[HN Gopher] Smashing the Limits: Installing Windows XP in DOSBox-X
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Smashing the Limits: Installing Windows XP in DOSBox-X
        
       Author : whereistimbo
       Score  : 138 points
       Date   : 2024-10-31 16:32 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (fabulous.systems)
 (TXT) w3m dump (fabulous.systems)
        
       | xattt wrote:
       | Were there any shims or workarounds (specific to an upgrade path
       | from a DOS-based Windows) that were left in place in XP to keep
       | things chugging along?
       | 
       | I'm wondering whether a clean install worked more efficiently
       | versus an upgraded install.
        
         | unnouinceput wrote:
         | Clean install failed directly. Without a hiccup at the very
         | first file. Only taking the upgrading route via W2000 it
         | worked.
        
           | felsqualle wrote:
           | Correct, that was the only way to get things working.
        
       | whalesalad wrote:
       | Cool and all but what is wrong with qemu, virtualbox, etc?
        
         | bravetraveler wrote:
         | IIRC one can have some issues with virtualization - dynamic
         | clocks and sheer speed, where emulation has benefits
         | 
         | One can emulate with the others, sure, but not all equal.
         | Accuracy is a comparison benchmark
        
         | ziddoap wrote:
         | They are less fun (to the author).
         | 
         | > _This is what I like about emulation and playing around with
         | those systems so much._
        
         | yazzku wrote:
         | Not as much pizzazz.
        
         | bri3d wrote:
         | Why Dosbox/Dosbox-X instead of qemu or VirtualBox in general?
         | Dosbox and Dosbox-X focus much more heavily on accurate
         | emulation, rather than fast virtualization. Peripherals are
         | implemented to match the original period-correct hardware,
         | rather than as a "good enough" view or cooperative facade
         | requiring guest support. Weird CPU errata (like specific carry
         | register behavior) is implemented.
         | 
         | Why the author chose Dosbox-X to try to run Windows XP? It
         | sounds like Because They Can.
        
           | smaudet wrote:
           | Ooh.
           | 
           | This makes me very much want to tinker with DosBox myself.
           | 
           | Qemu can IIRC do similar things with drivers but possibly
           | because it was co-opted to run android emulator imgs (which
           | are all very standard and boring), it seemed difficult to
           | tinker with custom drivers and emulated hardware.
           | 
           | The above could just be my own inexperience talking, but
           | examples are one of the best ways to learn, if DosBox-X takes
           | extra care that's noteworthy at least.
        
           | zamalek wrote:
           | > Because They Can.
           | 
           | It's probably also a great way to find bugs.
        
           | Dwedit wrote:
           | Unfortunately, CPU accuracy is not one of DOSBox's focuses.
           | 
           | If you install the "Recommended" build of DOSBox-X from the
           | website, then proceed to install the default "Visual Studio
           | build (64-bit)", you get buggy and inaccurate CPU emulation.
           | 
           | How do you know it's buggy and inaccurate? Run QBasic, and
           | PRINT VAL("5"). You get 4.99999999999.
           | 
           | But...
           | 
           | You get the correct result if you are using a 32-bit build.
           | You get the correct result on all non-MSVC builds. You get
           | the correct result if you have the Dynamic core selected,
           | even on 64-bit MSVC builds. It's just 64-bit MSVC builds with
           | any core other than the Dynamic core that give the wrong
           | result.
           | 
           | So what's going on here?
           | 
           | MSVC 64-bit doesn't support 80-bit floating point math, and
           | doesn't allow you to use inline assembly to manually run the
           | 80-bit floating point instructions. Instead, floating point
           | operations are truncated down to 64-bit.
           | 
           | I think that the MSVC 64-bit build should NOT be the default
           | build recommended to users for just that reason.
        
         | nxobject wrote:
         | In case you ever want to run Windows XP at 1MHz, of course. [1]
         | 
         | (/s, of course, but you get the idea - more control.)
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FxHyofXglI&pp=ygUQd2luZG93c...
        
