Win XP is now far past Microsoft’s support envelope, and is as good as dead. XP went public more than 10 years ago - let me repeat that, more than 10 years ago and is so far behind current technology that it’s almost not worth bringing up in general conversation.
It’s time to upgrade. There’s no nice way to say it…XP is dead, and it’s time to move on.
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How does windows 10 know what version you need to upgrade to? Example my laptop has Win 7 Ultimate and my Desktop has Win 7 Pro. I haven’t even researched windows 10 yet. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it - sometimes.
Windows 10 is pretty good - I’ve already switched over on most of my computers - but as with any new version of Windows, it’s still a little immature, and some people are experiencing issues. If/when you do decide to take the plunge, the installer will automatically detect which version of Windows 7/8 you’re running, and install the appropriate version of 10.
There’s a big service release for 10 coming out in November, and it’s purportedly going to fix a bunch of stuff (that probably should have been fixed before the public release LOL) and make the whole thing a lot easier to deal with. 
The upgrade to 10 is free (on eligible computers) through July of next year. You don’t need a new license key for it either, you can skip right over that part during installation if it happens to ask you. Once it’s installed, it takes a “fingerprint” from your specific hardware configuration, and will automatically activate itself when it’s online. After a successful upgrade and activation, you can wipe that particular computer and start clean with 10 (if you want) and it will still activate itself without a key. It’s a pretty slick system,
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Good info, think I’ll wait a bit for the November release then do some research on it. The reason I kept XP Pro on my shop computer is I have Illustrator 10 on it and Illustrator does not like newer OS’s.
That’s not exactly true. We just did a XP Pro fresh install recently and all the updates are still available for download on the Microsoft web site, so they are still supporting XP.
We still have 2 CNC routers running XP Pro with Mach3 and I would never consider upgrading them.
We have an Acer Aspire ONE laptop with XP Home loaded, Intel Atom 1.60Ghz CPU and 1gb ram running our image to gcode programs and streaming to our EmBlaser to laser engrave photos.
We are still running Windows 98SE and DOS 6.22 (released June 1998?) with our 4 axis CNC mill & 8 station auto tool turret lathe in our shop. They have 16GB Duracell Compact flash drives with IDE adapters for the Hard Drives, 128mb of ram and 8mb video cards. Did thousands of hours of production work using those machines over the past 14 years since I built them. Can’t find anything more simple and reliable. We have done some very complex 3D machining jobs with the mill using very large gcode files generated with KeyCreator Cad/Cam. Load them to Win98 using a USB thumb drive, then boot to DOS to run the files. I would never consider moving on and upgrading the operating system on those CNC machines.
I agree with @DavidYerkes statement. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
We are still running Win 8.1 with our Shapeoko and will not upgrade to Win10 until all the issues are fixed, but John, our software engineer has tested our software programs extensively with Win10 without finding any issues running them.
I did the win 10 upgrade on my shop laptop, A dell latitude D531 2.0 ghz running win 7 ultimate w/4 gb ram, and reverted back when i discovwered that i could no longer run a second monitor on the vga output from the laptop. I get a much clearer image on the second monitor and on this system it serves as my primary screen.
I guess i will wait until I find out that win 10 will let me have my second screen bfore i try the upgrade again
I think it supports. You may want to check this.
They are not actively supporting XP at the consumer level anymore, I’m afraid. End of Life was early last year. Businesses can get continuing support, but at the consumer level, there haven’t been any new updates or security fixes in over a year.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/WindowsForBusiness/end-of-xp-support
Any personal computer that’s going to be facing the internet really needs to not be running Windows XP anymore.
We are a consumer, so yes they are still supporting us. We still have a couple of XP PC’s online and still get periodic automatic security updates from Microsoft.
No, you don’t get periodic automatic security updates for XP, and haven’t since April 2014 unless you have a business support contract. They stopped issuing them over a year ago. I’m sorry, but whatever you think is happening, isn’t actually happening. I’m not just making this up as I go along. The retirement of XP has required significant attention in the IT industry for quite a while. It’s now a blatant network security risk and is being purged, much to the delight of many a sysadmin.
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Tim,
I know what Microsofts official policy is. And I was very surprised the first time it happened, but since the “End of Life” officially happened I’ve seen 2 or 3 updates come through on an XP machine I have to keep running. I know this will not go on forever, but I have seen it happen. And while this is in a work environment, this was just a consumer licensed computer.
While from a security standpoint I agree with you. There is often software ( and sometimes hardware) that just runs best on older OS’es. Even compatibility modes will sometimes not work this out. Heck I’ve heard of folks keeping pc’s with Windows 98 going for this very reason.
This is the part where I just throw my hands in the air and give up. I obviously have no idea what I’m talking about.
but. after inspecting my xp powered media server yes it still gets updates but none that are critical to the security of the machine
Is anyone using Xpadder with windows 10? and if so what version of Xpadder works? I was also wondering if anyone using PicSender was using an Xbox controller to jog the router?
hey shane is there any way of getting this to work with windows 10? I downloaded and it says I have the wrong windows version lol
Well well looks like I will be looking into this just lost my laptop due to hard disk failure got another drive and win 10 so I will report back later with my findings. Seeing as how I am setting everything up again.
have you tried right clicking on the file and go to properties and change the compatibility mode.
I was going to make another linux box but the software options are better on windows. If it ever comes to having to rebuild the xcarve it will be rebuilt and adapted to my wood lathe.
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Ok so I am toying with it at the moment came across the same issue. right click on the xpadder app icon and click trouble shoot compatibility and it should set it up of you can wait on the updated video I am working on at the moment.
Hey shane yeah I figured that out and actually got an old version of xpadder to work on my computer but none of my game controllers show up in xpadder
so I went to microsoft and downloaded the game controller driver and installed it then I went back to xpadder and nothing lol
and according to the device manager everything says its okay
so I guess my question is I am trying to use a wireless controller with a usb cord attached to the back of it. So is that my problem? should I be using a true wired controller for this