Windows XP

Windows Update

Microsoft does not serve updates for Windows XP anymore, use Legacy Update to restore Windows Update functionality.

The website is set up for backwards compatibility with Internet Explorer 6, so just open http://legacyupdate.net and go from there.

If you opt-in for "Windows Embedded 2009 updates", be prepared for obscene amounts of updates, and some of them force-restart Windows after installation. I'd argue you don't need them if you don't intend to go online (e.g. a retrogaming PC).

To retrigger Windows Update Agent: wuauclt /detectnow

Web browsers

Internet Explorer 6 and 8 do not support modern HTTPS, and modern web avoids unencrypted protocols as much as possible, but there are still WinXP-compatible browsers capable of accessing modern web.

• Supermium
  • Chrome fork patched to work on Windows XP
  • Still actively maintained
  • Requires SSE2 CPU instruction set
  • Crashes on some websites, i suggest having Firefox installed as a backup
  • To download using Internet Explorer: http://win32subsystem.live/supermium/legacy/
• Firefox 52.9.0 (June 26, 2018)
  • Increasingly degraded support for modern web features
  • The last "official" browser supporting Windows XP
  • To download using Internet Explorer, access the "FTP" server using HTTP protocol: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/52.9.0esr/win32/en-US/

Text editors

• GitHub Codespaces works in Supermium
  • A way to run latest versions of VSCode, extensions and toolchains on Windows XP
• Notepad++ 7.9.2 (Jan 1, 2021)

Development tools

• Git for Windows 2.10.0 (August 25th 2016)
  • According to this answer on StackExchange, this is the last version that is fully compatible with Windows XP
  • Is compatible with GitHub
• TortoiseGit
  • Developers claim the last version supporting Windows XP is 1.8.16.0 but it fails with Windows Installer error
  • Version 1.7.15.0 works on vanilla Windows XP SP3

Messengers

Discord web version works in Supermium.

FTP/SFTP clients

• Bitvise SSH Client
  • Still actively maintained
  • Version 9.33 (20 December 2023) tested to support Windows XP SP3
  • Supports modern encryption protocols
  • Features SSH Terminal and SFTP file transfer
• FileZilla 3.8.0 (2014-03-28)
  • Does not support modern SFTP encryption protocols

Utilities

• 7-Zip
• HWiNFO (download "Portable" release, run HWiNFO32.exe)
• Keyboard Test Utility
• MSI Afterburner (throws an error on launch, but otherwise compatible)

Force high refresh rate in games

Use RefreshLock app.