Z97 and XP

[CP5670]

I'm thinking of getting a Z97/4790K setup with the deals going on right now. I run 8.1 but keep an XP install around for some old games that don't work in 8.1 or an XP VM. I only boot into it rarely but want to keep it usable for now, especially since it works fine on my current X58 board and GTX 980.

There is a custom inf driver that gives AHCI support on XP on modern SATA controllers, and USB 3 should just revert to USB 2 speeds, which is fine. As far as I can tell, the only thing that would be an issue is the NIC. It seems that the Intel and Qualcomm chips don't have any XP drivers, but I believe the Realtek ones do from digging around online. There are only a couple of boards with the Realtek chips, however. I was thinking of the MSI G55-SLI, which seems like one of the better options.

Has anyone here tried to use XP on a Z97 system? I don't need it to be officially supported, as long as it works with some level of functionality. I found one random facebook post from a guy who said he was using it, but that was it.

 

[vailr]

XP-32 bit can install and everything worked okay on an MSI Haswell H81 system with Realtek LAN port (that I tried as an experiment), so XP should also work on a Z97 board.
There are no proper Intel GPU drivers available, AFAIK.
Note: prior to installation, switched from the default AHCI mode to IDE mode in bios.

 

[hoorah]

I dont know if this is the answer you're looking for, but I picked up a Realtek Gigabit pci nic on ebay for like $6 including shipping for an older system that only had 10/100. If you have enough ports that seems like a simple way to ensure it will work no matter what board you choose.

 

[CP5670]

XP-32 bit can install and everything worked okay on an MSI Haswell H81 system with Realtek LAN port (that I tried as an experiment), so XP should also work on a Z97 board.
There are no proper Intel GPU drivers available, AFAIK.
Note: prior to installation, switched from the default AHCI mode to IDE mode in bios.

That's good to know. Those chipsets are pretty similar. I'll be just disabling the IGP, so that's not a problem.

I dont know if this is the answer you're looking for, but I picked up a Realtek Gigabit pci nic on ebay for like $6 including shipping for an older system that only had 10/100. If you have enough ports that seems like a simple way to ensure it will work no matter what board you choose.

I was thinking of that if nothing else works. My x-fi would take up the only PCI slot on most of these boards, but there are external USB NICs too. It would be a hassle to move the plug to it every time I use XP though.

 

[Dahak]

You should be able to integrate the AHCI driver into the install media for xp using the
f6flpy-x86.zip from -- >> https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=24293

Looking at the INF information it is showing XP and the 9 series support for it.

To integrate it you can use www.nliteos.com to add the driver and make a new iso and then use http://rufus.akeo.ie/ to make a bootable usb or burn the iso to cd

 

[CP5670]

I already have that driver loaded in. I'm not sure if the official Intel one works on the 9 series, but I used the one here.

 

[CP5670]

I got this working after some effort, in case this is useful for someone else. I removed all the drivers before taking out my old X58 parts but got blue screens on the Z97 setup even in safe mode. However, it worked fine after doing a repair install off an XP SP3 CD with the Intel AHCI drivers preloaded. The Realtek 8111 NIC chips have official drivers for XP (the other companies do not), as does the Asmedia USB 3.0 controller, and the Intel chipset inf installer claims to only support 7/8.1 but works anyway. The Nvidia drivers need a simple inf edit but then work fine. I have it set up in EasyBCD so that I can use it through the 8.1 bootloader.

 

[TheELF]

Which games are you talking about?
Why not tell us,someone might know how to run them ,some may have patches official or otherwise,some may be able to run in VM's

 

[CP5670]

Some I can think of are Rollcage Stage 2, Recoil, Motorhead, Star Monkey and Nuclear Strike. Most of them suffer from the Windows 8 Directdraw bug in some way. These particular games don't work in XP on VMWare either, although some others do.

 

[TheELF]

Some I can think of are Rollcage Stage 2, Recoil, Motorhead, Star Monkey and Nuclear Strike. Most of them suffer from the Windows 8 Directdraw bug in some way. These particular games don't work in XP on VMWare either, although some others do.

Used to love rollcage back in the days,that made me look around and I found this site they have two ways of playing this,one with an d3d replacement dll and one with nglide
http://www.play-old-pc-games.com/2014/08/14/rollcage-stage-2/

nglide also works for recoil if you select the fx in the options.These two run great on win 8.1, I tested them,starmonkey gives hideous artifacts.

 

[CP5670]

I know about that page for Rollcage Stage 2, but their dll just crashes the game for me. There are several other custom ddraw.dlls out there, but I couldn't get any of them working on this particular game.

Recoil seemed to crash for me with nglide, but it's been a while since I tried that. I'll need to check it out again.