Reinstall XP need advice

[harrishawk]

Attempted a reload of XP Service Pack 2 from factory disc, blue screen appeared, quick Google, turned out was a huge issue happening. Forum had magik fix, Had to toggle Compatabilty switch within F12 Boot area..vwalaa!!

Well i panicked before i found this out cause system was freezing bad on Start-up. so Techie already had my laptop. Did clean install of other Factory disc that came with new Dell. It was Windows 7 SP 1, but it sucks cause its very plain, theres lots of missing cool stuff like the touchpad app..++ other good productivity programs..

So yeah it came w/ both those disks upon purchase.
The factory installed Windows 7 SP1 then an XP- SP2 on top of that??
I asked tech why he didnt put the XP SP2 back on. He shot it down recommended not using it.
So i shoot over to Microsoft at XP downloads section..
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/search/DownloadsDrillInResults.aspx?q=xp&cateorder=1_5_2_3_17_15_16_11&site=
XP SP1---XP SP2---XP SP3 all available but heres message on site::
Windows XP - End of Support
Your Windows XP computer isn't as secure as it used to be. As of 8th April 2014, support and security updates for Windows XP are no longer available. Don't let your PC go unprotected.
Use at own risk now..

Still have my XP-SP2 disk but should start at site in chronological order,, up to XP-SP3? Is this correct. I believe they're all ISO image downloads..
Thing is ALL the security/ other important DL updates are there if i want to take 4ev doing em all or can advice be given there as well please..
Again if needed::
Please see XP Download Page::https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/search/DownloadsDrillInResults.aspx?q=xp&cateorder=1_5_2_3_17_15_16_11&site=
Would love to run XP again. Please some advice here. Ty.

[GuiltySpark]

I no longer deal with XP as it's become a minefield due to site advances and browsers not supporting XP certificates etc.
However, you will first need to gather all drivers for your system as without these you will have constant trouble doing anything.

After installing XP2 and all your drivers I would install sp3 although I don't think MS have that .iso page available any longer.
I may have sp3.iso clean on one of my systems (haven't uploaded to a drive yet for download), so if you have issues finding it let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Incidentally, you can start at sp3 if you have the .ISO

[harrishawk]

Well in that case, he also shot down Windows 10, being it full of probs. I kinda agree don't like the format, so @ a crossroads here, depends on personal taste but what version would you recommend. How's 8?

[GuiltySpark]

I personally don't like 8.1 or 10. Win 7 was the last one I liked but they've pretty much killed that one off too.

If I had to choose I would actually boycott MS and go for ZorinOS LTS assuming that the machine is too low a spec for anything else.
The good thing about Zorin is you can have it look like XP, 7 or Gnome.
If the spec is very low then I would go for Zorin lite otherwise the full version would be good enough.

If he is interested then ask him to take a look at the following links (I have actually turned a lot of people onto Zorin as the transition is very easy.

https://zorinos.com/download9.html

https://zorinos.com/gallery.html

Of course all this would depend also on what software he may wish to use.