Archive for the ‘Windows XP’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/29
When virtualising your final physical Windows XP machines (just in case you need to hook up old hardware that is unsupported from newer Windows versions), you need to figure out the kind of license of each physical Windows XP machine in order to stand a chance to keep it licensed.
This answer by [Wayback] Moab [Wayback] windows xp – How to know which license version has an XP installed system – Super User helped me a lot.
I tried to make it a bit easier to read:
- First obtain the “Product ID” from the Windows XP machine. It is derived from the original Windows XP installation product key and displays a few values:
xxxxx-yyy-zzzzzzz-zzzzz
xxxxx: the MCP (Microsoft Product Code) describing which product version, or in case of Windows XP: what language, edition (like “Home” and “Pro”) and often some more information)yyy: the Channel ID (especially important to set apart OEM from other channels; OEM is not allowed to be virtualised, so would need a complete new Windows XP key to be activated as Virtual Machine; Channel IDs being neither OEM nor VLK (volume license key) can often be re-activated, sometimes over the phone to explain the situation; I’ve not tried virtualising a VLK based Windows XP yet.zzzzzzz-zzzzz: semi-random values
[Wayback/Archive.is] Product IDs – Lunarsoft Wiki has quite detailed lists of not just the MCP and Channel ID values for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, but also the disk volume labels and setup.ini label values.
Often this is easier to do from the physical machine before virtualising it, but even afterwards you can get it by running Windows in Safe Mode, then use either of these to get the Product ID:
- Run the Windows Contol Panel applet
sysdm.cpl which shows the “Product ID” us under the “Registerd to” information.
- From the console, run
reg query "hklm\software\microsoft\windows nt\currentversion" /v ProductID
- From another machine or boot CD (like Hiren’s Boot CD or Windows Ultimate Boot CD), mount the hard disk, mount the registry hive, then show the above registry key value
- Download and run NirSoft [Wayback] ProduKey (which usually will give you both the Product ID and Product Key)
- From the product key, determine if you can re-activate Windows, either by phone, or by this link:
[Archive.is] Self Service for Mobile
I got the link from [Wayback] activate windows xp – Microsoft Community via [Wayback] windows xp – How do I activate WindowsXP now that support has ended? – Super User.
Phone (in most countries) and on-line activation should still work; it worked in 2016 (see [Wayback] license – Will I still be able to activate Windows XP after support ends? – Super User) 2019 (see [Wayback] windows xp – How do I activate WindowsXP now that support has ended? – Super User) and 2020 (see [Wayback] XP activation – Windows XP Home and Professional).
- When OEM, try to obtain a legal Windows XP license key that matches the MCP, then change the key using steps in for instance:
- [Wayback] Change the Volume Licensing product key – Windows Server | Microsoft Docs. I think this is what these below links are based on:
- [Wayback] Use OEM Version to Upgrade XP | Petri
- Licensing is a pain; this interesting thread shows how much pain:
-
- [Wayback] Licensing after Virtualizing Windows XP physical machine – MS Licensing – Spiceworks
- [Wayback] Licensing after Virtualizing Windows XP physical machine – MS Licensing – Spiceworks – Page 2
- [Wayback] Licensing after Virtualizing Windows XP physical machine – MS Licensing – Spiceworks – Page 3
- [Wayback] Licensing after Virtualizing Windows XP physical machine – MS Licensing – Spiceworks – Page 4
- [Wayback] Licensing after Virtualizing Windows XP physical machine – MS Licensing – Spiceworks – Page 5
- [Wayback] Licensing Windows 10 with virtualization technologies – How-To – Windows Forum – Spiceworks
I’m not a lawyer, and Microsoft Licensing is a pain (especially for products that are out of support), but it looks like it is about three licenses:
-
- the original OEM license on the physical machine that allowed you to install the original Windows XP on that machine
- the non-OEM license for the Virtual Machine (if I read the thread correctly, it needs to be a Volume License that has Software Assurance) to activate it
- an access license so you can logon to the Virtual Machine or otherwise access it
Alternatively, if you started with a non-OEM license, and you could re-activate it on the virtual machine, it looks like you only need 3 (if you could not reactivate, you’d need 2 and 3)
Chris (Microsoft) had many interesting responses in the thread: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
Other interesting bits in the thread: the XP activation servers are still working, but buying new keys for it can be problem and given the right licenses, reinstalling a virtual machine is virtually indistinguishable from cloning the physical machine.
Note that it is no use searching Google for Windows XP License keys: Microsoft did and invalidated them back in the Windows XP SP1, SP2 and SP3 days: Wayback: Error message when you install Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) or Service Pack 2 (SP2): “The product key used to install Windows is invalid
The 2001 Windows XP Professional License is archived in the Wayback machine as Microsoft Windows XP Professional END-USER LICENSE AGREEMENT: Windows%20XP_Professional_English_9e8a2f82-c320-4301-869f-839a853868a1.pdf (via [Wayback] Convert your existing Windows XP system into a virtual machine – TechRepublic).
