Help! Having to use old XP desktop

[flashguy]

My laptop died yesterday (screen went dark, although still powered up). The external monitor went dark, too. Am now attempting to struggle along with my old XP desktop. I can get to this forum and some others, but cannot seem to connect with Yahoo! to get my mail. What do I need to do?

flashguy

[Bigfoot]

Re: Help! Having to use old XP desktop

You may just need an updated browser. IE10/11 or the newest Firefox, opera, pale moon, etc.

[Herr Walther]

Re: Help! Having to use old XP desktop

You can't run IE10/11 on XP. It is unsupported. Chrome is also unsupported and I'm not certain about Firefox.

You are taking an extreme security risk using this system for internet access.

Obviously, it sounds as though you lost the GPU on the motherboard of your laptop, and that is soldered to the board. Not an easy fix, but not impossible either. Unfortunately, probably not cost effective to diagnose and fix either unless it's less that two years old.

I had this rude awakening when I reloaded the XP Pro system to one of my older computers. There was hardly anything that would run on it. I bought a licensed copy of Win 7 Pro 32 and I was back in business.

What are your computer specifications? Processor, RAM, etc? Upgrading to Win 7 may be a viable option if you don't want to buy a new system.

[9th Company]

Re: Help! Having to use old XP desktop

Or reformat and put a Linux distro on:

https://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php

[Herr Walther]

Re: Help! Having to use old XP desktop

That'll work too. I like Zorin, but I've tried Mint too. Zorin is most like Windows 7.

Wine will not allow PS, iTunes, or my comm programs to run, so I don't run Linux regularly, but I have a T520 with dual 500GB hard drives with separate O/S's. One runs Windows 7 Pro 64 and the other runs Zorin.

[Mac's!]

Re: Help! Having to use old XP desktop

I like XP (Home Edition) and it's all I run on all of my systems. They're all connected up to talk to each other on an internal system and internet capable on Firefox 47.0.01. Yeah, I know it's not the latest hi-teck stuff but it works and works pretty fast too!

[Herr Walther]

Re: Help! Having to use old XP desktop

Flashguy, what are your computer specs?

[flashguy]

Re: Help! Having to use old XP desktop

It's a Dell tower with a Pentium 4 CPU 2.66GHz, 2 GB of RAM, and a 40GB hard drive. I have a 500GB external drive connected via USB that contains my important documents and my photographs.

I recently purchased a new Dell tower with 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive, with W7Pro installed and it should be here this week. It does not have its own display, but my 27" monitor is still working and I expect it to continue for a while yet. It will be interesting trying to get all my applications moved to a new machine, though.

I do have a couple of applications that only work on XP, but my former desktop computer ran them OK using the W7Pro XP emulator, so I should be OK with the new one.

Regarding security, I am not able to do much with the old XP machine--I can read my mail (not reply) and work with some web fora. I have avoided doing anything financial for fear that my accounts could be compromised.

All things considered, I should be back to normal (?) in a few days. Thanks for all your help.

flashguy

[Herr Walther]

Re: Help! Having to use old XP desktop

Win 7 would not run very well on a P-IV processor. It might not even install on such a system. Win 7 requires a dual-core processor for satisfactory results.

I have a machine I bought new in '06 that has a Core 2 Duo E4400 2.0 Ghz processor and it loves Win 7 32 bit. Runs better than it did on XP Pro.

You were better off buying a new machine.

[flashguy]

Re: Help! Having to use old XP desktop

The new PC was picked up today and I've got it set up and working. Not all things have been added to it that I use, but I've got Internet connectivity, ability to respond to e-mail, and the printer functioning again. Even got my genealogy software loaded and rebuilt. The PC has Word®, Excel®, and PowerPoint® already loaded, but doesn't seem to have Outlook® (my preferred mail handler)--I'm working directly with Yahoo! Mail for now.

Tiny steps.

flashguy

[Led]

Re: Help! Having to use old XP desktop

Or reformat and put a Linux distro on:

https://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php

I have to agree!!! My "spare" computer has Linux on it. It never gets "outdated" to the point where it won't work anymore, unlike XP. Plug it in and go.

Sure, it won't do a lot of the things one expects.......but it is ALWAYS there for at least web browsing and E-mail! Beats being totally cut off from the World!

[Herr Walther]

Re: Help! Having to use old XP desktop

Linux can save a lot of still useful systems that would otherwise end up in the electronic scrapheap. With the caveat, that Linux is something that needs to be 'operated' more than other mainstream operating systems.

It is not exactly a plug-n-play OS as Windows and iO operators are used to.

Command line operations are the norm with any Linux distro and those sometimes vary between distros to make matters worse for the neophyte.

I am certainly one of those myself, though, with maybe the knowledge that I already know there are things I don't know. No one likes the unknown and that is certainly true with any distro of Linux for a new person.

[Led]

Re: Help! Having to use old XP desktop

YUP! Herr Walther is right!

My "VMware" player was NOT in the "repository". I had to load it from an "outside" source. All that is VERY intimidating, but you keep extracting files, and all of a sudden it will install. That may take a dozen mouse clicks or so..........

There are many times as a first time user of Linux, that I gave up too early........patience is your friend..........