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u/degentrified 1d ago
FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8
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u/iphones2g- 23h ago
I used to remember one by heart, lemme see if I can actually remember it still
MRX3F-4789T-2487J-KWKMF-RPWBY
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u/jld2k6 20h ago
I used to remember mine by heart as well too because I formatted my PC so many times trying to squeeze every fps possible out of quake 3 lol. It eventually stopped automatically accepting my CD key and I had to call Microsoft every time to have them activate it for me because they had something like a 20 use limit on my home edition to prevent piracy lol. I had to explain to a representative every time that I'm formatting to tweak my PC and they never gave me any trouble about it
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u/J_CC3 14h ago
What is this? I know it's a code but the oldest OS I remember using regularly was 7
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u/degentrified 9h ago
Its a cd key for authentication..someone stole a "corporate" edition of windows xp really soon if not before it was released and this was the key that a lot of people had. There was a list of oem keys that leaked at some point early on too
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u/iphones2g- 1d ago
Did the windows 98 and xp logo have a baby or something? As that is NOT the windows XP logo
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u/CaptainYaoiHands 23h ago
That exact image comes up on a bunch of sites if you search "windows xp logo".
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u/proudcanadianeh 21h ago
It shouldn't, thats the old style logo. I believe it died with 2000.
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u/Vincent394 13h ago
Actually, betas of Windows XP when it was still "Whistler" were the last to have it
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u/StatisticianUsual471 1d ago
After windows 7 it just went straight down hill
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u/phido3000 1d ago
XP was way better than 2000, and Win7 was a nice upgrade to XP. Win8 was, fine, the UI was a bit different, but in hindsight not a huge crime.
But XP was so good, it was peak of everything new was going to be better than everything that came before in pretty much every single way.
Win XP was peak humanity.
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u/fentown 1d ago
Did you forget about Vista being between xp and 7?
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u/AgapeAnus 1d ago
Vista with all the service packs after 64 bit compatibility was no longer niche was peak. Win7 was just more peak. Launch vista, much like launch xp, was ass.
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u/Simon_Drake 22h ago
Launch vista was ass and officially had a minimum ram requirement of 256mb which is insane, anything under 2GB and it's going to run like molasses. Which is what happened to a lot of people, buy a new laptop, hey this one has Vista I'll get that.
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u/alien_farmer1 20h ago edited 18h ago
XP was the OG.
XP is more than an operating system. It was production of peak humanity era. There is no other OS that had so much enthusiasm put on other than XP.
There were many different themes, wallpapers, sounds etc. And then there is XP Plus... Today, you get nothing other than minimalistic shit. There will be never better system than XP and XP Plus.
I remember the times where I lost myself in OS now, there is nothing to discover and do without your own games and internet.
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u/richempire 1d ago
I think I’m like 1 of the three total people that actually liked windows 8 :,(
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u/Carb0nFire 23h ago
8 or 8.1?
Because if you legit mean Windows 8, then you are a UI terrorist.
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u/Simon_Drake 22h ago
Christ on a bike. I installed Windows 8 on a normal non-touchscreen laptop and I literally couldn't shut it down. The only way to access the shutdown button was to slide a control bar that only responded to touch screen and not the mouse.
In the end I had to use command line to trigger shutdown instead. Then immediately reinstalled XP
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u/Bulky-Hair8606 21h ago
You can bring up that bar via moving the cursor to the top right you know that right
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u/neurorootkit 21h ago
Windows 8 may have had UI concerns but it was modern and stable without the ad-infested always listening garbage of 10 and 11
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u/apachelives 17h ago
On low end tablets it was near perfect and made sense, for regular desktop users it was a slap in the face. A free third party start menu made it great, Microsoft to this day still does not listen to its users and still doubles down on mistakes.
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u/richempire 13h ago
But, but…I liked the full screen start menu, I still miss it.
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u/apachelives 4h ago
I liked the live tiles, the full screen start menu especially the later 8.1 variant looked fantastic, its a shame they did not allow any customization or a "classic start menu" option.
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u/Tim_DHI 1d ago
I loaded XP into VirtualMachine and that bootup is pure happiness. Then I play some 90s early 2000s music in windows media player while working on 90s hobbies, then play some DukeNukem and Starcraft.
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u/alien_farmer1 20h ago
Just because of Xp, i will have an old laptop. I also have XP on my pc with virtual computer but it doesnt hit the same. Still good but not enough.
Also there are always some problems while playing a new game. Some games are unplayable because of software-hardware issues on virtual machine.
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u/KingEdwards8 5h ago
I used to do this inbetween classes in the computer suite at school.
Sitting in for the break with my Scottish CompSci teacher who was puzzled by a 00s kid having nostalgia for Windows 95/98.
