Windows XP
 

yes that's right XP. I run two PCs with XP, one is now a very old xp2000 running at 1.3 or 1.6 mhz overclocked. But its a great PC with a good sound card originally supplied with dedicated software for the card, a Creative Sound Blaster Live Drive.

Having recently reinstalled XP for the first time on this PC this December, the ensuing pandemonium of graphic driver chaos, crashes and lockups, I found this site Guru 3D. Not only do they have a library of older drivers, but also neat section of utilities where I found a direct x rollback app enabling me to reinstall some old software that will only run with direct x 8.0, strange but true

I have recently discovered that direct x 9c or later can effect XP in some odd ways. causing strange symptoms of excess drinking, swearing, hair loss, not mention bouts of depression and anger. :/\\!! I would highly recommend that you never throw away old drivers of any kind. Happy days to you all.

http://www.guru3d.com/

Most graphics makers still support XP without question.

Still - even with an older machine, why not move to 7? The performance upgrade alone is well worth it.

I have 2ND PC not fit for the dump, a pice of junk iF any. 2.ghz cpu, 32mb onboard gfx, 1.5gigs ram only new rthing is a 80gig hdd & ram i bought for it don't know why cause its not good enough imo, i suppose i had dreams of getting it to gaming standards :88) But it had no problem running Windows XP with SP 3 and can run games like Warcraft 2, Earth 2150 moon missions no problem

Microsoft outdid themselves with XP. The most stable OS ever.
Win 7 is certainly a good solid OS, MS learnt from XP.
I have a second machine running xp sp3 as a second gaming rig, purely because some older games just run a lot better with xp.

I'm still on XP with SP3. It suits me well. I have no desire for more/other functionality. So I guess I'm not going to switch to another platform soon, even when MS support for XP ends next year.

If it ain't broken why fix it?

Enigma,

No reason to change if your happy. I will say that 7 performs better, generally speaking. Add in Dx 10/11 support and for most people those are enough of a reason. Still, as long as your happy, go with it!

i would like to contradict - less than 2GHZ, less than 1.5GB of RAM, less than a dualcore is a practical no go for Win7.

win7 without ripping your hair out is a dualcore at 2Ghz, 2Gigs of DDR2 RAM and 25 GB for the OS only. Then the programs, then the Data, then the Swap. make it an 80GB HDD
...and removing all the extras that eat up Memory.

Proper Win7 starts above that, in computers with dual 3Ghz, 2.5 or3 GB of 667Mhz Ram and a 120+ HDD... the earliest hardware i would recommend to run 7 would be from around 2007.

The official Numbers are these:

32-bit 1 GHz IA-32 processor Memory (RAM) 1 GB DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM driver model 1.0
(Not absolutely necessary; only required for Aero) HDD free space 16 GB

64-bit 1 GHz x86-64 processor 2 GB Graphics card DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM driver model 1.0
(Not absolutely necessary; only required for Aero)20 GB of free disk space

pulled from Wiki.

But they represent the bare iminmum for the install for a fresh Win7. They do not encompass the software that is the true goal to run a Windows, the upgrades, the additional features that are running BESIDES the Win7, such as your antivirus program and stuff.

Do not thrust these figures, but double them, just as much as you double the Hardware requirements for running a game at useful settings.

Hi,

I have a 3 year old dual core 3GHz pc running Vista, but it's only good for my interest in graphics really, it can't handle SH5 for instance so it does't get used much

My 2 XP computers run much better and the 3GHz one eats SH5 for breakfast. But the old 8 year (must be) one is good as well . It's very a good PC and it main function is running cakewalk sonar which it handles with ease.

The biggest issue I discovered while re-installing XP, was finding up to date drivers. Via do a 4 in 1 driver for the motherboard, but after close inspection I discovered some components within the driver were for 98SE, and put the computer crashes down to this Via driver. But all's well that ends well.

Windows 7 generally beats XP - unless your running OLD hardware.

For the record, the lowest machine documented to run 7 - a Pentium 2 266MHZ machine....

Source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/benchm...vista-xp/22006

That was tested before SP1 as well...

Ultimately - if your running hardware older than Sailor Steve, yes stick with XP. If you want to run newer games, you want DX 10/11 and your going to have more horsepower - which 7 uses to greater EFFECT than XP can.

So each to their own!

Yes I am using old hardware, creative sound blaster live drive. It's a great card with a front panel for inputing various devices, headphones, guitars, midi etc. Although I do used more uptodate PCs, this oldie has this usefull facility, and is hard to get rid of it for this reason.

It's not much use for modern software or games, but it is great for older software and it runs quite well.