         | unnouinceput wrote:
         | Nothing. Author wanted to push the limits of unsupported stuff
         | on a ongoing project. Myself I prefer vmware instead of
         | virtualbox and/or qemu. When it comes to virtualization and
         | fast spinning whatever flavor of the month a new OS pops vmware
         | is undisputed king.
        
           | TheRealPomax wrote:
           | This is objectively incorrect: vmware/qemu and dosbox are
           | _not_ interchangeable technologies even if it seems like they
           | try to do the same thing, with various comments on this post
           | nicely explaining why and how =)
        
         | giobox wrote:
         | One of the primary reasons for using DosBox vs virtualization,
         | at least for actual DOS software, is that lots of old DOS games
         | and apps are designed to run on a specific x86 chip and clock
         | speed.
         | 
         | The classic example is the earlier Wing Commander games - run
         | them on anything faster than the period correct 286/386 CPUs
         | that were out at the time of release, the games timing/speed
         | gets severely messed up. DosBox has nice features to let you
         | control the CPU speed to try and make these games work again.
         | 
         | Software such as Wing Commander were never tested/designed
         | originally to run on faster CPUs that didn't exist back then
         | and software timing can sometimes only be correct on very
         | specific chips and clockspeeds.
         | 
         | Here with XP, its just cool - not a practical or performant
         | choice.
        
           | MegaDeKay wrote:
           | Modern Vintage Gamer recently went over Wing Commander and
           | talked about this in detail. The problem with DosBox is the
           | framerate chugs with lots of enemies on screen and then
           | speeds up as you take them out one by one. He suggests the
           | best way to play is on a PC that it was originally designed
           | for.
           | 
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuFNFd8I0WU&t=680s
           | 
           | BTW, I remember playing Wing Commander way back in the day.
           | No game sucked me in like that before or since.
        
         | sebazzz wrote:
         | DOSBOX-X and x86box emulate 3d graphics accelerators properly,
         | and the native drivers in Windows support these. That means you
         | can run games that require 3D acceleration. VirtualBox, VMWare
         | often do not support 3d acceleration for older OS - not sure
         | about qemu though.
        
       | Vampiero wrote:
       | This article is not very clear. After the author realizes that
       | they don't have low-level access privileges they just... do the
       | thing that failed 20 times before and suddenly it works with no
       | explanation as to why.
        
         | Dilettante_ wrote:
         | The authentic Windows XP experience!
        
         | unnouinceput wrote:
         | No, he was not realizing that. Was wondering if that's the
         | case. The realization comes later with understanding NT vs FAT
         | conversion that was happening. Hence why the upgrade route via
         | W2000
        
         | smaudet wrote:
         | I think clean installation failed, there is/was another
         | installation route with upgrade.
         | 
         | I agree that the low-level explanation is lacking, but in
         | fairness dosbox-x doesn't sound like it offers that (out of the
         | box).
         | 
         | I'm guessing what happened, the boot sector etc. were installed
         | by 98, win2k had some way of converting from FAT32 to NTFS, and
         | the winxp installer just sets some flags and dumps install
         | files on disk somewhere.
         | 
         | Getting all that from "it's the NT conversion" is a stretch,
         | but.
        
           | felsqualle wrote:
           | That's my current theory as well. IMHO that's the reason why
           | an upgrade from 98 to XP failed while it ran successfully by
           | using Windows 2000 as the base installation.
           | 
           | Note that I was totally skipping the text-based installation
           | stage when upgrading from Windows 2000 while I got it when
           | starting the installation from Windows 98 - that's where the
           | "NT conversion, stupid!"-theory came from.
        
         | jaredhallen wrote:
         | The way I read it is that instead of trying to upgrade directly
         | from 98 to XP, they went from 98 to 2000, and then to XP.
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | They tried upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows XP, hoping that
         | it would work like upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows 2000
         | did, but it didn't. Then they realized that upgrading from
         | Windows 98 to Windows 2000 and _then_ to Windows XP might work,
         | and it did.
         | 
         | It's important to realize that Windows XP was the successor
         | both to the NT line (Windows NT/2000) as well as to the DOS-
         | based consumer-oriented line (Windows 95/98/ME), hence
         | upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows XP is the natural path,
         | whereas upgrading to Windows 2000 in between is kind of a
         | detour.
        