That Time Computer really did do its time. Then one day, it turned off for the final time.
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u/Getoff_My_Lon_Cheney 1d ago
I’m old enough to still talk about Windows 95. “Remember when you completely fucked my computer and I had to buy a new one?”
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u/JeanJeanJean 19h ago
I'm old enough to still talk about Windows 3.11 but I prefer to talk about 95.
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u/TheRealFeal 1d ago
Win XP was the GOAT! You click a thing and it just works, zero issues. I remember i had to run many of my games in compatibility mode for XP for years after just to make them work.
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u/marcola42 23h ago
I'll just drop this gif.
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u/Dillenger69 Number 15 1d ago
I remember XP getting no end of hate when it came out
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u/No-Internal7978 1d ago
It was hot garbage at release and was worked on.
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u/Carb0nFire 23h ago
Everyone remembers XP as it was after SP2. But forget it took a while to get there.
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u/Damnation77 19h ago
All I can remember is that networking worked on release. No more rebooting after changing anything at all. Saved me about an hour of work every day.
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u/Willing-Bet3597 23h ago
Came here to say this windows 98 ftw
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u/I_travel_ze_world 18h ago
Win98 was such dog shit that they had to release a "second edition" that you had to buy to fix the problems with it.
There is a good reason why they retired that kernel... it is because it sucked.
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u/bluris 21h ago
In 15 years there will be people making similar memes about Windows 11.
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u/MegaMoah 21h ago
They won't, windows xp may had problems but atleast its not spyware and bloatware buily with zero thought of actual clients
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u/dgrantuk 18h ago
Well, people forget that MS made all users Admin so apps wouldn't break but then your machine became an easy virus target. The perfect storm of that and IE with crazy powerful ActiveX embedded objects broke everything so much that MS had to do a complete security reset...
Windows 7 was the best desktop OS because they learned that security with internet should be taken seriously...
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u/GlorytotheHypnoToads 1d ago
I got an old Dell desktop that’s still running XP. Used to fire it up every few years when I was feeling an urge to play some of my old PC games from when I was a kid.
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u/theexodus326 1d ago
I was actually telling my wife today how much I miss XP as I was waiting 8 minutes for file explorer to open on Win 11
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u/jeff-beeblebrox 23h ago
I have an XP machine that I still play civ3, StarCraft and C&C on. Fuck yeah.
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u/nissanfan64 23h ago
I used XP until early 2020 when I got my new pc. I plan to use 10 on this one as long as possible.
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u/Kenny_log_n_s 22h ago
Windows XP with all updates was critically vulnerable in 2020. Hope you never connected it to the Internet, or you've changed all your passwords since.
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u/nissanfan64 22h ago
I’ll be honest, not only did I use it but I used a pirated version with a bunch of system functionality stripped out.
Never had any issues. My computers generally exist for web browsing and watching YouTube. Never had issues with accounts being intruded upon. Never had virus issues or anything like that.
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u/Signal_Cod_1873 22h ago
The fact that I can hear the Windows XP startup sound just by looking at this image...
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u/DoookieMaxx 1d ago
Windows 98 with an “eXpansion Pack”
Windows left 98 and went with Windows ME and EVERYONE hated it. So they repackaged windows 98 and the rest is history.
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u/Cream-Neat 21h ago
A lot of people hated Windows millenium, but I loved it. Maybe biased since it was my first PC, but the memories are there.
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u/albygoing 19h ago
It was all about Windows 2000.
I forgot why I chose it but I stand by my choices
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u/SourceCodeAvailable Linux User 21h ago
Mac Payne was only working on Windows ME for me. Not XP, not 98.
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u/ahoymatey83 17h ago
I still remember my dad bringing home a hard drive that had Millennium on it. The boot up sequence back then to my tiny brain was mind blowing. Unfortunately. the hard drive did not live long
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u/Nervous-Apricot4556 16h ago
I was doing my apprenticeship in IT service during pr shortly after the ME era. It was a pain in the ass. Such a buggy OS...
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u/iamdanchiv 22h ago
Windows XP SP1 was the most unsecure & exploitable system ever gracing the masses.
You could load any weird site and end up with 3 Trojans, 2 Worms, and 10 popup exploits.
Thanks Microsoft, for allowing a small child to make money so easily by fixing these issues for his porn-addicted neighbors, lol!
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u/The_Infinite_Carrot 23h ago
To be honest I used to think XP was the OG at the time and hated Win7. Then I came around and loved 7 whilst hating 10. Then the same again liking 10 and hating 11. I still have to use XP, 7, 10 and now 11 at work and XP is not great really (although it was at the time). But 11 is dogshit and will continue to be dogshit forever.
