Windows XP MSDN Collection torrent

Discussion in 'Windows XP / Older OS' started by ReverseEngineer, Aug 27, 2017.

  1. ReverseEngineer

    ReverseEngineer MDL Novice

    Aug 26, 2017
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    Hi, guys.

    As you'll be able to see this is my first post. I actually originally joined MDL last year, though, but have since lost access to that account.

    First of all, can I just take a moment to comment upon what a brilliant community this forum truly is. I discovered MDL in late November while I had been searching around for options to perform a clean install of an OS without owning a disc after I encountered some bother with my XP laptop. It would be rude not to commend how incredibly helpful many of the members are on here, exemplified in merely the few threads I've glanced through so far, especially one person who, from what I recall, explained thoroughly to me much of the basics of the various installation types and differences between them, not to mention them assisting me with SATA drivers. Now that I'm back I hope to become an active participant in this lively and dedicated community and offer help wherever I can .

    With my introduction out of the way, I was wondering whether any of you might be able to kindly assist me. At around the same time as initially becoming a member, I thought had hit the jackpot when I stumbled upon a rather well-hidden torrent after searching tirelessly for Windows XP ISOs on Google (the "real" ones, not the likes of what you'll find on any of the pages listed in the first few results) which contained absolutely every Windows XP installation ISO present on MSDN, otherwise known as the 'Windows XP English MSDN Collection'. At the time, I didn't know such collections exist as I had only encountered single-ISO torrents previously. Obviously, since then I've seen the massive caches of ISOs and all sorts of other files provided by the generous members of this forum.

    I barely had any storage available to me, so I only downloaded what I needed. I recently finally purchased myself an 1TB external HDD. Several days ago, I became rather keen on the idea of storing the whole collection now that I can, so I opened uTorrent and initialised the torrent again. If memory serves me correctly, last year this particular torrent was rather active, but I've had it running for a few days now and it's essentially dead. There's been a few peers here and there uploading at ridiculously slow speeds—think less than 20kB/s—but they've barely made any difference. Thankfully, there is one person who appears to have just started seeding again, not continuously, but I've noticed they seem to come online around the same time each night. For that reason, I've been leaving my computer running permanently in the hope that I can complete the download sooner. The problem is, their upload speed peaks at around 200kB/s if I'm lucky, but tends to remain below 100kB/s, and the total download size is 27.4GB, so as you can imagine the process isn't exactly happening at lightning pace. I'm currently at 41.8%, having downloaded 8.41GB so far after running uTorrent for the last three days approximately, so it is getting there slowly but surely. I'm just hoping that the single seed continues to reconnect, otherwise it doesn't look promising.

    So, what I've come to ask is, have any of you have used this torrent in the past? I'm sure some of you will know of the particular one I'm using. It was created by some guy called 'prathaprabhu', whose name seems to crop up a lot when it comes to untouched ISOs from MSDN. If any of you have downloaded the contents of this torrent previously, I would massively appreciate if even just one person could seed their files. If nobody has access to the torrent in question, then no worries—I just thought if anywhere at all, here would be the place to ask. :)

    Thanks in advance guys,
    Aaron
     
  2. Tito

    Tito Super Mod / Adviser
    Staff Member

    Nov 30, 2009
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  3. ReverseEngineer

    ReverseEngineer MDL Novice

    Aug 26, 2017
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    Hi, Tito.

    Yeah, I thought that must be the case, judging by the download threads I've seen on here.

    Could you briefly explain what SVF is exactly? Am I right in thinking that the principle is essentially a means of having a single base file which can be added to or altered using a patch, instead of having many copies of practically the same thing, to conserve storage?

    To be honest, if I had have thought about downloading everything from the sources provided on here first, I wouldn't have bothered with resuming the torrent. Since I've let it reach nearly halfway, I thought it would be a waste to just cancel the whole thing now, which is why I'm asking.

    I don't suppose you're familiar with the torrent I spoke of, are you?
     
  4. Tito

    Tito Super Mod / Adviser
    Staff Member

    Nov 30, 2009
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  5. ReverseEngineer

    ReverseEngineer MDL Novice

    Aug 26, 2017
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    @Tito

    Thanks for the information. I'll check it out. I'm keen to learn how it works. Ultimately, the point of using SVFs is to dramatically reduce storage consumption of largely the same data, correct?

    I thought you probably would. I don't suppose you have access to this torrent, do you?
     
  6. ReverseEngineer

    ReverseEngineer MDL Novice

    Aug 26, 2017
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    I think I was tempting fate bringing this up here as it looks like the torrent is now completely inactive and looks set to remain that way. Hopefully that one seed will come back at some point.

    Like I said, I would massively appreciate anyone's contribution to this torrent if you have used it previously.