▲ 419 points

Windows XP Professional

win32.run

by pentagrama·1y ago·221 comments·view on hn ↗

221 comments

How can you tell that any Windows or Mac clone UI is a re-implementation? Easy: try to move your mouse diagonally into the Send To menu after letting it pop up. If the send-to menu closes as you mouse over the item into the submenu, it's a clone. If the menu stays up even if you brush over another menu item, it's either real or a Good Clone. :)

For the fun history, @DonHopkins had a thread a few years back:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17404345

I love reading about old UI interface guidelines, and how much research was done to make it useful to the user.

Now it's all about how to make it useful to the company.

Anyway, the links in that post have deteriorated.

Here's the link to Raymond Chen's blog: https://web.archive.org/web/20190218080905/https://blogs.msd... (shame on MS for redirecting you to another page when showing you a 404, which make it harder to find the original URL).

Updated link to Raymond Chen's blog, where the comments have been 'retired': https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20080619-00/?p=21...

And the 2 imgur links (same issue with the redirecting...):

https://web.archive.org/web/20230509182201/https://i.imgur.c...

and

https://web.archive.org/web/20230507201645/https://i.imgur.c...

I could tell instantly in the loading screen because the three blocks in the progress bar move smoothly across it.

A classic article about a no-delay solution to this problem, not mentioned in the linked thread:

https://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega...

There's something like this in every desktop Linux I've tried, which made it feel like using the mouse was in some way weird and broken. But I've been using it for long enough now that it either got fixed, or more likely, I got used to it. I don't even remember what it was, something about clicking drop down menus a certain way?

Reminds me of the first time I ever used classic Macintosh System OS, and how you have to hold the mouse button down to keep menus open. It doesn't take much to throw everything off.

It also fails the "hold right click" test, Windows didn't popover context menus until right click was released. Instead, for file, it did a kind of "contextual drag and drop".

Ugh, all the links in that comment are dead, imgur and microsoft alike :(

You can also right-click the desktop and choose 'Properties'. If the resulting window has a tab called 'Screesaver', it's a clone.

I don't have an appropriate machine (virtual or otherwise) at the moment to check, but I believe this is another one of those things they screwed up around Windows 10 or so --- right-clicking on the Start menu and trying to get to the submenu that has the shut down / logout options was made significantly more frustrating because of it.

If you have another option with a submenu on either side of Send To, the Send To menu will close. It closes as soon as you move over any item with a submenu. But it just so happens that Send To is typically by itself, so it's a good test regardless.

This is a nice replication of the WinXP UI in JS (it is not a virtual machine running in your browser).

https://docs.win32.run/

https://github.com/ducbao414/win32.run

If you want the real thing: https://lrusso.github.io/VirtualXP/VirtualXP.htm

(takes less memory than Miro, at least in Firefox :D)

Win XP remains my favourite OS till date. I was in college and getting hands on a pirated copy back then makes me so nostalgic.

There was a cambrian explosion of tools to customize the look and feel. TweakXP pro is the one I remember. All pirated off-course.

I was hoping this was emulation, like the windows 95 in js that exists, but its more of a simulator. The web browser doesnt work and the minesweeper game uses a text emoji instead of a picture for the face

I feel slightly ashamed that I spent enough time using Windows XP that was able to spot that this was a clone based on the fonts and shadow effects alone.

Nice effort though.

Back when the Start Menu made sense. It wasn't rose colored glasses, it was functional.

Will call our IT support tomorrow and start this as a full screen.

That will be fun in the office :-)

Check out SmolXP [1]. The one I setup had a 340MB qcow2 image, took about ~10 sec to boot to desktop with qemu, and used only 58MB ram idling on desktop.

https://github.com/AFellowSpeedrunner/SmolXP

"WIN32.RUN might have unexpected behaviors on browsers that are NOT Chromium-based (Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc.)"

What would be the reasons this wouldn't run on Firefox? Genuine question from a non-web developer.

God I miss Windows XP. I feel like, with a few small changes, the Windows XP GUI would be the most solid desktop experience you could possibly have.

Throw in POSIX compliance/bash, first party Linux compatibility (not WSL), window snapping, dark mode, maybe a spotlight-like search and a few enhancements to the file manager and you'd have a pretty much perfect desktop/productivity OS.

Why can't we have nice things?

This is awesome! I recreated Win XP for my personal website a few years ago (https://www.sohailsayed.com/), but this completely blows it out the water on functionality.

I absolutely love just how much depth there is to the functionality in this (from being able to use apps like word, or being able to drag and move around icons on desktop).

Brilliant!

Real thing is possible on https://copy.sh/v86/ I think but need an XP disk image[1], not readily available at the moment (probably for copyright reasons?).

[1]: https://github.com/copy/v86/issues/86

Using this made me feel happy. I don't get that feeling from modern Windows.

We get these cheap recreations semi-regularly on here. Why does stuff like this keep being spammed on here, besides the nostalgia factor?

Design peaked here for OS's. Perfect balance of colors and functionality, and gloss. This was the top.

No Pinball :(

wow it's one of the most nostalgic feelings I've ever felt. Like coming back home after leaving for many years. And you still know your way around even though you already forgot you knew.

This brings back so many memories I still remember having a cd with the serial key written right on it. Even now, that key is stuck in my mind qqwd7-8gr47-x9rcp-jjwh7-qpgqq

Little fun tidbit: I happen to use the WinXP wallpaper on my Macbook (just for fun nostalgia, and because I like it), so when I open this up on my browser the background blends: https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/70a66a71-3f6a-485...

Check margin/padding in filename input line of "save file as" menu. Ms Word is totally not real Main menu font should be monotype if I remember correctly Minesweeper has other fonts and pictures Browser in browser can not work by some browser policy. BTW the shot of nostalgy is MASSIVE My favorite video player from that times was LightAlloy and Winamp 2.

I went through the "Install Windows" option just to hear the Windows XP installation music again. That track is such a vibe, I have loved it since I was a 14 year-old installing a pirated copy of XP in 2001.

I am viewing this post on a real Windows XP system on a 440BX platform from 1998. ;)

The BIOS splash text loads and animates but not much else. I'm using Palemoon 25 (SSE1). Impressive that it loads at all!

Fun but its Python REPL broke the immersion for me.. Python 3.13.2 (main, Aug 4 2025 20:25:58)

I was expecting Python 2.2 or 2.3 ... not sure what was the earliest version of Python on Pyodide

Took a nostalgic detour to XP-ville—right in my browser. No VMs, no installs—just pixel-perfect throwbacks. Warning: May derail your workflow with retro joy.

Strangely enough, the first thing that some subconscious forces brought me to was to listen to Beethoven's 9th symphony (the file in media sub folder in the home folder).

Very well done...

Wow. This is very impressive. It would be trippy if IE can run https://win32.run again.