I just installed Windows XP successfully! Can’t believe how stupidly happy I am right now ?
So we have this really old computer at the office. It has a FPT Elead brand and was manufactured in 2009. I bought it second-hand for 2 million dong. It used to run on Windows 7, but was so slow that we just let students do entrance tests on it.
I knew that Windows 7 was too much for this dinosaur so I wanted to have XP on it. I made a bootable USB drive, and after a couple of hours Googling and struggling with all the UEFI, GPT, asms, AHCI configurations (if you knew any of those terms, you’d understand the pain), I finally got XP to run.
I can’t believe how excited I was upon seeing the blue XP setup screen! It was like a wave of nostalgia sweeping over all at once.
See that screen right above? I’ve seen it so many times! I had my first computer in 2002. In 2006 I built a PC by myself with parts bought from Trần Anh, and between that year and 2009 I must have installed and re-installed XP close to a hundred times.
At one point I typed the CD key in so much that I even had the serial number memorised! I can’t remember crap this time, so I just took a picture of the CD key off the computer screen.
Finally the desktop screen came up! Took me another hour to find the right audio, graphics drivers, and browser for this ancient piece of machinery. It was 1 am, but I can’t say I was tired at all. So happy to go over the old 3D icons, the familiar Windows sounds, the legendary wallpapers (Bliss, Blue Hills, Autumn!).
I remember when I was a kid and first seeing the XP interface, I was astonished by the 3D graphics. This was a massive leap from the flat and monotonous Windows 98 theme. I would spend hours just browsing through all the categories in Control Panel and absolutely fascinated with the shadows, the gloss and colour blending, the depths of the icons — from the printer, the headphone, the globe, the office gadgets, to the LCD screen. To me back then, this represented a surreal concept of modernity. This is what the US with its cutting edge and futuristic tech must have looked like!
I also remember marvelling at the mystifying beauty of the default XP wallpapers — the Bliss, Autumn, Azul, and Blue Hills ones in particular. Having grown up in the crowded and ugly urban jungle of Hanoi, I had no idea how majestic nature could be. The moment I first saw the Bliss photo, I just stared at it for hours with my mouth dropped. I imagined myself frolicking, running, rolling, and playing on that field with none of the worries in the world. I said to myself that I would have to visit this particular spot one day!
The Autumn and Blue Hills ones also captured my childhood obsession. With my non-existent English and Googling skills back then, I was left wondering where those places were. I kept thinking of the photographer, of the moment they took those photos. I thought to myself, the moment I stood on top of the blue hills with that exact same sight in front of my eyes would be the happiest day in my life!
So yea, just a quick post to commemorate the old beauty that accompanied me through my coming of age years. Windows 10 is smooth, elegant, and reliable on a whole nother level, but XP will always have a special place in my memory.