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  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

The cockroach of Windows, XP, lives on in London's Victoria Coach Station

(2021/07/26)


BORK!BORK!BORK! Windows XP is coming up to a 20th birthday yet it is heartening to see that the OS can still be guaranteed to take its place as one of the three horsemen of the borkpocalypse.

While not actually on a screen of blue, the ugly face of Windows XP has shown itself nestled between a CMOS error and another screen that has simply decided to end it all.

[1]

Three broken screens inside London, Victoria (click to enlarge)

Register reader Carly Stone spotted the borked threesome gazing balefully over customers keen to know the status of arrivals into London's Victoria Coach Station.

For the uninitiated, Victoria Coach Station can be found in the City of Westminster and serves as a terminus for all manner of coach journeys around the UK. The company behind it was incorporated [2]almost a century ago .

Things weren't so good in 2020, as the coach operator visible through the windows [3]reported an 80 per cent drop in passengers numbers.

[4]

Zooming in

As for the trio of bork, it's not clear what has caused the CMOS checksum error on the left – possibly a battery breathing its last? The 32M of shared memory suggests to us that the hardware is both relatively elderly and unlikely to be a ball of fire. Even if it could boot.

[5]Paid antivirus? On ads? Think of all the beer you could buy without that subscription

[6]Sing a song of Office, a pocketful of why: ARM64 version running in a Pi

[7]Exchange some currency you want to? Guess the BIOS setup keyboard combination first you must, young Padawan

[8]Come to Malmö for St Peter's. Stay for the Bork

[9]Hello, support? What do I click if I want some cash?

However, taking centre stage is Windows XP. It looks like whatever app this installation is running has not seen its database for the best part of a month or more. It is also running atop the similarly obsolete .NET Framework 2.0 as, we suspect, is more legacy code than admins would like to think about.

In this case, things have gone a bit wrong and left onlookers none the wiser with regard to which coach has arrived from where. The only thing they know for sure is that Windows XP is surely the cockroach of operating systems, and simply refuses to die.

[10]

Even if the database lurking behind the scenes has taken its own bus to nowhere. ®

Get our [11]Tech Resources



[1] https://regmedia.co.uk/2021/07/21/bork.jpg

[2] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/00205610

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/18/national-express-reports-445m-loss-for-2020-after-80-drop-in-passengers

[4] https://regmedia.co.uk/2021/07/21/bork_detail.jpg

[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/19/bork/

[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/05/office_arm64/

[7] https://www.theregister.com/2020/03/27/bios_bork/

[8] https://www.theregister.com/2020/03/18/malmo_bork/

[9] https://www.theregister.com/2020/03/10/bork/

[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YP7cHDmrCAp64oWaTBa0hAAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/



Piro

It's not ugly, it's nostalgic.

Ironic

JimPoak

Microsoft could not get rid of Linux and they still cannot rid of XP. Another example of If ain't broken don't fix it. In this case it's the battery. You wouldn't believe how many hi profile applications still run under XP. You only notice them when they fall over.

Re: Ironic

heyrick

I still use XP. Rarely use a desktop machine these days, and there are a few applications that are quite nice and run will on XP on a box from when the Pentium4 was a thing, so I never saw any need to spend money to replace what works.

Re: Ironic

captain veg

If they're actually running on a Pentium 4 then you would probably save money by moving to a cheap Atom (or similar) powered box just on electricity costs.

Unless it's part of your home heating, of course.

-A.

steviebuk

I loved Windows 98se. Never wanted to move to XP. Tried it, wasn't keen but also turned out my PC wasn't that great. This was back in 2004. I think I may have lasted another year before I was finally confident enough about XP that I moved, then loved it :)

Stayed on it until Windows 7. Loved Windows 7. Still using it and only use Windows 10 on work machines. But I might have to bite the bullet soon as there are some quite useful "quality of life" things on Windows 10 that work well that are missing on Windows 7. Native ISO mounting for example.

The Oncoming Scorn

Personally it was Windows 2000 that I clung to, until I was forced to replace both the motherboard & HDD, when the spinning rust died & the world had moved away away from IDE.

Icon - Moving to XP.

magnetic interferance from money/credit cards