Windows XP 25 Years Later! An LGR Retrospective
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Date: 2026-10-28
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Comments and reviews: 20
jotabe1984
nowadays XP seems like a really old OS, and a really mature one. but if you set yourself back in time to 2002/2004 you had a really new OS and a lot of problems. The compatibility with x16 hardware was mediocre, 8bit was out of the question, and a lot of Win9x era software needed a lot of workarounds and sometimes not even that would make them work.
That being said. the platform itself matured a lot. WinXP crossed several eras.
- started in the late PCI GPUs, and lasted during AGP cards era up until as far as PCI-E gen2.
- started in the sdram era and went usable during DDR1 and DDR2 era. hell, some DDR3 machines are perfectly compatible with XP
- started with very small IDE HDD and lasted up until SATA2/3. With some workarounds SSD are possible.
- started with single core 1ghz CPUs and lasted up until 8 core 4ghz CPUs (some AM3 in certain boards are compatible with XP)
- started in the later stages of Floppy drive and CD roms, lasted during DVD and up until USB 3. 0
So in his long life experienced way more changes than let's say Win7 and even Win10.
Also the Service packs (in particular Service Pack 2) added a lot of features, i recall as a big feature the integrated firewall, a feature with heavy requests during the previous years, since 3rd party firewalls were expensive and/or heavy. Of course after some years SP2 was mandatory for many modern software, but it was more than O. K.
all in all, WinXP was one of the best Windows ever. it was about as revolutionary as Win95 (and the improved Win98se) but way way more polished and stable. Yet stability wasn't on pair with modern standars, but to me it was a huge step ahead and only 2nd to the best Windows in history (Win7)
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nowadays XP seems like a really old OS, and a really mature one. but if you set yourself back in time to 2002/2004 you had a really new OS and a lot of problems. The compatibility with x16 hardware was mediocre, 8bit was out of the question, and a lot of Win9x era software needed a lot of workarounds and sometimes not even that would make them work.
That being said. the platform itself matured a lot. WinXP crossed several eras.
- started in the late PCI GPUs, and lasted during AGP cards era up until as far as PCI-E gen2.
- started in the sdram era and went usable during DDR1 and DDR2 era. hell, some DDR3 machines are perfectly compatible with XP
- started with very small IDE HDD and lasted up until SATA2/3. With some workarounds SSD are possible.
- started with single core 1ghz CPUs and lasted up until 8 core 4ghz CPUs (some AM3 in certain boards are compatible with XP)
- started in the later stages of Floppy drive and CD roms, lasted during DVD and up until USB 3. 0
So in his long life experienced way more changes than let's say Win7 and even Win10.
Also the Service packs (in particular Service Pack 2) added a lot of features, i recall as a big feature the integrated firewall, a feature with heavy requests during the previous years, since 3rd party firewalls were expensive and/or heavy. Of course after some years SP2 was mandatory for many modern software, but it was more than O. K.
all in all, WinXP was one of the best Windows ever. it was about as revolutionary as Win95 (and the improved Win98se) but way way more polished and stable. Yet stability wasn't on pair with modern standars, but to me it was a huge step ahead and only 2nd to the best Windows in history (Win7)
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myne00
A few factors converged to make xp the one.
2k was a bit of a rush job to capitalise on y2k. Argue Try sp1 for a while.
Me. existed partly because of that rush, and 2k didn't get development time on dos compatibility.
Dos was still somewhat relevant. Xp did allocate some development time and time itself moved forward, making dos less relevant than 2k era.
Blaster Code red Whatever it was, there was a virus that basically got microsoft to down tools go back to the classroom and reimplement security.
AMD64 got some development time and Xp64 was the mostly baked result.
Both of which pulled resources from longhorn which was ultimately cancelled.
Did I mention time keeps moving linearly Well, that happened. Longhorn never got better. It was put out to pasture, mostly. Vista was the most-stable half-baked result to meet a omg it's been 6 years since our last version and xp64 was more of a tech demo than serious release panic.
7 polished it. Well.
Ultimately, most things boil down to time and money. Xp got the time and the money.
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A few factors converged to make xp the one.
2k was a bit of a rush job to capitalise on y2k. Argue Try sp1 for a while.
Me. existed partly because of that rush, and 2k didn't get development time on dos compatibility.
Dos was still somewhat relevant. Xp did allocate some development time and time itself moved forward, making dos less relevant than 2k era.
