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Jerry Cotton posted:XP had a "classic" theme (or something to that effect). Was this anything like how you could run the old Windows 3.0/3.11 program manager on Windows 95 if you didn't like the start bar based interface?
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Mar 27, 2019 12:51
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There was the hacked uxthemes.dll trick to run third party themes, I used it to run one of the beta version themes just to get rid of Luna. Towards the end there was a decent program to ape AeroGlass, which I used instead.
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Mar 27, 2019 12:56
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You could shut off the theme and make it look mostly like 2000 but I really hated how everything was in a different place for seemingly no reason and you needed to use stuff buried in the group policy editor to change things that used to be basic settings. I knew that it was completely different under the hood but I just wasn't willing to deal with it when I didn't feel like 98SE was limiting me at all, then I stubbornly stuck with it even after it was almost impossible to keep using it. I remember there being a few games that "required" XP to run, but then the no-CD cracks for them would also patch out the OS check and they'd run fine. This just made me even more convinced that upgrading was pointless. When I finally switched to XP I used a third party theme called HmmXP that was kind of like a more minimal version of the Whistler theme.
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Mar 27, 2019 13:01
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"Fisher Price" was the term I heard used to describe the default Windows XP theme, I thought that was quite fitting. Classic theme was definitely much nicer:  (by the way, the Windows XP version of Space Cadet works fine under VirtualBox (edit: for me)) When I invested a bunch of time in setting up a system, I liked the Microsoft Zune theme:  I also liked this third-party theme which required the uxtheme.dll hack: https://www.deviantart.com/b0se/art/XPMC-RC3-20901820 Sometimes weird things would happen though, like various UI elements would stop rendering, so I stopped using it 
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Mar 27, 2019 13:19
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Buttcoin purse posted:"Fisher Price" was the term I heard used to describe the default Windows XP theme, I thought that was quite fitting. oh snap, i'm off to play some truck dismount right now.
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Mar 27, 2019 13:32
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rndmnmbr posted:There was the hacked uxthemes.dll trick to run third party themes, I used it to run one of the beta version themes just to get rid of Luna. The Watercolour beta theme was rather nice, it's kind of a shame they didn't leave it in as an official option (or just the default). I used it for years.
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Mar 27, 2019 13:35
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Buttcoin purse posted:"Fisher Price" was the term I heard used to describe the default Windows XP theme, I thought that was quite fitting. Yeah, Microsoft had a bunch of interesting ideas for UI at the beginning of the aughts. I feel like it was an attempt at making computers more approachable. Computers weren't ubiquitous yet in 2002, and we had just gotten over the Y2k panic, so there were still tons of people who were afraid to use them.
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Mar 27, 2019 13:36
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I remember back then, you could hex edit Explorer.exe to change the text on the Start Button.
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Mar 27, 2019 13:42
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Wow, I completely forgot about how much I hated Windows XP's default theme, thanks for that anti-nostalgia. Though I guess the nostalgia part is remembering just how quickly I went through all the Control Panel options to find out just how far from that I could make it look. I cannot wait until Windows 8 is a tech relic so I can finally use it for nostalgia and maybe finally figure out how it works instead of feeling like an elderly person trying to use MS-DOS
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Mar 27, 2019 13:47
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Buttcoin purse posted:Classic theme was definitely much nicer: Most people here probably already know, but somebody's mind gets blown every time I mention it. The Space Cadet game that came with Windows is a demo table from a game called Full Tilt! Pinball. The full version has three tables and can run at higher resolutions. Edit: seems to work fine in Windows 3.11 inside DOSBox. 
A FUCKIN CANARY!! has a new favorite as of 14:41 on Mar 27, 2019 |
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Mar 27, 2019 14:21
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All that stuff Microsoft bundled and/or sold seemed to be licensed from no-names and ruined. Terminal Velocity was a fuckin great game until MS bought it and relabeled it Hellbender and hosed up the physics and visuals For years we had to support people who had installed the MS Frontpage extensions on their servers, which were apparently just a fuckin rootkit (also every file had "v" in its name apparently because Vermeer wrote it and MS bought them and never renamed anything)
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Mar 27, 2019 15:00
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Double Punctuation posted:I remember back then, you could hex edit Explorer.exe to change the text on the Start Button. I remember changing mine to LCARS.
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Mar 27, 2019 15:38
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best space slight sim is still the one buried inside excel 95
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Mar 27, 2019 16:09
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Fil5000 posted:I swear, I ran windows 2000 all the way up until about 2008. I had to find fan patches to get some games to even let me install them. I ran 2000 until 2012 when I switched to windows 7. 2000 will run pretty much anything XP does. It only really became a chore around 2010 when .net 3.x/4.x took off.
