re-installed WinXP clean. The first thing I did was check Windows Update. All of the existing security & performance patches, including service packs 1, 2 & 3 were all gone.

Not only did that make the old computer more vulnerable to attack via the Internet, it created additional software issues. I had intended to install an Adobe Creative Suite CS4 package on that machine. Unfortunately it requires Win XP SP3 to run. That old PC is old enough I don't think it would run Win 7 productively at all. Plus I didn't want to spend the money for a Win 7 disc for such an old machine. So I wound up installing a couple now ancient Adobe CS2 generation applications on it (as well as Flexi Sign Pro 7).

Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 06-26-2014, 02:11 PM:

I have loaded W7 on some older P4 machines with no problems. As long as you have about 1GB RAM things should be fine. These machines actually run better on W7 than they did on XP.

So far I have only found one machine that I couldn't get the video driver for the onboard video, an old E-machines, and the video defaults to 640 X 480. I need a PCI video card to get that one working at better resolution since it doesn't support AGP.

Anyone have a PCI video card they'd like to part with?

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 06-26-2014, 05:11 PM:

I have a D520 myself. If you put WIN7 on it, you bury it. Keep it as it is. I actually have a couple of older DELLs with COMs on them on XP and I hope they keep as long as possible. With this usage profile in mind, future missing software updates are irrelevant.

Bobby - there is an offline updater available, installing all updates automatically from a local filesystem. A day before MS ended XP support, I ran a last update to make sure I have every update for XP and Office 2003 downloaded.

It sits on a dedicated USB-Stick now. You can install a virgin XP and have it updated to the very latest patches within half an hour without an online connection.

- Carsten

Posted by Shawn Arndt (Member # 7159) on 07-11-2014, 01:07 PM:

Very informative thread here. Thanks for sharing all of your experiences as it helps us noobs keep up a bit.

[Smile]

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 07-13-2014, 10:13 PM:

Kicking this back up has anyone here tried Virtual XP? It's a free app from Microsoft that that allows you to run XP inside of W7 or 8... Seems like a cleaner way of dealing with the occasional need for XP.

Mark

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 07-14-2014, 06:00 AM:

That is what I do. I have XP mode installed for those times I need a 32-bit OS to talk to older equipment with older programs. Heck, series 1 DLP program doesn't like to stay operating with Win 7 64-bit...but has no problem staying up living in XP Mode.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 07-14-2014, 08:22 AM:

Will it talk to COM ports properly?

- Carsten

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 07-14-2014, 02:41 PM:

Thus far...yes on most counts. It passes physical hardware between the operating systems and you can define things too. That said, I've had issues with things like the JSD80 connecting up. USL stuff drives me crazy on their older RS232.

Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 07-14-2014, 08:42 PM:

Yes, RS232 on the JSD-80 is a pain! The micro only has one uart, and it's used to drive an RS485 bus on the backplane. The rs232 is driven with an off chip uart with an sli interface. It only has a 4 byte fifo, so a lot of handshaking is required to not miss stuff.

Harold

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 07-14-2014, 09:15 PM:

I just had to replace a hard drive on an Dell computer which came with XP. The installation went without much trouble and I was able to install Windows updates through the end of life. This particular computer doesn't quite have the minimum specs for Windows 7, but still works just fine for it's intended purpose - as a secondary office computer.

As far as I'm concerned, there is no reason to dump a working XP machine until it stops working or is no longer meeting your needs. And if you are just going to get rid of it to upgrade, I'm sure your local school would be able to find a needy student who would be perfectly happy with the machine.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 07-14-2014, 09:36 PM:

Hey, the communication on the ECI-60 has raised my blood pressure too!

Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 07-14-2014, 10:34 PM:

Though I did the firmware for the ECI, I manage to hand off support on that to Rick E. So, I haven't looked at it in a while. I know the early ones had the Xport for Ethernet, which was a real pain. I don't remember too much about the RS232 other than it has a checksum mode that the GUI uses. If you then disconnect and use the RS232 for automation, you have to disable the checksum (typically by power cycling) unless you want to compute the checksum on all your commands (and I don't!). Rick does a great job supporting the ECI. I stick with the JSD-100, JSD-60, CM-8E, DAX-16, closed captioning, and LSS-100 since I can remember how they work.

Harold

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 07-14-2014, 10:47 PM:

quote: Justin Hamaker
As far as I'm concerned, there is no reason to dump a working XP machine until it stops working or is no longer meeting your needs.

The only exception to that I'd make is if the machine is used for a mission-critical application that requires it to be connected to the Internet. In that situation, the security vulnerability of having a net-connected XP computer would worry me.

I'm rehabilitating an early '00s vintage XP machine for use purely to control our d-cinema projector and as an insurance option to command an AP20 as a "get out of trouble" if the touchscreen should fail during a show (or if it's needed for a show before it can be fixed). So all it needs to do is run a terminal program and NEC Digital Cinema Communicator. With some more memory it would meet the requirements for 7 easily, but I can't see any point in spending the time or money to put 7 on it. It won't be connected to the Internet (the booth in question has a hub to which the projector, the DSS200 server, the AP20, a CP650 and this computer are connected, but which is not connected to the outside world at all), and so with the settings locked down (i.e. a non-administrator account will be used for everyday operations), there's no way any malware can get in, and with XP it'll do everything I need it to quite happily.