Blaster Code red Whatever it was, there was a virus that basically got microsoft to down tools go back to the classroom and reimplement security.
AMD64 got some development time and Xp64 was the mostly baked result.
Both of which pulled resources from longhorn which was ultimately cancelled.
Did I mention time keeps moving linearly Well, that happened. Longhorn never got better. It was put out to pasture, mostly. Vista was the most-stable half-baked result to meet a omg it's been 6 years since our last version and xp64 was more of a tech demo than serious release panic.
7 polished it. Well.
Ultimately, most things boil down to time and money. Xp got the time and the money.
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robinrai4973
I'm trying out a mac for the first time in a long time and I think it really highlights how pretty much nailed the basic Windows layout is - Starting a program _Start_ menu. Starting a search _Start_ menu. Starting basically any task _Start_ menu. Running tasks _Task_ bar. Close, maximise and minimise do exactly what you think. On mac to start an app you use the Apps icon in the dock at the bottom, to start a search you go to the top right of the screen for a tiny search button, to do some other things you go to the opposite corner and press the Apple icon, to see running tasks, you see if in the dock there's a tiiiiiny dot underneath an app icon in the dock, the red close button doesn't actually close the app half the time, the green button takes you to a weird fullscreen mode and maximising is double clicking the titlebar, etc etc, it's a mess!
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I'm trying out a mac for the first time in a long time and I think it really highlights how pretty much nailed the basic Windows layout is - Starting a program _Start_ menu. Starting a search _Start_ menu. Starting basically any task _Start_ menu. Running tasks _Task_ bar. Close, maximise and minimise do exactly what you think. On mac to start an app you use the Apps icon in the dock at the bottom, to start a search you go to the top right of the screen for a tiny search button, to do some other things you go to the opposite corner and press the Apple icon, to see running tasks, you see if in the dock there's a tiiiiiny dot underneath an app icon in the dock, the red close button doesn't actually close the app half the time, the green button takes you to a weird fullscreen mode and maximising is double clicking the titlebar, etc etc, it's a mess!
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XxLIVRAxX
MSN Messenger, the Windows Media Player skins, the themes and Wallpapers, Age of Empires 2, Emule, MSN Chat and Groups, all of that is burned in my memory.
Win95 was the OS of my childhood, WinXP was the OS of my teens, Vista (briefly) and Win7 were the OS of my 20s, I kept using Win7 until it was no longer supported.
Win7 felt like a refined version of WinXP, I guess it was that, but XP feels like going back to home base.
For a while I have wanted to build a vintage WinXP gaming PC using the case of the machine I had back in 2003.
Games like Homeworld, Rise of Nations, Warcraft 3, Starcraft, HalfLife 1 and 2, Deus Ex, Arcanum, Diablo 2, Fallout 2, Need for Speed Undeground, Worms, Quake 2, Sid Meir Civilization 3 and many others remain among my favorites to this very day, that was the golden era of gaming and the PC experience.
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MSN Messenger, the Windows Media Player skins, the themes and Wallpapers, Age of Empires 2, Emule, MSN Chat and Groups, all of that is burned in my memory.
Win95 was the OS of my childhood, WinXP was the OS of my teens, Vista (briefly) and Win7 were the OS of my 20s, I kept using Win7 until it was no longer supported.
Win7 felt like a refined version of WinXP, I guess it was that, but XP feels like going back to home base.
For a while I have wanted to build a vintage WinXP gaming PC using the case of the machine I had back in 2003.
Games like Homeworld, Rise of Nations, Warcraft 3, Starcraft, HalfLife 1 and 2, Deus Ex, Arcanum, Diablo 2, Fallout 2, Need for Speed Undeground, Worms, Quake 2, Sid Meir Civilization 3 and many others remain among my favorites to this very day, that was the golden era of gaming and the PC experience.
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Fudgelings
I remember using XP in school and on my family computer back in the day, and when i was getting 'my own' for the first time, which /did turn out to be/ the new family computer. they only did vista, which i didnt like. I couldnt play a lot of my favorite games anymore on that . Like the vista worked 'fine' for 'new era' games and things, at least from my experience, but going back to play monkey island and that stuff it just crashed after a few seconds
XP will always have a special place in my heart: 3 Its where i started to really 'get into' computers and gaming and stuff like that. I also miss how /visual/ the menus were, especially the 'start menu'. I terribly miss the days of searching down in the searching area of the start menu and it showing up. and now just wanting me to search on the web for it.