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Mar 27, 2019 17:43
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I ran Windows 2003 Server on my home computer because I got a free copy for beta testing it. It was awesome, it was basically XP with the themes service disabled, and all the actual server stuff was post install add-ons or easily disabled services. It was annoying for compatibility sometimes because it was NT 5.2 and that was newer that XP/5.1 so it would cause a couple installers to freak out. That kind of went away when MS made XP x64 Edition based off of NT 5.2 and devs got their poo poo together. I ran that til 7 RC1. Vista wasn’t bad, since I had a beefy computer, but it was never gonna be close to as fast as 2003, which was essentially just Windows 2000 Service Pack 7. It seems crazy that I ran it from ‘02 to ‘09 but people keep running 7, a 10 year old OS like it’s nothing.
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Mar 27, 2019 19:01
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7 has the benefit of a fully integrated Windows Update service that grabs your drivers for peripherals and poo poo. And a good number of preinstalled or generic drivers to get by on. XP was puzzling out how to make that work, from an era when USB was the wild new thing, iirc.
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Mar 27, 2019 19:11
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FilthyImp posted:7 has the benefit of a fully integrated Windows Update service that grabs your drivers for peripherals and poo poo. And a good number of preinstalled or generic drivers to get by on. W98 (maybe W98SE?) was when USB started to appear. But XP was still poo poo at the whole plug n play thing in the beginning. No one has to right-click an .ini file to install drivers anymore, thank god.
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Mar 27, 2019 19:26
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Laslow posted:I ran Windows 2003 Server on my home computer because I got a free copy for beta testing it. It was awesome, it was basically XP with the themes service disabled, and all the actual server stuff was post install add-ons or easily disabled services. It was annoying for compatibility sometimes because it was NT 5.2 and that was newer that XP/5.1 so it would cause a couple installers to freak out. That kind of went away when MS made XP x64 Edition based off of NT 5.2 and devs got their poo poo together. Windows Server 2003 was closer to Windows Vista than XP or 2000. They used Win2003 as the basis for the Vista codebase after they threw away the Longhorn code and reset development IIRC.
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Mar 27, 2019 19:33
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I remember when USB flash drives first became common they wouldn't work on Windows unless you installed drivers for them, so if you actually wanted to use the flash drive to transport files you had to also carry a floppy with the drivers on it.
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Mar 27, 2019 19:37
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This guy has a ton of videos going thru various versions of Windows, including a ton of beta builds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc_SvufBoFw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU5cF1IqN2E
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Mar 27, 2019 19:43
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FilthyImp posted:7 has the benefit of a fully integrated Windows Update service that grabs your drivers for peripherals and poo poo. And a good number of preinstalled or generic drivers to get by on. It does not have USB 3 drivers though, and will refuse to install on new hardware unless you create your own image with the drivers added in.
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Mar 27, 2019 19:43
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A FUCKIN CANARY!! posted:I remember when USB flash drives first became common they wouldn't work on Windows unless you installed drivers for them, so if you actually wanted to use the flash drive to transport files you had to also carry a floppy with the drivers on it. This was my experience in 2003 when I got a DellBox and they didnt ship the floppy drive. "HERE. Flash Drive. 16Mb much bigger then Floppy!" But the drivers are on a floppy 
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Mar 27, 2019 19:44
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I think Windows ME was the first version of Windows to support most (? I think) USB Mass Storage devices without installing additional drivers. I remember this because my high school computer labs all ran Compaq towers with the CRT stacked on top that ran.. WINDOWS ME. They were also routinely reformatted for some mysterious reason...
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Mar 27, 2019 19:49
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My first PC was from 2000 so while it had a CD burner and maybe a DVD drive I didn't have any USB anything Last Chance posted:They were also routinely reformatted for some mysterious reason... I once had a teacher yell at me in the face for not being able to turn off a game demo I loaded onto the room computer. IT COULD HAVE A VIRUS!
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Mar 27, 2019 19:52
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Remember this?
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Mar 27, 2019 19:52
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I weirdly never had any issues with Windows Me 
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Mar 27, 2019 19:56
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In my experience, the only thing XP actually did better than 2000 was handling of wireless networks. I'm talking about basic things like connecting to a network and entering the WEP password. In XP that stuff was all native; for 2000 you had no choice but to install whatever godawful "management" software shipped with your wireless card.
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Mar 27, 2019 20:18
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Powered Descent posted:In my experience, the only thing XP actually did better than 2000 was handling of wireless networks. I'm talking about basic things like connecting to a network and entering the WEP password. In XP that stuff was all native; for 2000 you had no choice but to install whatever godawful "management" software shipped with your wireless card. It was only native to XP after SP2. 2000 was marketed as a business version of windows, with Me being the home version. XP was the first time that the business and home versions shared the same architecture since the launch of NT
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Mar 27, 2019 20:26
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The Fool posted:It was only native to XP after SP2. I seem to remember that during development, the merger between home and business was supposed to happen for 2000, but for some reason they decided to keep going for one more round.