         | kelnos wrote:
         | Yeah, I was really hoping to see a deep-dive with debugging and
         | tracing tools to figure out _why_ those files failed to copy.
         | But still fun to see the end result, with XP running.
        
       | sourcepluck wrote:
       | > The OOBE started, but what an experience it was! This wasn't an
       | experience. This was pure madness!
       | 
       | Very enjoyable. I was overjoyed seeing shots of 3D pinball.
        
         | sourcepluck wrote:
         | Following on from this, I looked at another of your articles,
         | and learned of the existence of Andrey Muzychenko, and his
         | reverse engineering efforts and making this
         | https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball
         | 
         | Crazy! Playing right now, so happy. Reverse engineering and the
         | people who practice it are legends.
        
       | 01jonny01 wrote:
       | I still use Windows XP, even managed to install the last ever
       | version of Netscape. It was working with most mainstream site up
       | until a few years ago.
        
         | anyfoo wrote:
         | As much as I love my retro-computing, I keep it far away from
         | open networks...
        
           | EvanAnderson wrote:
           | It makes me feel so old to hear Windows XP described as
           | "retro-computing". >smile<
        
             | anyfoo wrote:
             | I'm old enough to remember the release of Windows 3.0!
             | (Before that I used Windows 2.1 and was technically around
             | for all Windows releases, but didn't hear about the
             | release.)
             | 
             | But just last month, when I installed Windows 2000 on a
             | new-old-stock laptop from 2008 (which was surprisingly
             | challenging as well), I realized that it does start to feel
             | retro by now...
        
               | kelnos wrote:
               | I remember the Win3.0 release too, though that was the
               | first version of Windows I'd used (we were a DOS-only
               | house before then). In middle school I begged my dad to
               | get hold of a copy of Windows 3.11 for Workgroups,
               | because somehow I believed that was crucial to my and a
               | few friends plans to start our own software company.
               | 
               | Of course those plans never materialized, even after we
               | all installed WfW 3.11.
               | 
               | It is wild to me that Windows 3.1's system requirements
               | were 1MB of RAM and 6.5MB of disk space. Things have
               | changed...
        
               | anyfoo wrote:
               | Ah, I remember installing WfW 3.11 around the same age as
               | well! I don't even remember if we already had a home
               | network at that time (the first one was NetWare 3.11
               | based), but I do remember the subtle differences that
               | somehow made it fun.
        
           | kjs3 wrote:
           | This. I still have a few XP machines/instances running
           | software/hardware that won't work on newer stuff (logic
           | analyzer, PROM/PAL programmers, old CAD, etc). I don't think
           | I've ever launched a browser on them, and they definitely are
           | walled off network wise. But they work perfectly for the use
           | case.
        
             | anyfoo wrote:
             | Yep. For the same reason my oscilloscope and spectrum
             | analyzer are in the same isolated network as my retro
             | stuff.
        
               | kjs3 wrote:
               | My 'big' LA runs HP/UX 10.something. No way that's
               | getting near the interwebs. =)
        
           | ruined wrote:
           | at some point, the attack surface is old and strange enough
           | that it's no longer hazardous to expose. like a spear going
           | through kevlar ballistic armor. i guess that's backwards but
           | you know what i mean
        
             | anyfoo wrote:
             | Oh yeah, I agree with your point. I really wouldn't be
             | worried very much about the DOS machine with packet drivers
             | being exposed to the Internet. It's easier for me to have
             | the "retro net" just being generally isolated, though.
             | 
             | Windows XP on the other hand...
        
             | wongarsu wrote:
             | Windows XP meanwhile is more like a WWII weapon: outdated
             | but still sees a surprising amount of use, and is familiar
             | due to its similarity with modern weapons.
             | 
             | Behind a NAT it may be fine, but you still have to be very
             | careful
        
       | biofox wrote:
       | Maybe I'm just getting old, but Windows XP was the last version
       | of Windows where usability and UI consistency seemed to be
       | central to the design.
       | 
       | The menu bar was in the same place in every application. Short-
       | cuts were consistent between apps. I didn't have to contend with
       | four different version of the file browser to open a file, or
       | "Show more options" on right-click to get a non-idiot-proof
       | context menu. Icons were high contrast, there were text
       | descriptions and tools tips (instead of cryptic grey-on-grey
       | icons), short-cut combinations were actually included in the
       | menus, and almost every application had a help file!
       | 
       | Can we go back to that, please?
        
