Getting on the internet via XP Professional is not happening with the basic XP Pro. I have checked and rechecked and confirmed my internet cable.

I have 4 purchased XP Professional 2002 copies with their product codes and another copy with SP3 on it that I do not have the product code for. I am building some XP machines for a friend but cannot put the service packs on due to not being able to get onto the internet. I have rechecked the settings, but have not discovered the incorrect setting. It has been several years since I built a machine. I think I need SP1 at least to get on the internet. I have tried with and without the IP settings in place. no change. The connection Icon reports comings and goings activity. Any ideas would be helpful.
 

bazz2004

Posts: 1,919   +311
There's not much in the way of browsers that are compatible with XP. Firefox version 52.9 was the last one that worked with 32 bit XP so you'll need to download it and save to usb on another computer before you install the browser. If you let the program update to the latest version then obviously you won't have a working browser. Finding a copy to download could take some time. I'm using 52.9 with XP running on a virtual machine and it works fine.
 

NikoBB

Posts: 134   +85
FF52, like Chrome 49, is long dead as a browser capable of opening actual sites. XP today only makes sense for audio/video for older machines and as an OS for some no longer supported hardware. There is no point in using it anymore today. RIP XP.
 

bazz2004

Posts: 1,919   +311
XP can supercharge a low spec machine like an atom netbook. Firefox still works great so long as you don't try to update it past versions that are XP compatible.
 

NikoBB

Posts: 134   +85
99% of sites (well, except for very simple ones with text) that I open in FF52 already work absolutely incorrectly. And already more than 10% work incorrectly even in FF94, which is only 1 year old! So your optimism about FF52 is not appropriate. Machines under XP, if you do not take into account the unsafe clones of chromium and ff of newer versions from the Chinese and all sorts of homemade ones, under XP, are already useless for the Internet for like 2-2.5 years for sure. In about 1-1.5 years, the same fate will befall W7-W8.1 (although the crooks from M$ and Google could have made it to 2025, especially since W7 still receives paid updates, including for the US Department of Defense - and this is taxpayer money, by the way, which means that all these updates must be available to at least all US citizens, as well as citizens of other countries where government agencies still pay for such updates).

I personally use XP only for a projector and music on an old computer, because, there everything goes smoother and without friezes, as in W7 (this is clearly visible if you start a movie in XP and W7 in the same video player with the same video card driver version - on XP, camera scrolls in scenes are smoother, about sound and speech no, XP absolutely rules here in terms of system latency and the likelihood of problems in playback, I somehow wrote about it in detail in the topic for news about chrome under W7 support end). Otherwise, XP (especially since it is also dramatically worse than WS2003 - the latter at least has support for GPT and disks larger than 2TB, plus memory support for more than 3GB and a normal TCP/IP stack with faster SMB) I have long been like a working environment not interested.
 

bazz2004

Posts: 1,919   +311
Certainly XP is nowhere compared to W11 which is my main choice but as yourself I use XP to run obsolete but valued software. That can involve some hard work. I have XP in VMWare Workstation on the W11 machine I'm posting from and fired it up to check what you have posted. YouTube seemingly won't work and said that I needed to update the browser - Firefox. I tried a couple of sites including ebay and Amazon which seemed fine although any transactions conducted in XP would be too risky. Then I did a search for some music videos of popular music. Many Youtube links came up and for some strange reason they played fine. There may be other browsers that support XP better. I remember Pale Moon but don't need to spend time looking for such software as most of my hardware will run W11 and up to date browsers.
 

bazz2004

Posts: 1,919   +311
This link gives details of browsers to download to try with XP.
 

SNGX1275

Posts: 10,613   +464
The OP never came back to say what worked (or didn't). But I don't think the actual question was addressed, he seemed to be having problems getting it "on the internet". Troubleshooting should have been directed towards whether he has network connectivity or not, rather than what type of browser delivers the best internet experience - IE5 that was XP era would still work today, just a lot of websites won't display well, but it can still reach out and pull information from servers.
 

bazz2004

Posts: 1,919   +311
If you put in some time using internet explorer on an XP machine you'll see that you are underplaying things. In an era when we need to be able to repurpose tech it's a shame that the big OS players and some of the biggest content providers like Youtube are actively making as many difficulties as possible for users of legacy equipment. I've just acquired an ancient mac mini running Snow Leopard and found parallel Mac related issues with Safari. It was just not usable. This took a fair bit of time but I eventually found that Arctic Fox and Interweb which are supported by third parties would give acceptable functionality in OS X 10.6.8. Apple kit is too dear but having now dipped a toe in the water I'm more inclined to consider buying an up to date Mac system.
I'll also add that OS systems like Linux don't impress me when compared with XP.
 

Macho

Posts: 89   +2
I have 4 purchased XP Professional 2002 copies with their product codes and another copy with SP3 on it that I do not have the product code for. I am building some XP machines for a friend but cannot put the service packs on due to not being able to get onto the internet. I have rechecked the settings, but have not discovered the incorrect setting. It has been several years since I built a machine. I think I need SP1 at least to get on the internet. I have tried with and without the IP settings in place. no change. The connection Icon reports comings and goings activity. Any ideas would be helpful.
Mypal web browser works with it. Of Course no more Internet Explorer will ever work again. Certification errors & more. But Mypal gets you on the internet and you will have no problems.
 

Macho

Posts: 89   +2
I have 4 purchased XP Professional 2002 copies with their product codes and another copy with SP3 on it that I do not have the product code for. I am building some XP machines for a friend but cannot put the service packs on due to not being able to get onto the internet. I have rechecked the settings, but have not discovered the incorrect setting. It has been several years since I built a machine. I think I need SP1 at least to get on the internet. I have tried with and without the IP settings in place. no change. The connection Icon reports comings and goings activity. Any ideas would be helpful.
I bought SuperMax from Ebay for under $100.00
and it will serve you well with them having it ready for your use with that Foxfire version and more.

 

Mark Fuller

Posts: 430   +23
I don't understand why the architects of the world wide web don't support legacy operating systems more than they do. Given the fact that there are millions of machines that use them that still work (they still use the same gasoline in an old automobile) it would appear to anyone with any general knowledge of accounting that the business that they would generate on the world wide web is not there. Also, to anyone with any general knowledge of networking all of them can still be networked with the most current operating systems.