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I remember using XP in school and on my family computer back in the day, and when i was getting 'my own' for the first time, which /did turn out to be/ the new family computer. they only did vista, which i didnt like. I couldnt play a lot of my favorite games anymore on that . Like the vista worked 'fine' for 'new era' games and things, at least from my experience, but going back to play monkey island and that stuff it just crashed after a few seconds
XP will always have a special place in my heart: 3 Its where i started to really 'get into' computers and gaming and stuff like that. I also miss how /visual/ the menus were, especially the 'start menu'. I terribly miss the days of searching down in the searching area of the start menu and it showing up. and now just wanting me to search on the web for it.
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arcadeportal32
I had one of these in the eggshell color L1000R models Pentium III in amazing condition much later on I got from the side of the road, WinXP, the works, sadly it got stored for a bit and a mouse found its way in through an open PCI bay and sadly just frkin destroyed it beyond repair. :/ Still lucky to have my first PC, an also Eggshell colored system built around Sep of 1999 as one of the built launch PCs for Windows XP for businesses that had Win XP Pro installed when I got it in 2005 from my G-mom from her business with 4GB of RAM. Eventually upgraded the GeForce MX 200 AGP with a GeForce 6200 PCI card, then replaced the PSU, then the MB died around 2016, rebuilt it again, then rebuilt it again, now it is still my main Office PC with a RX 6600, Ryzen 5 CPU, 750watt EVGA psu, and 32GB of ram. Rip gmom.
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I had one of these in the eggshell color L1000R models Pentium III in amazing condition much later on I got from the side of the road, WinXP, the works, sadly it got stored for a bit and a mouse found its way in through an open PCI bay and sadly just frkin destroyed it beyond repair. :/ Still lucky to have my first PC, an also Eggshell colored system built around Sep of 1999 as one of the built launch PCs for Windows XP for businesses that had Win XP Pro installed when I got it in 2005 from my G-mom from her business with 4GB of RAM. Eventually upgraded the GeForce MX 200 AGP with a GeForce 6200 PCI card, then replaced the PSU, then the MB died around 2016, rebuilt it again, then rebuilt it again, now it is still my main Office PC with a RX 6600, Ryzen 5 CPU, 750watt EVGA psu, and 32GB of ram. Rip gmom.
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thelookofahero15
Windows XP was indeed a leap forward as a combination of the 2000, 98, and Me operating systems. It merged them together with two new simple consumer lanes, Home and Professional. I remember my IT friends savagely mocking XP, calling it a Fisher-Price operating system. Describing it as a modern landmark in the dumbing down of society. It was regarded as a cash grab for a long period of time. People were talking about boycotting everything after 98 and 2000 because they still had their discs that Microsoft could never get back. Launching a year or so after Windows 2000, which literally required no onlineor phoneproduct activation other than a key, people simply hated on XP. It was really not seen as a viable OS until many moons later. But I do get all the nostalgia. lol
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Windows XP was indeed a leap forward as a combination of the 2000, 98, and Me operating systems. It merged them together with two new simple consumer lanes, Home and Professional. I remember my IT friends savagely mocking XP, calling it a Fisher-Price operating system. Describing it as a modern landmark in the dumbing down of society. It was regarded as a cash grab for a long period of time. People were talking about boycotting everything after 98 and 2000 because they still had their discs that Microsoft could never get back. Launching a year or so after Windows 2000, which literally required no onlineor phoneproduct activation other than a key, people simply hated on XP. It was really not seen as a viable OS until many moons later. But I do get all the nostalgia. lol
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studiopond
I never liked XP tbh, it drove me to macOS/Linux and it was the start of me hating on Microsoft software. I found it slow, crash happy, full of weird annoying bugs and quite ugly. Attaching network drives would cause explorer to freeze for 2 mins on logging in, the OS would always slow down to a crawl after a month of use and the updater was agonisingly slow (though thankfully optional.
Still, nice to see folks reliving good memories of their past. Just because I don't like it, doesn't mean it hasn't touched people's lives. And when put into comparison with something like Windows 11, I'd take XP any day.
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I never liked XP tbh, it drove me to macOS/Linux and it was the start of me hating on Microsoft software. I found it slow, crash happy, full of weird annoying bugs and quite ugly. Attaching network drives would cause explorer to freeze for 2 mins on logging in, the OS would always slow down to a crawl after a month of use and the updater was agonisingly slow (though thankfully optional.