         | ktosobcy wrote:
         | > The menu bar was in the same place in every application.
         | Short-cuts were consistent between apps.
         | 
         | Thank the "web-devs"... instead of having native looking apps
         | that use OS controls/widgets they want to push dumb html/css/js
         | to "unlease their creativity"... I'm sorry but huge middle
         | finger to you.
         | 
         | I want all my apps to use the same widgets and paradigme and
         | look the same...
        
           | DCH3416 wrote:
           | Yeah but look how _cool_ those css effects look. What, people
           | actually use keyboards to navigate?
        
           | vundercind wrote:
           | I try not to think about the collective time and frustration
           | lost to companies wanting their native apps to be "on brand"
           | and cross-platform consistent rather than native. A bunch of
           | extra work to make it that way. A bunch of extra work to
           | maintain it, any place dumb "look and feel" shit like
           | specially-animated buttons or whatever made it fragile. Then
           | on the other side, 99% of the time it's worse to use than if
           | they'd at least _mostly_ stuck with native widgets, so wastes
           | time and causes frustration among users, and then there 's
           | the special case of that for accessibility, which is often a
           | true shit-show.
           | 
           | All because the marketing suite can't stand not getting their
           | fingers in something. I want to see the fucking study that
           | says having the buttons on iOS the same shape as the ones on
           | the website adds any number of dollars to the bottom line.
           | C'mon, this is important enough to spend a bunch of money on,
           | slow development, and also make UX worse, must have a good
           | reason for it, right? _Surely_ it 's not just an exec who's
           | never done the actual job pushing things for vanity purposes,
           | or a variety of roles padding their portfolios, or needing to
           | market this to toddler-like C-suiters inside the company on
           | some damn powerpoint, right? LOL.
        
             | layer8 wrote:
             | It's all such a waste of human life time, an actual
             | tragedy.
        
               | vundercind wrote:
               | I connect this in my head to a shift in presentation of
               | things like big box stores, which look a lot more
               | consistent and marketing-designed these days than they
               | did in, say, the '90s. Hell, fast food chains, too. It's
               | like some time in the '00s marketing departments across
               | the board received a much greater mandate and I've got
               | this _funny feeling_ that only some of that, and maybe
               | not most of it, is really justified by added value in
               | dollar terms.
               | 
               | But then, for as much as we pretend to be data-driven in
               | business and pay lip service to various science-adjacent
               | notions and think we've really got it all figured out,
               | mooooost of it falls apart if you poke at it a little and
               | it all starts to look very fad and social-proof driven.
               | So I guess just add this to the list of weird stuff
               | companies do for maybe-bad reasons.
        
               | theideaofcoffee wrote:
               | I feel the same way, I feel despair when I think about
               | all of the time wasted for such trivial bullshit. But
               | then I'm told I'm being dramatic and to get back to my
               | Jira stories. Line must go up, huh?
        
             | quietbritishjim wrote:
             | While I do think native controls are the better choice, I
             | disagree that companies even though it's harder. They do it
             | mostly because it's easier: write once in JS, push to web,
             | mobile and electron on desktop and be done with it.
        
           | exe34 wrote:
           | > I'm sorry but huge middle finger to you.
           | 
           | Amen.
        
           | dmit wrote:
           | Exactly! Let's go back to the times when things were
           | consistent! Remember when you couldn't tell AIM from ICQ from
           | MSN Messenger from Skype because they looked and behaved
           | consistently?
           | 
           | Just find an old Windows VM and put Winamp next to Sonique
           | next to RealPlayer next to Windows Media Player next to
           | QuickTime -- those sure were the days, until the damn
           | "creatives" came with their stupid "web tech."
        
