Windows XP Ending

There are disks issued with new PC's all the time that don't require a COA if installed on a PC from the company. Dell disks will do this. I'm surprised you were able to do that with a Dell install disk. A Compaq/HP disk will check for product signature. A master disk with all versions of Windows that will work on any PC is not legal! I don't care what anyone does at a personal level but this board is public and cannot be complicit in such acts

My gosh I have two laptops and three desktops. Guess I will update laptops at least.

It's just my opinion but I would only upgrade PC's which will be used for online banking, PayPal or any other sensitive activity requiring SS numbers and bank passwords. I will have several XP-Pro computers which will be fine for logging into forums, online research, and storing such things as schematics.

A good source for a reasonable priced copy of Windows 7 is newegg.com.

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/04/08/end-windows-xp-support-spells-trouble-for-consumers-businesses/?intcmp=features#

I understand it is not legal BC master disc are supposed to be for computer repair shops and dealers.. I hope I do not have an issue with my laptop since it is only around 6 months old. Years ago I used to purchase a copy of XP from a computer repair shop with no COA. They would tell you to use the COA already on your machine. All those disc were DELL versions and they worked fine in every machine I installed them in. Most of the time it was an Emachine. Since that is what I usually used to own since they were either free or a curb find.

I'm not trying to be anyone's conscience and I'm not the software police but I do have an obligation to make sure this board does not condone any inappropriate actions.

Unless you have been in contact with Mircosoft (and I have) about upgrades and COA's you have no idea what's legal and not. There are holes in everything, even security measures. Just because it works does not mean it's legal. If I lock my front door but forget the back door and you decide, to enter and take something, it's still stealing!

The fact that this thread is about Windows XP makes it very searchable, we cannot be the site that informs people on how to get around paying for an upgrade when they should.

Again, my concern is to protect TRF from conflict with Microsoft!

On a more benign and less litiginious note, how new and special does a computer have to be to run the currently supported operating systems? I have an old Dell GX series pc.

It depends on processor speed and the amount of memory the PC will handle. I've seen XP Home run with only 512K and a 486 processor. From what I remember of that series it's time to give it up unless you want to use it for something like retrieving schematics. I have an old PC in the shop running Windows 98SE just for electronic documentation.

If you want to run Windows 7 on your PC, here's what it takes:

1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)

16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)

DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Remember this is just to run Windows 7, it could still fall on it's face depending on what software you run on it!

Also the Disk its self comes into play, in fact in order to install most recent Os's you would have to format the disck to run on 32 bit and now for win 8 its 64 bit.

I had XP on a 300 MHZ machine with a very minimal amount of RAM. That machine ran great besides the fact it only had a 6 GB HDD in it. So I had enough room for windows and a couple programs that used little space. It ran better than a 700MHZ machine I had after it. I believe you can run XP with as little as 128MB of RAM but I can't remember the minimal CPU speed,but 300MHZ is quite slow compared to machines now days.