Project: Windows XP Second Edition

[Steve]

>later versions of Internet Explorer such as ie9

I never saw a screenshot of XP running IE9, the only ones i was able to find were concepts. So i'd doubt that XP SP4 can run IE9 or any form of it.

Also may attempts at a "XP SE" were made. as far as i know.

:thonk:

If that's real could we get a download or atleast it's name?

[NermalCat79]

>later versions of Internet Explorer such as ie9

I never saw a screenshot of XP running IE9, the only ones i was able to find were concepts. So i'd doubt that XP SP4 can run IE9 or any form of it.

Also may attempts at a "XP SE" were made. as far as i know.

:thonk:

Holy... Now I am kinda curious. This must be either a VERY good Photoshop, a very heavily modded copy of Windows 7, or there's some real deep stuff going around here...

[theundeadwolf0]

It's actually just a modified VMware (removing the "- [vm]" from the application name) running on XP 64-bit. It's running two VMs: a Windows 7 and (not in this screenshot) a Windows 10 VM. The Windows 7 VM has an Luna msstyles port on it, the Windows 10 VM has a WindowBlinds theme that resembles XP as closely as possible on it.

So they're not actually running natively, but it's at least immersive.

Interestingly, a heavily modified Windows 7 is also an option, since the Windows XP explorer.exe actually does run on Windows 7 (albeit not perfectly; start menu doesn't work and theming is weird). I guess, with forcing the XP explorer.exe to use XP system files instead of Windows 7 ones, I could get it to work better. But at that point, why not just recreate explorer.exe from scratch anyway to ensure no issues will occur?

As for a download link, I unfortunately cannot provide one (it would very likely count as piracy), but to recreate it:
* Install Windows XP 64-bit
* Install VMware Workstation Pro 10
* Use a hex editor to zero out "- [%s]" in vmwarewui.dll (offset 0x2DAEF2) (removes "- [vm]" from taskbar)
* Set up a Windows 7 or 10 VM
* Apply either this msstyles or this WindowBlinds theme to get the XP borders.
* Put the VM in Unity mode (remove window decorations for more immersion).

[NermalCat79]

It's actually just a modified VMware (removing the "- [vm]" from the application name) running on XP 64-bit. It's running two VMs: a Windows 7 and (not in this screenshot) a Windows 10 VM. The Windows 7 VM has an Luna msstyles port on it, the Windows 10 VM has a WindowBlinds theme that resembles XP as closely as possible on it.

So they're not actually running natively, but it's at least immersive.

Interestingly, a heavily modified Windows 7 is also an option, since the Windows XP explorer.exe actually does run on Windows 7 (albeit not perfectly; start menu doesn't work and theming is weird). I guess, with forcing the XP explorer.exe to use XP system files instead of Windows 7 ones, I could get it to work better. But at that point, why not just recreate explorer.exe from scratch anyway to ensure no issues will occur?

As for a download link, I unfortunately cannot provide one (it would very likely count as piracy), but to recreate it:
* Install Windows XP 64-bit
* Install VMware Workstation Pro 10
* Use a hex editor to zero out "- [%s]" in vmwarewui.dll (offset 0x2DAEF2) (removes "- [vm]" from taskbar)
* Set up a Windows 7 or 10 VM
* Apply either this msstyles or this WindowBlinds theme to get the XP borders.
* Put the VM in Unity mode (remove window decorations for more immersion).

What about the desktop icons and WMP12 on the quick launch menu?

[theundeadwolf0]

It's actually just a modified VMware (removing the "- [vm]" from the application name) running on XP 64-bit. It's running two VMs: a Windows 7 and (not in this screenshot) a Windows 10 VM. The Windows 7 VM has an Luna msstyles port on it, the Windows 10 VM has a WindowBlinds theme that resembles XP as closely as possible on it.

So they're not actually running natively, but it's at least immersive.