             | paulryanrogers wrote:
             | I think they were referring to internal consistency?
             | 
             | Windows XP did allow apps to do some crazy things, though
             | not sure how much of that was unique to XP vs legacy APIs.
        
               | Dwedit wrote:
               | "Layered Windows" is how an application can have a window
               | which is not the typical rectangular shape, such as the
               | "Head" skin for Windows Media Player. That would be the
               | "crazy things" that apps were allowed to do.
        
           | myself248 wrote:
           | Exactly! We spent years training reflexes and keyboard
           | shortcuts, only to have window borders change appearance (and
           | get thinner!), menus rearrange, controls vanish unless
           | moused-over, etc. It's an insult.
        
         | zamadatix wrote:
         | I doubt we'll see as tight consistency again but the cause and
         | effect more being Windows XP released 6 years after the taskbar
         | debuted in Windows whereas now there is closer to 30 years of
         | stuff expecting to still run the same as it did back then
         | rather than a change of goals. I still wouldn't mind if it were
         | a bit better on the consistency anyways though...
        
         | fourfour3 wrote:
         | Honestly, Windows 2000 UI with the right click menu on the
         | start button from Windows 10 onwards would be a near perfect
         | Windows UI for me!
         | 
         | I know the 3D effects are considered dated now, but I found
         | them very useful from a separation PoV.
        
         | mikepurvis wrote:
         | Windows 2000 was this for me, but it's true that you could opt
         | out of the bubble gum skin and get a more conventional look
         | from XP if you preferred that.
        
           | layer8 wrote:
           | This was still largely true with Windows 7. Starting with
           | Windows 8 the UI story really went to hell.
        
             | mikepurvis wrote:
             | Okay, that's good to know. I was a Mac user from 2007 to
             | 2018, so I missed the entirety of the Windows 7/8
             | generation-- going directly from XP to 10.
        
               | layer8 wrote:
               | 10 was a bit of an improvement over 8, so at least you
               | skipped the worst with 8. I haven't had the heart to
               | install 11 yet though.
        
               | mikepurvis wrote:
               | Like most filthy casuals, I don't think I'm a
               | particularly "deep" user of the OS. It's basically
               | background chrome for web browsers and terminal windows
               | into WSL and SSH sessions.
               | 
               | To the extent that the OS does anything at all, I'm
               | usually just mildly annoyed, like it signing be out of my
               | work VPN or forgetting how my monitors are arranged. Or
               | eating the battery when it should be sleeping (though I
               | understand there's been some historical finger-pointing
               | between Dell and Microsoft about whose actual fault those
               | issues are).
        
         | DCH3416 wrote:
         | > Icons were high contrast
         | 
         | Seriously. Who demonized having legible color icons in exchange
         | for blurry grayscale icons?
        
           | layer8 wrote:
           | Ironically, having to support high-DPI displays destroyed
           | having nice icons.
        
             | anyfoo wrote:
             | I think that's true. I recently installed Windows 2000,
             | also for nostalgia, and marveled at the icons. I like the
             | Windows 3.11 (not so much the 3.0) icons even more.
             | 
             | They have such a charm and special style that only works
             | through their low pixel count, but if you would pixelate
             | icons today it would just look gimmicky and out of place
             | with the rest of the OS.
        
               | DCH3416 wrote:
               | It depends on the design of the icon. You generally can't
               | scale Windows 3.1 graphics to higher resolutions without
               | it looking like it's lacking details. The charm was with
               | what you couldn't see and your mind could fill in the
               | blanks.
        
               | anyfoo wrote:
               | Yep, that's what I mean. Art comes from restriction, and
               | the designers at Microsoft did really charming stuff with
               | what they had to work with.
               | 
               | I still vividly remember such simple but delightful
               | things as the Excel icon, or the icon of a stylized 386
               | processor for the System category in Control Panel.
        
               | Lammy wrote:
               | > the designers at Microsoft
               | 
               | Susan Kare did a lot of those! I love how they're just as
               | expressive at 16-colors as at higher color depths.
               | https://www.stardock.com/blog/502254/the-evolution-of-
               | comput...
        
