Windows XP on ASUS Z390 Motherboards (and others)

[FireKillerGR 226]

Hi,

this is still a work in progress but will be sharing updates as it needs to be tested more till we get to a point that its working 100%.
Then (hopefully next 2-3 days) I will gather everything so you can apply this to your own OS/mobo.

Anyhow, after a couple of tests, we finally got XP to work on ASUS Z390 motherboards.
Special bios is not needed  

This -for now- has been tested only for fresh installations.
Will test later today if we can get old ones to work but might be a bit complicated.

More info & credit to those who assisted coming soon  

 

UPDATE:

So to get windows to work we care about the following files:
acpi.sys (exists in SP3.CAB and Driver.cab both under I386 folder of installation)
acpi.sy_ (exists under I386 folder of installation) - acpi_sy is the result of makecab.exe command of the acpi.sys
syssetup.sy_ (exists under I386 folder of installation) - again result of the syssetup.sys

ahci drivers which we import by nLite

How I did it is -> get .iso file, decompress -> replace the above files -> nlite to import ahci driver -> make bootable .iso.

Attached you can find all the files that are needed and work with Z390 without modding the bios.

Will add more about usb etc later.  

NOTE ABOUT OLDER IMAGES:

About older images - still being tested but you will probably need to boot via older mobo, replace acpi.sys, syssetup.sys and install drivers.
Then you should be able to get the SSD and boot on z390.

UPDATE v2:

Ok so - current easy way that worked for us to update older images (z170/z270/z370) to work on Z390 is the following:

a) copy acpi.sys (system32/drivers) and syssetup.dll (system32) from Z390 Files.zip
b) the two .sys files from AHCI Update.zip to system32/drivers (drivers from Jason but removed the files that arent needed for this process)
c) boot on an older working mobo (ie z270)
d) run the .reg file (from AHCI Update.zip) and input the entries
e) shutdown and boot normally on z390

 

CREDITS:
Credits go to Win-Raid's users Fernando, XPLives, Daniel_k & diderius6.
I think the files are from Fernando and @diderius66 (don't remember as I went through tons of them) but all of them contributed over thousands of posts to get this working.

Z390 Files.zip

AHCI Update.zip

Edited November 11 by FireKillerGR

[Nik 36]

nice work

[FireKillerGR 226]

Thanks @Nik

Usb installation should work fine as well via the old firadisk method (z170/z270 days).

Will test older images/backups too today (make them from z270 > z390 compatible) and then it should be good to go.

 

 

[skulstation 22]

super new , nice work for all involved in this procces
hope it whil be easy to do. firadisk is a disaster for me 

Edited November 6 by skulstation

[I.nfraR.ed 173]

Have you tested the performance? On Ryzen2 (3000 series) XP is not that fast.

Edited November 6 by I.nfraR.ed

[FireKillerGR 226]

6 minutes ago, I.nfraR.ed said:

Have you tested the performance? On Ryzen2 (3000 series) XP is not that fast.

acpi or non-acpi?

[I.nfraR.ed 173]

48 minutes ago, FireKillerGR said:

acpi or non-acpi?

ACPI. Modded ACPI HAL by @diderius66. It was long time ago.

https://hwbot.org/submission/4211718_i.nfrar.ed_superpi___32m_ryzen_5_3600_7min_26sec_359ms

There's also a thread about it on the forums: 

 

Edited November 6 by I.nfraR.ed

[phobosq 15]

3 hours ago, FireKillerGR said:

Thanks @Nik

Usb installation should work fine as well via the old firadisk method (z170/z270 days).

Will test older images/backups too today (make them from z270 > z390 compatible) and then it should be good to go.

 

 

So there's a good chance we can get modded M9A for Coffee Lake support to run with HT on XP, would be cool.

[dogna 10]

Nice share bro!

[FireKillerGR 226]

Ok so here you can find the .iso that works for Z390:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1x_NIfXf4RTSZnxOImpHkus1JRe_JW7Wi

You install this normally with PS/2 keyboard.
You can use asmedia drivers later to get usb ports to work.

Both usb (firadisk obviously as usb ports wont work right away) and dvd installation works and its confirmed by 3 people already.

Updating initial post with info so you can apply on your own setup.

[skulstation 22]

Hmm traid Apex ix and Xi have same error.

Gone re download and use an other tool to creat the USB stik

[FireKillerGR 226]

6 minutes ago, skulstation said:

Hmm traid Apex ix and Xi have same error.

Gone re download and use an other tool to creat the USB stik

you probably try to install via USB when USB does NOT work.

What firadisk does is that it loads the files into the RAM and treats it like eram/floppy/disk or whatever.
That way the installation doesn't have to have access to the USB.

[skulstation 22]

Just now, FireKillerGR said:

you probably try to install via USB when USB does NOT work.

What firadisk does is that it loads the files into the RAM and treats it like eram/floppy/disk or whatever.
That way the installation doesn't have to have access to the USB.

idd straid from a usb stik
i hate the firadisk , only trobels for me

[_mat_ 392]

4 hours ago, I.nfraR.ed said:

Have you tested the performance? On Ryzen2 (3000 series) XP is not that fast.

Not surprising at all. The Windows Kernel Team works constantly to support and optimize all platforms months before they are released (read in a tweet some time ago). It's not always perfect I guess (Ryzen power plan for example), but from my knowledge there are many things to consider for best performance, compatibility and security.