Note this does not cover OEM or Volume Licenses.
–jeroen
Posted in ESXi6, ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, Windows, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/22
In 2015, I posted P2V of an existing XP machine to Hyper-V to have an emergency fallback when retiring old XP physical machines and did a short edit on 20210727 promising about a future article on trying to fix the [Wayback] stop 0x0000007B blue screen.
This stop can that can happen during boot when the converted Windows XP requires different disk drivers than the physical Windows XP. Windows Vista and up are smarter to figure out the required changes, but Windows XP wasn’t.
The above screenshot is actually from the same physical Windows XP machine after doing the conversion, I wanted to try and run the virtual machine on physical hardware close to the original before moving it to the actual VMware host (yup, the Windows XP machine had been used as a VMware host before, so it had both VMware Workstation 6.5 and VMware Converter 4.01 installed).
The reason I wanted to move my last Windows XP machine to a virtual machine was that it was the only computer that could still print to my old, but nice, Olympus P-400 color dye sublimation printer. I mentioned this in 2015 when Installing the PIXMA mini260 – Canon Europe drivers under Windows 8.1 x64 – trying to say goodbye to Windows XP
I need to find a way to get my [Wayback/Archive.is] Olympus Camedia P-400 Digital Color Photo Printer. That is a lot harder: the latest Windows [Wayback] P-400 Printer > Software Downloads are for Windows XP.
At the end, of the blog post are a few links on the stop 0x0000007B and the Universal Boot CD for Windows workaround.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Fusion, Hyper-V, Power User, View, Virtualization, VMware, VMware Converter, VMware ESXi, VMware Workstation, Windows, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/01/03
Great post [WayBack] The Evolution of Windows Search | Windows Search Platform, covering some 3 decades of search:
- 1991 (Cairo with WinFS)
- 1996 (Windows NT 4.0)
- 2000 (Windows 2000)
- 2001 (Windows XP)
- 2007 (Windows Vista)
- 2009 (Windows 7)
- 2012 (Windows 8.x)
- 2015 (Windows 10)
It is part 1 of a series of 4 posts by [WayBack] Brendan Flynn, Author at Windows Search Platform:
- The Evolution of Windows Search 👈 You Are here
- Windows Search Configuration and Settings
- What’s in my index?
- How to make the most of search on Windows
When grabbing them, only the first two parts were available. Part two was about [WayBack] Configuration and Settings | Windows Search Platform with an in depth coverage of both the old style Control Panel applet as the new Windows 10 Settings page.
Via: [Archive.is] Immo Landwerth on Twitter: “If you like Raymond Chen’s The Old New Thing, then you might love this new developer focused blog too. It starts with an interesting history of Windows Search, by @brflynn_ms. Enjoy & subscribe!”
–jeroen
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows NT, Windows Server 2000, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/31
This helped me big time finding failed logon attempts: [WayBack] Event Log Hell (finding user logon & logoff) – Ars Technica OpenForum
Alternatively, you can use the XPath query mechanism included in the Windows 7 event viewer. In the event viewer, select “Filter Current Log…”, choose the XML tab, tick “Edit query manually”, then copy the following to the textbox:
Code:
<QueryList>
<Query Id="0" Path="Security">
<Select Path="Security">*[System[EventID=4624] and EventData[Data[@Name='TargetUserName'] = 'USERNAME']]</Select>
</Query>
</QueryList>
This selects all events from the Security log with EventID 4624 where the EventData contains a Data node with a Name value of TargetUserName that is equal to USERNAME. Remember to replace USERNAME with the name of the user you’re looking for.
If you need to be even more specific, you can use additional XPath querying – have a look at the detail view of an event and select the XML view to see the data that you are querying into.
Thanks user Hamstro!
Notes:
- you need to perform this using
eventvwr.exe running as an elevated process using an Administrative user CUA token.
USERNAME needs to be the name of the user in UPPERCASE.- replacing
TargetUserName with subjectUsername (as suggested by [WayBack] How to Filter Event Logs by Username in Windows 2008 and higher | Windows OS Hub) fails.
- there are more relevant EventID values you might want to filter on (all links have screenshot and XML example of an event):
- blank (empty passwords) can only be used for local logon, so they disable network logon. That can be a useful security strategy.