Interestingly, a heavily modified Windows 7 is also an option, since the Windows XP explorer.exe actually does run on Windows 7 (albeit not perfectly; start menu doesn't work and theming is weird). I guess, with forcing the XP explorer.exe to use XP system files instead of Windows 7 ones, I could get it to work better. But at that point, why not just recreate explorer.exe from scratch anyway to ensure no issues will occur?

As for a download link, I unfortunately cannot provide one (it would very likely count as piracy), but to recreate it:
* Install Windows XP 64-bit
* Install VMware Workstation Pro 10
* Use a hex editor to zero out "- [%s]" in vmwarewui.dll (offset 0x2DAEF2) (removes "- [vm]" from taskbar)
* Set up a Windows 7 or 10 VM
* Apply either this msstyles or this WindowBlinds theme to get the XP borders.
* Put the VM in Unity mode (remove window decorations for more immersion).

What about the desktop icons and WMP12 on the quick launch menu?

Those are both Unity shortcuts (in the Unity start menu, right click on an icon and create a shortcut iirc).

[Steve]

It's actually just a modified VMware (removing the "- [vm]" from the application name) running on XP 64-bit. It's running two VMs: a Windows 7 and (not in this screenshot) a Windows 10 VM. The Windows 7 VM has an Luna msstyles port on it, the Windows 10 VM has a WindowBlinds theme that resembles XP as closely as possible on it.

So they're not actually running natively, but it's at least immersive.

Interestingly, a heavily modified Windows 7 is also an option, since the Windows XP explorer.exe actually does run on Windows 7 (albeit not perfectly; start menu doesn't work and theming is weird). I guess, with forcing the XP explorer.exe to use XP system files instead of Windows 7 ones, I could get it to work better. But at that point, why not just recreate explorer.exe from scratch anyway to ensure no issues will occur?

As for a download link, I unfortunately cannot provide one (it would very likely count as piracy), but to recreate it:
* Install Windows XP 64-bit
* Install VMware Workstation Pro 10
* Use a hex editor to zero out "- [%s]" in vmwarewui.dll (offset 0x2DAEF2) (removes "- [vm]" from taskbar)
* Set up a Windows 7 or 10 VM
* Apply either this msstyles or this WindowBlinds theme to get the XP borders.
* Put the VM in Unity mode (remove window decorations for more immersion).

That sounds inconvenient and wouldn't even work for apps that need GPU acceleration.

[theundeadwolf0]

It's actually just a modified VMware (removing the "- [vm]" from the application name) running on XP 64-bit. It's running two VMs: a Windows 7 and (not in this screenshot) a Windows 10 VM. The Windows 7 VM has an Luna msstyles port on it, the Windows 10 VM has a WindowBlinds theme that resembles XP as closely as possible on it.

So they're not actually running natively, but it's at least immersive.

Interestingly, a heavily modified Windows 7 is also an option, since the Windows XP explorer.exe actually does run on Windows 7 (albeit not perfectly; start menu doesn't work and theming is weird). I guess, with forcing the XP explorer.exe to use XP system files instead of Windows 7 ones, I could get it to work better. But at that point, why not just recreate explorer.exe from scratch anyway to ensure no issues will occur?

As for a download link, I unfortunately cannot provide one (it would very likely count as piracy), but to recreate it:
* Install Windows XP 64-bit
* Install VMware Workstation Pro 10
* Use a hex editor to zero out "- [%s]" in vmwarewui.dll (offset 0x2DAEF2) (removes "- [vm]" from taskbar)
* Set up a Windows 7 or 10 VM
* Apply either this msstyles or this WindowBlinds theme to get the XP borders.
* Put the VM in Unity mode (remove window decorations for more immersion).

That sounds inconvenient and wouldn't even work for apps that need GPU acceleration.

Exactly, it's just a proof of concept. VMware's 3d acceleration might work though, but it's just really buggy in my experience. I guess it doesn't work well with the already emulated GPU (since XP is also running in a VMware VM).

I assume a Wine port to WinNT could work for some apps (i.e. Firefox), but you'd probably be far better off just abandoning NT 5 entirely and using NT 6 at that point.