Still, nice to see folks reliving good memories of their past. Just because I don't like it, doesn't mean it hasn't touched people's lives. And when put into comparison with something like Windows 11, I'd take XP any day.
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izchann
I was a kid when I first used Windows XP around 2006-2008 - in the computer, where Red Alert, and Counter-Strike were introduced to me. The voice lines of the troops in Red Alert up to this day I can still remember. Unit reporting, High speed low-drag and of the iconic troop line was the Kerov reporting. On the other hand, I learned the shortcut for buying the weapons and other equipment in CS. Like pressing the keyboard keys B12, B34, B32, B44, etc. i missed those days.
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I was a kid when I first used Windows XP around 2006-2008 - in the computer, where Red Alert, and Counter-Strike were introduced to me. The voice lines of the troops in Red Alert up to this day I can still remember. Unit reporting, High speed low-drag and of the iconic troop line was the Kerov reporting. On the other hand, I learned the shortcut for buying the weapons and other equipment in CS. Like pressing the keyboard keys B12, B34, B32, B44, etc. i missed those days.
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onenightblitz
14: 10 I remember this being the only file in our family PC's install of Windows XP, and back in the day it was the only Windows XP install I've ever encountered with the David Byrne sample music file. Everyone else got Scherzo and Highway Blues. Even some of the customer service hotlines used Highway Blues as hold music. When I do fresh installs, Byrne was gone. Watching this I'm glad our PC wasn't an anomaly, or a result of some upgrade leftovers.
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14: 10 I remember this being the only file in our family PC's install of Windows XP, and back in the day it was the only Windows XP install I've ever encountered with the David Byrne sample music file. Everyone else got Scherzo and Highway Blues. Even some of the customer service hotlines used Highway Blues as hold music. When I do fresh installs, Byrne was gone. Watching this I'm glad our PC wasn't an anomaly, or a result of some upgrade leftovers.
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you2be839
I used Windows XP pretty much since it came out (due to all the Windows ME issues) and up until around 2015 on both my laptops and desktop PCs, and by that I mean I always had at least one partition or dedicated HDD to just Windows XP that I still used more frequently than Vista, 7, or 8!
Needless to say that it's also the DirectX 9 OS, and if you know something about PC videogames, you probably know how long that DX9 gaming generation lasted.
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I used Windows XP pretty much since it came out (due to all the Windows ME issues) and up until around 2015 on both my laptops and desktop PCs, and by that I mean I always had at least one partition or dedicated HDD to just Windows XP that I still used more frequently than Vista, 7, or 8!
Needless to say that it's also the DirectX 9 OS, and if you know something about PC videogames, you probably know how long that DX9 gaming generation lasted.
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NT2021
Such nostalgia. My grandfather had the same Compaq Pressario with Windows ME, and matching CRT monitor/speaker combo. He was an eBay powerseller and it just wasn't reliable enough with ME. So I helped him upgrade the ram and operating system to make it more usable. We also tried Windows 2000 and eventually upgraded to XP. It was such a cool looking machine back then, and you could store cd's in the front blue panel. Brings me back. Thank you LGR!
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Such nostalgia. My grandfather had the same Compaq Pressario with Windows ME, and matching CRT monitor/speaker combo. He was an eBay powerseller and it just wasn't reliable enough with ME. So I helped him upgrade the ram and operating system to make it more usable. We also tried Windows 2000 and eventually upgraded to XP. It was such a cool looking machine back then, and you could store cd's in the front blue panel. Brings me back. Thank you LGR!
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Takayama-sama
I used to work at a plant that produced floors for houses. The plant cut all its material on site using this old German saw and the program that ran the saw was on a computer that used Windows XP. Not sure if the program had to be run using Windows XP or if the company was too cheap to update things, but it worked pretty well, for the most part. Trying to figure out all the German error messages was also part of its charm.
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I used to work at a plant that produced floors for houses. The plant cut all its material on site using this old German saw and the program that ran the saw was on a computer that used Windows XP. Not sure if the program had to be run using Windows XP or if the company was too cheap to update things, but it worked pretty well, for the most part. Trying to figure out all the German error messages was also part of its charm.
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miguelque9102
At one point M$ pushed a suspicious looking update that authenticates if your copy of Windows XP is legit. As a twelve-year-old from a developing country, I opted for skipping it, knowing that my copy and probably any copy in my neighborhood couldn’t possibly be legit. Some days later a school mate asked me if I installed the authentication update because his computer has been hijacked with a black screen. Fun times.
