Day 4 is up. And XP might be dead.
I thought I had the system stable. It booted. It ran. I was ready to start bridging Discord to IRC.
Then it paused. No crash. Just silence.
Then it rebooted.
Then it beeped. Loud. Continuous.
Then five beeps and a pause. Over and over.
That’s not a software failure. That’s a BIOS screaming about hardware.
I tried XP one last time.
It made it to the Windows screen.
Then black.
Then the Samsung logo.
Then Windows.
Then black again.
Looping. No recovery.
I broke the USB rule and booted into Debian. It worked—barely.
Espeakup is stuttering.
The install is dragging itself forward like a dying animal.
This is not normal.
I'm writing this from my Surface Pro while the netbook stumbles through what might be its last job.
If there’s a Day 5, it’ll be a miracle.
If there isn’t... you already know the title.
Read the post:
https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/dead-os-walking-30-days-on-windows-xp-in-2025-day-4-the-challenge-might-be-over/
#WindowsXP #BlindComputing #RetroComputing #OldHardware #DeadOSWalking
@fireborn I can definitely tell you that XP works in 2025, and there is even a browser (Supermeum) that is basically a clone of Chrome, able to connect to their servers, etc. I have physical and virtual XP and 7 machines. Sadly, it just sounds as if yours is failing. Would it be possible for you to save the hard drive and put it in another netbook or laptop? I know netbooks are extremely cheap now and you could even just buy one that is already set up. They're wonderful little machines.
@dandylover1 Unfortunately, I installed debian to the drive. but I do have all of the software and drivers that worked.
I found a browser that works on this machine and is faster than Supermium. Do you daily drive xp?
@fireborn No, but only because Reddit for Blind, Luna For Reddit, and TweeseCake don't work on it. Otherwise, I could very easily do so, as my other programs do. Most of them are portable. Outlook Express also still works on it, but there is a fork of Thunderbird, called Icedove that does as well. On the same page is Serpent UXP, which is a fork of Firefox. Both of these are updated often, especially the latter. But Serpent doesn't connect to the servers for Firefox.
Page for Serpent and Icedove (plus other software).
http://rtfreesoft.blogspot.com/
I know you said you had something faster, but this is for those who may want it.
Supermium (the regular version lost accessibility the last time I tried it, but the portable one works well)
https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/supermium-portable
I tried Debian in a virtual machine, but Linux is a hastle, to put it mildly. It requires commands for everything and doesn't even see normal .txt files as such. I would like to just download a program and install it normally, preferably Thunderbird 102, which is what I use with Windows 7 and 11.
@dandylover1 thank you. serpent is what I was using. I didn't know about the email client though. Have you tried installing the onecore API? that might help you get some more things to work.
@fireborn No. That's a good idea! I have heard of it but never really researched it.