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Windows XP Starter Edition Snubs P4, Athlon
Apu writes "CNET is reporting that Microsoft's Windows XP Starter Edition operating system specifically checks the result of the CPUID instruction on bootup and fails to continue if a Pentium 4 or Athlon processor is detected."
to read someone from a mostly Linux messageboard call windows fragmented
A high frequency Celeron still costs less than a low frequency P4. It's because they suck that bad.
Trust me, I used to have one.
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That's still nothing! My copy of WinXP fails to continue if no kind of CPU is detected!
Incidentally, the same can be said of my copy of the favorite-Debian-based-distro of the day.
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For developers, DOS was never reliable. One little memory pointer problem and you'd have to reboot. That gets old, real quick.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Starter edition is targeted towards developing countrise and computers with lows specs. Plus MS is not making newarly the money that they hoped for on starter edition. So wellome to Microfag and if you plan on doing any hacks you should know that this is equivalent to getting an illegal version only you pay for this one and it is highly stripped down. So it's your choise but if you don't have money for Windows XP there is alwas linux and it may actually work better on your aging machine.
This is because all following versions of Windows XP are intended to run only on the G5 processor (the same one used in modern Macintosh computers). By checking the CPUID, Microsoft is making sure that you don't try to execute the G5 code on the incompatible and totally different x86 platform, which cannot execute G5 code.
It is a smart business decision to make sure that your customers don't try to run your binaries on the wrong hardware platform.