Related:
–jeroen
Posted in Development, Microsoft Surface on Windows 7, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Vista, Windows XP, XML/XSD | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/23
lFor Mac keyboard keys, almost all (except the old solid and open Apple logo’s) have a Unicode code point, see for instance the modifier keys from the [WayBack] List of Mac/Apple keyboard symbols · GitHub (the “Alt” column has a solid Apple logo in the bottom right; on non-Mac systems it will look differently as it is in the Unicode private range: [WayBack] Unicode Character ” (U+F8FF): ‘<Private Use, Last>’):
| Sym |
Key |
Alt |
| ⌃ |
Control |
|
| ⌥ |
Option |
|
| ⇧ |
Shift |
|
| ⌘ |
Command |
|
These are the code points for the “Sym” column:
Keys on many platforms
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Microsoft Surface on Windows 7, Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Vista, Windows XP | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/09
[WayBack] How to turn on automatic logon in Windows
Describes how to turn on the automatic logon feature in Windows by editing the registry.
Most archivals of the above post fail with a 404-error after briefly flashing the content, but this particular one usually succeeds displaying.
It is slightly different from the one referenced in my blog post automatic logon in Windows 2003, and because of the archival issues, I have quoted most of it below.
A few observations, at least in Windows 10 and 8.1:
- Major Windows 10 upgrades will disable the autologon: after each major upgrade, you have to re-apply the registry patches.
- If the user has a blank password, you can remove the DefaultPassword value.
- Empty passwords allow local logon (no network logon or remote desktop logon), no network access and no RunAs, which can actually help improve security. More on that in a later blog post
- For a local machine logon, you do not need the DefaultDomainName value either (despite many posts insisting you need them), but you can technically set it to the computer name using
reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v DefaultDomainName /t REG_SZ /d %ComputerName% /f
- If another user logs on and off, the values keep preserved, so after a reboot, the correct user automatically logs on
- you need a full reboot cycle for this to take effect
- The AutoLogon tool does not allow blank passwords
I wrote a batch file enable-autologon-for-user-parameter.bat that makes it easier:
if [%1] == [] goto :help
:enable
reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v AutoAdminLogon /t REG_SZ /d 1 /f
:setUserName
reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v DefaultUserName /t REG_SZ /d %1 /f
:removePasswordIfItExists
reg delete "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v DefaultPassword /f
if [%2] == [] goto :eof
:setPassword
reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v DefaultPassword /t REG_SZ /d %2 /f
goto :eof
:help
echo Syntax:
echo %0 username password
The article quote:
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Microsoft Surface on Windows 7, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2021/06/11
From my answer at [WayBack] hard drive – defrag /x – consolidate free space not really working – Windows Server 2012 – Server Fault
I’ve tried many tools, starting with defrag C: /X (which tries, but doesn’t give good results) and found out these steps give the best results:
- Perform an Ultradefrag full optimisation
- Perform a MyDefrag
Consolidate free space script on the drive.
Note that MyDefrag (formerly named JkDefrag) is not maintained any more but the 4.3.1 version in the WayBack machine still works very well as the underlying defragmentation APIs in Windows haven’t changed.
References:
The original MyDefrag disappeared two times (temporarily in 2014 because the domain expired, then permanently in 2017 because the domain went off-line).
Luckily, the WayBack machine at archive.org has the latest version saved (not all the links from the archive.org search page have an executable as sometimes it shows the expired domain or a non-existing redirect when the domain got off-line):
Note that chocolatey install --yes mydefrag --version 4.3.11 fails because of the missing download. See [WayBack] Chocolatey Software | MyDefrag 4.3.1.
(The --version parameter trick is from [WayBack] Chocolatey – How to install hidden and unlisted package? – Super User, via [WayBack] “This package is unlisted and hidden from package listings.” – Google Search).
–jeroen
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2019/12/02
When safe mode is a good thing: [WayBack] Windows XP Pro won’t boot, safe mode boot hangs at agp440.sys – Microsoft Community
During the regular boot, after a minute or so on SSD, a legacy Windows XP SP3 machine didn’t reboot.
During safe mode, it hung after loading agp440.sys. Apparently this is a Good Thing ™ as it means that chkdsk is running in the background as the post above explains.
Nice to know!
–jeroen
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2019/10/25
By default, Chrome uses the same proxy server as Internet Explorer: the system one that your Chrome settings page accesses from chrome://settings/search#proxy through this command-line call:
"C:\Windows\system32\rundll32.exe" C:\Windows\system32\shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL C:\Windows\system32\inetcpl.cpl,,4
There is no GUI way inside Chrome to change this, but there is a command-line parameter: --proxy-server="ipaddress:port"
So create a new shortcut to Chrome, then you can change it.
This comes in very handy if you want to test
- some sessions through for instance Internet Explorer going through HTTP Fiddler (that defaults at localhost:8888)
- other sessions through Cntlm (that defaults to localhost:3128)
Some background information:
–jeroen
Posted in Chrome, Cntlm, NTLM, Power User, Web Browsers, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows-Http-Proxy | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 