Can You Still Get Windows XP?

chewynut

Howdy

Random question. Is it still possible to buy or download some form of Windows XP (or maybe Vista) to replace Windows 7?

I'm asking on behalf of my parents. They were fine with XP which was the most current software when they were both working. Now they're retired and have a laptop with Windows 7 on it...and it takes them an hour to do something they could do in minutes on XP. And that's not even mentioning their attempts to use the Internet...:(

closed

Using the internet (and most other things) is just the same as xp, click on the browser icon, which takes a split second.

XP drivers may not be availiable for all the hardware in the machine, and it's unlikely to make the best use of the machine.

Chrisblue1962

One way you can get XP is to find somebody who is scrapping an old PC - e.g. eBay, which has a CoA (Certificate of Authenticity) on it / with it and then you can install XP from another CD disk but use the user code from the salvaged PC.

Many corporate PCs do not have their own disk / copy of XP but have the operating system installed via a network but using each PCs unique CoA. This method is used as it saves money by not producing countless would-be surplus XP CDs.

Using an OEM copy of XP on another PC breaches Microsoft's terms and conditions so be careful as an OEM version of XP will have "OEM" within the user code.

Hope this helps.

dalek

Microsoft have stopped selling XP.

They will also stop supplying updates to XP in 2014.



But ebay sellers still have XP discs for sale.

Scroll down the page i've linked to for different sellers and prices.

http://compare.ebay.co.uk/like/110914992521?var=lv&ltyp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes&var=sbar&adtype=pla

TakeThis

Make and model number?

lloydd

Could you not just enable classic mode in win7? At least it will look similar to older o/s's.

agrinnall

Rather than reverting to a OS that is no longer officially sold and will be unsupported soon, why not either find out what is taking your parents so long to do and educate them on how to do it more efficiently, or do a search online for 'win7 like xp' which will suggest a range of methods for making the desktop look and act more like XP (one if which is the method proposed by lloydd).

chewynut

agrinnall wrote: »

Rather than reverting to a OS that is no longer officially sold and will be unsupported soon, why not either find out what is taking your parents so long to do and educate them on how to do it more efficiently, or do a search online for 'win7 like xp' which will suggest a range of methods for making the desktop look and act more like XP (one if which is the method proposed by lloydd).

Thanks for all the advice. I'll definitely look for classic mode to see if it helps them.

Agrinnall, believe me, I spend about two hours a day going through the same thing over and over and over and over again with them. Their main hobby is taking photographs which they then move from the camera's memory card onto a large memory stick. You would not believe how many times I've shown them that you press this button. You click the pictures you want to move. Then you drag them over to the memory stick in the menu. It's every single flippin' day! :mad:

It's how Windows 7 groups everything together for neatness/whatever the hell the reason was they stopped doing separate windows for each task that is causing them the most problems. So IMO opinion, what's the point in them having Windows 7?...

Ben84

Windows XP is about ten years old now, it may be not so easy to get it to work well with new hardware that did not exist at the time it was produced. I have previously tried to dual boot older versions of windows on newer computers to get around the inability to run some programmes on newer versions, but I had problems with older versions of windows either not identifying new hardware at all or only using it with reduced functionality. Sound and video cards were specific problems.

closed

If their only copy is on a memory stick, it's not the best place to keep them.

Not sure what the problem is really, copy and paste is similar in xp and W7, the type of view in explorer can be changed by clicking the icons on the top right of the explorer window. You can get 2 explorer windows up, by running explorer (or by clicking organize, then changing the layout or folder and search options) a second time from the start button, and W7 lets you easily drag two identically sized explorer windows to each side of the screen.

chewynut

They find problems with everything. Seriously. I don't get how they manage to be so hopeless because one was an IT person thingy and the other was using e-mails and always fixing the computers when I was a kid.

I'll try and show them the two screen thing but god knows if they'll actually grasp it considering I've shown them how to move files about 300 times now.