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u/RxMurloc 23h ago
Still my favorite operating system all these years later. Simple. Direct. To the point and it just worked out of the box with no BS. (Or at least comparatively to newer OS)
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u/LiveAloha23 23h ago
I still have a Netbook with XP on it. I fire it up every now and then for a nostalgia hit
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u/meowizzle 1d ago
Just going to point out that Windows XP was just fancy windows NT (2000) after ME well....sucked and failed. Lol
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u/cafelallave 4h ago
Back when technology got better and better… now it’s just annoying and helps data corporations not people
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u/VeterinarianSoggy610 3h ago
Arguably, Windows 7 was better, but I get it. XP (after SP2) was special. It deserves its praise.
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u/SwankeyDankey 3h ago
Ah, windows XP and getting ludicrous amounts of viruses from flash games and Limewire
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u/bluecurse60 2h ago
I mean...enshittification does make a lot of older stuff look better by comparison.
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u/sooftcherryy 23h ago
The first pc I ever used ran Windows XP, and the feeling of joy was indescribable. Now it's just nostalgia
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u/BalkeElvinstien 22h ago
Ah the good ol days of signing into a computer lab pc in school and opening the games folder and opening kid pix or pivot
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u/Cheezeball25 22h ago
To this day I still use the fish background for my desktop PC. I refuse to change it
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u/RosieBaby75 22h ago
Those were the days, back when Microsoft products just worked.
Today I got the joy of nearly dying of a heart attack because I had to create and format my own document template because the provincial government posted a completely unusable template on their website that cannot be used in any way because it is three pages long and the document you’d need to use that template for is considerably longer than 3 pages.
The filename was also 67.pdf
67.pdf
There are no standards anywhere anymore which upsets me. Especially at the government. Does the government understand what the government is for? I don’t think so.
Why didn’t whoever created that template check it and question, “does this template I created serve its intended purpose?”
It’s abnormal someone would not do that.
What about standard file name conventions?
Also abnormal.
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u/Stare_Decisis 22h ago
You can still get a copy of xp service pack three online. It's been supported on Microsoft's industrial/commercial site.
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u/black34beard 20h ago
I break every single new os to make it work and look as mich like xp as I can.
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u/ExoticSterby42 19h ago
Lol I’m still working on XP on a daily basis, I have a stack of XP capable PCs in storage for a few clients. Entire production lines depend on this stock.
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u/invariant_4E3835 19h ago
Give me a Windows XP 2026 Edition with 64-bit support and drivers for modern hardware and we're golden.
The boot time will be so sickeningly fast, you'll have CS 1.6 and Winamp running by the time you've finished degaussing your CRT monitor.
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u/Ok-Limit-9726 16h ago
Was cleaning computer cupboard yesterday, found dvd’s of winXP,the V we don’t mention, 8, 8.1, 10 as my wifes pre built is not starting and i needed a win 11 usb…stupid pre builts don’t come with usb
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u/PotatoesAndChill Identifies as a Cybertruck 16h ago
I set my car's door lock sound to the Widows XP shutdown noise. It's fun.
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u/Mr_Lumbergh (⊃｡•́‿•̀｡)⊃ 16h ago
We think fondly over it now seeing the direction Microsoft has taken with it, but I remember exploit after exploit after exploit…
It did make me a Linux user though, so not all bad.
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u/Polinska 14h ago
I still miss XP's interface. This was just so pure, so simple. As beautifull as useful. Do I miss my childhood.
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u/jaeldi 14h ago
I'm so tired of the OS or an app trying to do things for me when I didn't ask for it. I'm tired of them trying force me to use AI.
I am tired of fighting for control of MY device and computer.
Is there a modern security patched version of XP? Even if it's unix/Linux with an XP skin?
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u/CobblerSmall1891 13h ago
I still have to use it and i don't like it. Let it die. It's not that amazing.
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u/Carb0nFire 23h ago
7 > 2000 > XP
Windows peaked at 7. It's been a slow descent into the trash heap ever since.
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u/VilificentXaraxis 1d ago
what even is microsoft?
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u/VincentNacon 20h ago
Ah. I can see where the confusion is coming from.
He's talking about Microslop from the classic era, there was a time before everything hit the fan. Hope that clear things up. Have a good day. :D
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u/Charming-Nobody-7132 1d ago
There was this Islamic version, I don't really know its origin, but my father got it one day
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u/LizzieAftynsonna 21h ago
Windows 7 Ultimate is my favorite OS... too much good and bad memories to just let it go like that... and those glossy Aero design, it's like a feast to the eye
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u/ashlynxxoooo 1d ago
The operating system that refuses to die in our memories"