As already mentioned the ACPI implementation can be (or sometimes has to be) different like interrupt routing for the CPU and platform devices for example. The choice of timer for the System Interrupt is a part of this as well. And although lots of the ACPI implementation is actually provided by vendors as AML, the OS still has most of the work to do to interpret these correctly. I'm regularly taking a peek at the Linux kernel source code when implementing hardware-based features for my BenchMate kernel driver and well let's say it's a lot to take in. Also love the hate comments from the kernel devs for fking things up that have therefor be fixed in software.

Another big thing is the thread scheduler, that is pretty close to the hardware. Optimizations there can lead to improved power efficiency, better latency and of course improved performance. I gather that's why a modern implementation of the scheduler leads to better multithreading performance in benchmarks on the latest platforms.

I've also seen many different code paths in the WIN32 API as well, where some lead to a syscall (userland to kernel transition for a hardware-based implementation) while on other platforms that's not necessary.

Ok, I'm already rambling. What I'm trying to say is that Windows XP is great for old platforms and/or old benchmarks. It has less overhead than any modern Windows because XP simply has very little security mitigations. It's also a native 32 bit OS, so 32 bit code doesn't have to go through the WOW64 subsystem. And let's not forget that old benchmarks were compiled with the appropriate tools at that time. Two famous examples:

• SuperPi: Compiled with the Borland C compiler that was especially famous for optimized 32 bit code back then.
• wPrime: Visual Basic 6 that hasn't even real threading, but uses COM to communicate between multiple spawned processes. The spawning is btw part of the time measured, so this also benches the COM implementation of the OS.

I doubt that none of these would be faster on Windows XP if they were compiled for 64 bit, with latest compilers, using modern C++ with cache locality in mind and appropriate threading models (OpenMP, Intel's TBB, ...).

Edited November 6 by _mat_

[Doc.Brown 28]

Have it working on the Gene XI @FireKillerGR what do you mean by old image doesn't work,mine is 5512 build tighten for overclocking by Strat few years ago ... I looked into your packed files and you seems using Fernando's AHCI drivers,from my experience there's incompatibility problem (BSOD during device installation in setup),I had to use other one ^^

For USB support you need to inject AMDXHCI drivers with Nlite

[skulstation 22]

24 minutes ago, FireKillerGR said:

you probably try to install via USB when USB does NOT work.

What firadisk does is that it loads the files into the RAM and treats it like eram/floppy/disk or whatever.
That way the installation doesn't have to have access to the USB.

Idd it was from a USB.

But now I tray is whit the iso burnd on CD/dvd and now it gave me a bsod stop code 07b.

 

Full stock bios

 

Edit : may be found wy I have bsod.

I assume no dimm.2 support 🤭

 

Edited November 6 by skulstation

[bigblock990 258]

13 minutes ago, Doc.Brown said:

Have it working on the Gene XI @FireKillerGR what do you mean by old image doesn't work,mine is 5512 build tighten for overclocking by Strat few years ago ... I looked into your packed files and you seems using Fernando's AHCI drivers,from my experience there's incompatibility problem (BSOD during device installation in setup),I had to use other one ^^

For USB support you need to inject AMDXHCI drivers with Nlite

Which AHCI driver are you using then?

[skulstation 22]

Works now 👍

[Doc.Brown 28]

56 minutes ago, bigblock990 said:

Which AHCI driver are you using then?

The storeahci one ;)

[FireKillerGR 226]

9 hours ago, Doc.Brown said:

Have it working on the Gene XI @FireKillerGR what do you mean by old image doesn't work,mine is 5512 build tighten for overclocking by Strat few years ago ... I looked into your packed files and you seems using Fernando's AHCI drivers,from my experience there's incompatibility problem (BSOD during device installation in setup),I had to use other one ^^

For USB support you need to inject AMDXHCI drivers with Nlite

I never said it does not work.
I said it hasnt been tested yet.

Plan is to test and show/share how it is done as half of the people have images from older platforms.

By the way, it would be awesome if you had contributed several days ago instead of jumping now dont you think? at least it would have saved me several hours of (re)search hehe 

PS. the incompatibility issue you had was because you added two drivers that were probably contradicting to each other = bsod.
At least thats what I recall from the win-raid posts.

So far no issues here.

Edited November 7 by FireKillerGR

[Doc.Brown 28]

Tested alone and have same BSOD also,anyway good news for you to have it working now,already have a working iso and ghost so I don't have to make it again(or maybe for x64 )

I "jumped" when I saw your post on FB and also when I have time to and I don't spend all my time here but I think you should say the same thing for those who knows how to score 01 in Seven,and all unknown tweaks by the mass etc ... well,I don't care in fact :p

I let you pursue your testing so ^^

[GtiJason 193]

11 hours ago, phobosq said:

So there's a good chance we can get modded M9A for Coffee Lake support to run with HT on XP, would be cool.

I thought most benchers knew this has been possible for a while now. Here is the "0094" bios I modded to work on M9A XP w/ HT back in 2018

Creative.ROM

[antome 39]

xp works fine with acpi on xi gene, at least it seems I haven't run bench yet.  I can't get the usb to go, it recognizes mouse and keyboard and even the pendrive but at the end of the installation it says that there was a problem and the device doesn't work

 

[websmile 1089]

USB worked for me including pen srive, I used the driver and method that EVGA used at Z390 Dark, there is a thread at EVGA Forum about it

[antome 39]

On 11/7/2019 at 10:41 AM, websmile said:

USB worked for me including pen srive, I used the driver and method that EVGA used at Z390 Dark, there is a thread at EVGA Forum about it

ok tanks, this link

update:

now the usb asmedia are working properly, i am optimizing xp for the spi32 but at the moment it is about 4s away from a good xp for the spi

Edited November 8 by antome