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Mar 27, 2019 20:29
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A FUCKIN CANARY!! posted:MAME can distinguish between multiple mice and I've used it for multiplayer Rampart. Yeah, they added it for light gun games and Rampart. I thought that it only worked on Windows XP and Linux or something, but I don't remember. I have a pair of Act Labs light guns for my old MAME cabinet that detected as a pair of mice. The ones I had had an S-Video interface so they worked on a CRT TV. They worked ok, better than the modern wiimote style of light guns they use on LCD screens, but not quite as good as a real arcade CRT light gun from the 90's.
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Mar 27, 2019 20:38
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The same goon that told me about this place also told me to drop Windows ME for 2000 and it's some of the best advice I've ever been given. There were definitely a few installers that would freak out but it was worth it. I ran 2003 for a few years too but by that time XP was out and it was easier to just turn the Fisher Price theme off. I was convinced for a long time that ME was just a ploy to force users to upgrade to XP by more or less breaking their machines but then Windows 10 rolled around and it's just as bad with no end in sight so who knows. ME broke in some pretty funny ways though, I remember having an error message as my desktop for the longest time because the loving wallpaper broke. Not because I had installed some weird skin or tried to open a corrupted file or anything. It just broke by itself one day while trying to display whatever stock wallpapers were installed. I tried fixing it but Google was 2 at the time and I'd be damned if I was going to ask that cocksucker Jeeves for anything so it stayed like that until I upgraded.
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Mar 27, 2019 20:45
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Old Windows trigger warning:
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Mar 27, 2019 20:45
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Lowen SoDium posted:Old Windows trigger warning: I remember doing repair work and it being a 50/50 shot at seeing homegrown porn if you clicked that button.
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Mar 27, 2019 20:48
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Lowen SoDium posted:Old Windows trigger warning: That little button would instantly cause a BSOD on my machine. Sometimes I’d click it while trying to open an item on the desktop.
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Mar 27, 2019 23:23
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Windows ME sucked dick, and I will die on this hill.
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Mar 27, 2019 23:26
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Last Chance posted:I think Windows ME was the first version of Windows to support most (? I think) USB Mass Storage devices without installing additional drivers. LifeSunDeath posted:Windows ME sucked dick, and I will die on this hill.
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Mar 27, 2019 23:34
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Lowen SoDium posted:Old Windows trigger warning: Good lord. I do not even remember what that could do, just that I would start shouting at my computer if it popped up and try to re-remember how to disable active desktop... If that was a thing. These last few pages are intense, man. Between active desktop and remembering the days when only our SysAdmin friend could actually get our systems networked for LAN parties, and it still took him like three hours...ugh. Ugh. I would almost rather edit CONFIG. SYS than go back to bad networking troubleshooting
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Mar 28, 2019 00:16
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Laslow posted:I ran Windows 2003 Server on my home computer because I got a free copy for beta testing it. mng posted:W98 (maybe W98SE?) was when USB started to appear.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95#Editions says this came out before Windows 98. I wouldn't really know, I used Windows 95 but the first PC I ever got with USB ports came with XP, and I still didn't use USB for a while because my SCSI scanner and parallel printer were just fine and always will be  (actually I can't get the printer to work now, I think the head has too much dried ink in it)This should say "You idiot! You should have turned off Active Desktop as soon as you installed Windows!"
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Mar 28, 2019 00:29
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Describing Win95’s USB support as ‘rudimentary’ would be kind. AFAIK, all it did was install drivers for the ports(if you had one of like two Intel motherboards); all devices had to install their own drivers. By 98se, I think basic mouse/keyboard drivers and a few mass storage drivers were included.
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Mar 28, 2019 01:46
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Flipperwaldt posted:Nah, that was one of the major differences between 98 and 98SE. I thought I might be misremembering but I did some Googling around and a lot of old articles say otherwise https://www.raymond.cc/blog/how-to-install-usb-mass-storage-device-on-windows-98/ quote:98SE doesn’t come with a generic mass storage driver that would install support for all standard USB storage devices like newer Windows versions, so not every device you insert will simply get recognised. http://www.technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/usbmsd98.php quote:Windows 98, especially in it's second edition (also known as Windows 98SE), handles USB fairly well, however there are no generic/universal mass storage device drivers preinstalled in the operating system, so you will need to install some additional drivers for it. Some manufacturers do however, provide the Windows 98 drivers on CD, others have them available to download, and others simply do not have them available at all. Win 98 SE had better USB support but not for USB drives.
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Mar 28, 2019 02:05
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