               | anyfoo wrote:
               | Ah, thanks for telling me that. I had absolutely no idea
               | she had any involvement, but now it makes perfect sense.
        
             | DCH3416 wrote:
             | That's true. Right up until you look at Haiku and its
             | vector icons. But I get it. Everyone has to look the same.
        
             | Dwedit wrote:
             | Vector graphics are a thing, you can make colorful graphics
             | that can scale. You just might need multiple levels of
             | detail depending on how large it's rendered at.
        
         | tetris11 wrote:
         | This may be the nostalgia factor, but XP was genuinely one of
         | the best operating systems I've ever run.
         | 
         | I had the "Student Edition" and you could trim down all the
         | services to the point that you would have a running OS using
         | just 18 processes. Linux at the time could not compete with
         | that. (Of course, things have changed a lot since then).
        
           | exe34 wrote:
           | When was this? I used VectorLinux on a 600MHz celeron with
           | 64MB RAM for a year at uni, and I could tell you what every
           | process was doing there - everything else had to go.
        
             | written-beyond wrote:
             | Blog post please
        
               | exe34 wrote:
               | I don't really blog, and I've forgotten all the juicy
               | details at this point. It was an old thinkpad that just
               | barely booted up windows ME and then couldn't do anything
               | useful. VectorLinux was a really great match for it, I
               | think they claimed to have fiddled with the kde libraries
               | at the source level and ripped out a bunch of things to
               | make it all snappier - I don't know to what extent that's
               | true, but that crappy little laptop allowed me to run
               | firefox, openoffice, skype, matlab and latex (not all at
               | the same time - at most two) for my first year of uni.
        
               | written-beyond wrote:
               | Hearing about these esoteric Linux distros and their lore
               | is always interesting.
               | 
               | I'm surprised Skype used to be functional, post Microsoft
               | acquisition I remember constantly fiddling with it to run
               | consistently on fairly recent versions of Ubuntu on a 4th
               | gen i5 latitude.
        
               | exe34 wrote:
               | oh it was a pain in the gluteus maximus, this was before
               | alsa worked properly, so it was using oss, and you could
               | only have one application using the sound card. this
               | means a random flash applet at the bottom of a page on
               | Firefox could easily hold it and Skype would just not
               | work.
        
             | tetris11 wrote:
             | Well, okay, puppylinux was pretty good if I recall in that
             | respect. This was ~15ish years ago, and I think that debian
             | and slackware were bloated in comparison to XP back then
        
               | exe34 wrote:
               | Yeah VL was based off slack but they ripped a bunch of
               | things out, and I carefully went over the bootscripts and
               | removed a bit more of things I didn't definitely need.
        
           | kimixa wrote:
           | Measuring total process count seems like a bit of a nonsense
           | metric, it seems more related to how the services are
           | structured or what features you want enabled rather than any
           | measure of "goodness".
           | 
           | From a security and robustness POV, surely /more/ process
           | separation is a good thing?
        
             | tetris11 wrote:
             | Of course, and I recall there being a single windows
             | process that pretty much did everything -- but at the same
             | time I knew that there were no other processes acting in
             | the background other than the ones I actively used, and
             | Windows.
        
               | anyfoo wrote:
               | So the point is just "shorter list is easier to look
               | through, and remember which processes are supposed to be
               | there"?
               | 
               | In Linux it was usually pretty obvious what daemon did
               | what on a somewhat well curated system, though. No
               | svchost.exe, and no gargantuan system processes or a
               | kernel overstepping its boundaries.
               | 
               | Of course, that's very different nowadays...
        
               | tetris11 wrote:
               | Back then I was not so savvy with what every process did
               | (over the years, of course, one learns). Windows XP had
               | one main process, and everything else was practically
               | userspace apps
        
               | anyfoo wrote:
               | Yeah, that makes sense. I think the (slight) backlash you
               | get is from your original statement that that is what
               | makes it the "best OS", when in reality it arguably
               | rather indicates some problems.
        