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At one point M$ pushed a suspicious looking update that authenticates if your copy of Windows XP is legit. As a twelve-year-old from a developing country, I opted for skipping it, knowing that my copy and probably any copy in my neighborhood couldn’t possibly be legit. Some days later a school mate asked me if I installed the authentication update because his computer has been hijacked with a black screen. Fun times.
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Chalk_Ra
Somewhat surprisingly for someone born in the same year Windows XP came out, I was never around it that much. My parents refused to upgrade from Windows 98 until that computer broke and they got a new one with Vista. I then went to a Waldorf school which eschewed computers in favor of pen and paper. But my grandfather did have XP on a computer connected to his TV which made it feel like the world’s coolest thing.
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Somewhat surprisingly for someone born in the same year Windows XP came out, I was never around it that much. My parents refused to upgrade from Windows 98 until that computer broke and they got a new one with Vista. I then went to a Waldorf school which eschewed computers in favor of pen and paper. But my grandfather did have XP on a computer connected to his TV which made it feel like the world’s coolest thing.
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ericpullen524
Worked in a local computer shop when this was released. We were used to Win98 and Win2K for our business customers. When we first saw this, we called it Windows FP (for Fisher Price. We thought it looked liked a kids toy because we were hardcore computer guys. It didn’t take long for us to fall in love with it though, still my favorite. Probably installed this OS on OEM systems then any other.
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Worked in a local computer shop when this was released. We were used to Win98 and Win2K for our business customers. When we first saw this, we called it Windows FP (for Fisher Price. We thought it looked liked a kids toy because we were hardcore computer guys. It didn’t take long for us to fall in love with it though, still my favorite. Probably installed this OS on OEM systems then any other.
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TheWyldehart
23: 20 I had to use remote access from my computer here in Florida to my mom's computer in Maryland back in 2002. I don't remember the specifics, but I think she had just bought a new WinXP PC and needed help from her resident nerd (me) to get it set up. I had XP Pro. I was able to set up her drivers, get software downloaded, and get it running for her via remote access. It worked like a charm!
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23: 20 I had to use remote access from my computer here in Florida to my mom's computer in Maryland back in 2002. I don't remember the specifics, but I think she had just bought a new WinXP PC and needed help from her resident nerd (me) to get it set up. I had XP Pro. I was able to set up her drivers, get software downloaded, and get it running for her via remote access. It worked like a charm!
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Orzorn
Windows XP did so much for the NT kernel, but I really don't think it came into its own until SP2 because there was still a decent amount of bugs.
But still, multitasking was KING for XP. Playing music, browsing, playing games, often at the same time. You also themed the hell out of it. I remember having a Doom 3 UAC custom theme that made it look like one of the computer terminals from the game.
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Windows XP did so much for the NT kernel, but I really don't think it came into its own until SP2 because there was still a decent amount of bugs.
But still, multitasking was KING for XP. Playing music, browsing, playing games, often at the same time. You also themed the hell out of it. I remember having a Doom 3 UAC custom theme that made it look like one of the computer terminals from the game.
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dazzlernator
7 and XP will likely remain my favourite Windows OSs because they were both stable, resource-efficient and so much worked with both of them. I still have an offline laptop running XP SP3. I'd still be running XP or 7 online if I didn't have to worry about exploits as much. Windows today is a shadow of what it once was as it's bloated with privacy invasions and peddling of AI.
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7 and XP will likely remain my favourite Windows OSs because they were both stable, resource-efficient and so much worked with both of them. I still have an offline laptop running XP SP3. I'd still be running XP or 7 online if I didn't have to worry about exploits as much. Windows today is a shadow of what it once was as it's bloated with privacy invasions and peddling of AI.
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Ruben-GG
I moved school in April 2001 when I was about to be 7.
This was the first time that I would use a computer lab.
I remember that XP was on those PCs from my first year, all the way to my last year of middle school.
They were definitely the most reliable workhorses Microsoft ever made - they were even there when I returned as a student teacher at 14.
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I moved school in April 2001 when I was about to be 7.
This was the first time that I would use a computer lab.
I remember that XP was on those PCs from my first year, all the way to my last year of middle school.
They were definitely the most reliable workhorses Microsoft ever made - they were even there when I returned as a student teacher at 14.
reply
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