If your computer meets the minimum system requirements and you have the latest graphics driver installed, then JavaFX 2.1 should work on your machine running Windows XP.
Whether JavaFX will work on a machine depends on the hardware on the computer, as well as the installed graphics driver.
Here are the system requirements for JavaFX 2.1 .
The version string referenced will be displayed for the Intel integrated chipset graphics driver. You can download current versions of such drivers from Intel .
Update
If your system does not support hardware acceleration, then JavaFX uses the Java2D software pipeline - just, of course, my program will still work, but with lower graphics, right?
At least in some cases with older drivers, it seems that the application will work returning to the software pipeline . Although this type of backup will work on a large percentage of old hardware and software combinations, I do not think that it is fully tested taking into account the large number of old combinations of hardware and drivers, and I do not think that there is a guarantee that the program will work as expected.
The following describes my experience with JavaFX 2.0 and 2.1.
If the graphics hardware is not specified in the JavaFX system requirements as supported for hardware acceleration, then JavaFX will return to software rendering and the application will work (albeit with potentially reduced performance and lack of access to some conditional functions such as (possibly) effects or 3D rendering ) This scenario should be rather unusual since JavaFX supports a wide range of hardware acceleration.
If the graphics hardware is specified in the JavaFX system requirements as supported for hardware acceleration, and the drivers are updated, then JavaFX will use the hardware renderer and your application will work. This is the most common scenario - any desktop computer purchased in the last few years must meet the minimum JavaFX hardware acceleration specifications and driver requirements.
If the graphics hardware is specified in the JavaFX system requirements as supported for hardware acceleration, and the drivers are not at the level necessary for JavaFX to work correctly, the application may not work (the application may return to the software pipeline and continue to work, or you will receive a message that drivers need to be updated) or the application will just start experiencing rendering errors and possibly freeze or crash. This scenario should occur only at a very low percentage of possible execution goals.
If you have instances of hardware and driver combinations in which JavaFX does not behave as you would like (i.e., execute your program incorrectly, register false exceptions or freeze and crash), then the jira issue file with technical and software specifications so that the JavaFX team thinks about supporting this combination.