I appreciate the response and I'd certainly agree with your comment. I have no plans to run XP on this mobo other than for testing purposes. However, since there is no ability to migrate XP to Win10 I plan to keep running XP on my "production" machies for as long as possible. If I can upgrade the hardware to breathe a little new life into those old boxes I'd love to do so. Upgrading to ROG mobos will make the inevitable move to Win10 a lo less painless.

My question is really about whether there is something about ROG/skylake/Z170 that *PREVENTS* XP Pro from running. I was quite surprised when it didn't just boot right up. Could be just a boot setting in BIOS.... haven't really looked into it yet.

Since I have this thread open, wondering if anyone is running Linux.... specifically OpenSuSe. Perhaps in Hyper-V. So far it seems to be running fine on my mobo although I am unable to get the ASUS built-in wifi to work. Currently using a garden variety USB wireless adapter.

I have a ROG G750 laptop that I love. And so far I've been very impressed with the Formula mobo. I'm not really a fan of Win10..... doesn't take much to break it and I've already had to rebuild the laptop twice. I built the XP machine I am typing this on ten years ago and I have had almost zero problems with it.

Hoping I can get some knowledgable thoughts on this. As I said, I'm obviously not buying high end ROG hardware to run a legacy OS on, but.... if I can upgrade my current half dozen XP Pro systems to new hw it will make the inevitable upgrade to W10 a lot easier. This is the first time I have ever installed an XP HDD in a new mobo and had problems. Wondering if there is something about the ROG BIOS/skylake/Z170 chipset that would prevent this from working.

My M8F is running OpenSuse just fine at the default settings. Will be installing W10 pro as soon as I can get a response on my bitlocker issue.

With a known good XP Pro HDD installed, it goes through the BIOS, windows starts and then goes back to the ROG logo screen. Tried setting secure boot to "other os".... no difference.

For fun, tried booting from the XP Pro install CD and after loading most/all of the software it blue screens.

I could really use some expert advice here. If the M8 mobos won't support XP that's going to put a real crimp in my upgrade plans.

Many thanks in advance.

I'd be much obliged Nate!

In your travels, if you could inquire about M8F native support for Win10 bitlocker, that would be a great help as well. Support confirmed there is no provision for a TPM on this mobo so I'm wondering if W10 os encryption is supported. Assuming it is but there is zero documentation on this.

Win10 Pro is an additional $100 over the home edition and the only relevant extra you get is bitlocker.... a lot of extra dough if my ROG mobo won't support it.

Interesting article. XP was/is certainly Microsoft's best OS. W10 is at least tolerable but I am hardly a fan. I've already had to rebuild my ROG laptop twice because Win10 decided to corrupt itself.

Any thoughts on what I should to to try to get XP Pro to boot on my M8F? Seemed pretty straightforward..... I presume there's a setting in BIOS that I'm missing.

Win XP Pro is on a Maxtor sata HDD that came out of an Intel Bad Axe quad core 775 machine.

I can run Trucrypt on my new machine if I have to but since that sw is depreciated I'd prefer to go with bitlocker. These days, NOT encrypting one's system seems silly..... surprised no one here seems to be doing it, especially since ROG people tend to be on the cutting edge.

The M8F mobo has no provision for installing a TPM module.

I understand that there are no drivers for XP.... but I'm not getting that far. At this point, a known good bootable HDD with XP Pro won't boot and the XP Pro install CD blue screens after loading a lot of software but before you get to the screen that allows you to do anything.