               | kimixa wrote:
               | From what I remember a single svchost.exe process
               | instance could be handing multiple "services" - you could
               | see the mapping of service to PID in the Services, and
               | there wasn't a 1:1 relationship.
               | 
               | So did you _actually_ know what services were running
               | based on the processes to support the belief that  "there
               | were no other processes acting in the background"?
        
               | tetris11 wrote:
               | But they were signed windows services, I didn't have to
               | worry about any nefarious processes coming from the OS
               | itself (at least, not back then...)
        
           | anyfoo wrote:
           | Well, some of these processes did _a lot_ , didn't they?
           | Sadly, Windows also does or did a lot in the kernel that
           | should actually happen as a process in userspace.
        
         | biddendidden wrote:
         | > Windows XP was the last version of Windows where usability
         | and UI consistency seemed to be central to the design.
         | 
         | Ever used Win 7? Way better, and not a candy UI.
        
           | evoke4908 wrote:
           | Aero is like the _definition_ of candy
        
             | layer8 wrote:
             | Not of candy (like XP), but of eye candy maybe.
        
           | fourteenfour wrote:
           | What? I really like Win 7 but it is for sure one of the best
           | early examples of a "candy" ui. The close button looks like a
           | jolly rancher and everything is glassy looking. If you are
           | talking about "eye-candy" it also stretches far into that
           | territory with title bar blurs, drop shadows and transparency
           | effects across the OS.
        
         | josephscott wrote:
         | This, especially if you turned off the extra UI bits, under
         | performance options.
        
         | theamk wrote:
         | Sure, just get any of the lightweight linuxes. Classical
         | toolbar, good contrast, captions... Some apps do have
         | inconsistent shortcuts, but many don't.
         | 
         | I type this comment from old Ubuntu Mate system, but my next
         | system is going to be Debian-based.
        
         | mipsi wrote:
         | My inner voice of Nostalgia just whispered: All the gorgeous
         | pixels gone with the wind.
        
         | throwawee wrote:
         | You're looking at it through rose tinted lenses. I remember it
         | getting blasted for its Fisher Price theme and ugly new Start
         | Menu and Control Panel redesigns. Remember the search dog?
         | 
         | If Microsoft had a champion of UI consistency I think it'd be
         | Windows 2000, but I wouldn't know from experience. I was given
         | a Windows ME prebuilt.
        
         | GeekyBear wrote:
         | For me, Windows 2000 and Classic MacOS were high water mark of
         | UI design.
         | 
         | After that, change for the sake of change started ti creep in
         | and then accelerated.
         | 
         | Windows XP had the Luna UI with its Fisher Price color scheme
         | and OSX moved to the lickabke Aqua UI.
        
       | felsqualle wrote:
       | Hi folks, thank you so much for your comments!
       | 
       | Yes, this was purely a "why not?!" project, it doesn't really
       | make sense and using VMware or true low-level emulation like
       | 86Box is a way better option than using completely unsupported
       | software.
       | 
       | Currently going through your comments...
        
         | IntelMiner wrote:
         | Question: Why didn't you just slap a No-CD patch on The Sims to
         | see if it could run?
         | 
         | The game is almost 25 years old (ow, my bones) I don't think
         | anyone would bat an eye if you circumvented the DRM
        
       | binary132 wrote:
       | Fun article. A bit of mental time-travel back to early teen years
       | and struggling to learn native windows game programming. :)
        
       | taneq wrote:
       | We've achieved inner-platform-ception. Again. It's recursive.
        
       | tomw1808 wrote:
       | There are people who create checksums of iso's and there's people
       | like me.
       | 
       | And then there are people who do not read the ToS and then
       | there's also nobody else.
       | 
       | I miss the simplicity of windows xp. sometimes.
        
       | ale42 wrote:
       | If I remember correctly, the blue text-mode part of the setup can
       | be launched from DOS 7.1 (the DOS part of Windows 98, with FAT32
       | support) by copying the i386 directory from the CD to the
       | FAT32-formatted hard drive and running WINNT.EXE from MS-DOS. I
       | doubt this would work inside DOSBox-X, tough... I'd like to try
       | but right now I don't have enough time for such experiments ;-)
        
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