This is what it looks like when a machine gives up.
For the first time since this started, I didn’t wake up ready to fight.
XP booted clean. Nothing screamed. The browser opened. Enafore loaded. I read some posts. JAWS tracked. The system didn’t even creak.
It felt... survivable.
No new services had risen from the grave. No weird startup behavior. The registry held. The audio stack behaved. Even the network card—flaky as hell on day one—was quiet and obedient. There was this uneasy calm to it, like the silence you get just before a summer storm hits. Still, I leaned in. Opened windows. Typed. Scanned. Replied.
I thought maybe I’d turned a corner.
I thought maybe this would be the day I started bridging Discord to IRC.
I thought wrong.
It started with a pause.
Not a crash. Not a freeze. Just... nothing.
No feedback. No disk activity. No screen redraw. JAWS went quiet. The kind of silence that wraps itself around you and makes your stomach drop.
Then the machine rebooted. On its own.
And that’s when I knew something was wrong—not with XP, not with a misbehaving browser tab, but deeper. Lower than software. One layer too far down to blame on JavaScript. One tier too critical to brush off.
When it came back up, it didn’t even reach the bootloader.
BIOS posted—sort of. The fan spun. Lights came on. But the screen? Black.
Then came the sound.
Continuous beeps. No intervals. No startup chime. Just a long, loud wail from the internals.
Then a shutoff.
Then another attempt.
This time: five beeps and a pause. Then again. And again.
That usually means CPU failure. Or the board. Or both. And this isn’t modern hardware with nice tools and clear logs. This is a netbook from 2009 clawing its way through 2025, and I just pushed it too far.
I powered it off. Pulled the battery. Held the power button.
Disconnected everything I could. Let it sit. Prayed.
Before I reached for USB, I tried XP one last time.
It made it to the Windows logo.
Then black.
Then the Samsung splash.
Then the Windows logo again.
And back to black.
A loop.
No disk errors. No BSOD. Just an endless carousel of almost-booting.
That was when I broke the no-USB rule. I’d been trying to keep this pure. XP only. No fallbacks, no cheats. Just the system as it was, not as I could rescue it.
But that was before it tried to die.
So I opened the BIOS. Switched the boot order. And weirdly—it beeped.
Every time I moved a device to the top of the list, it chirped like it was proud of itself. A sharp, crisp tone that somehow cut through the silence like mockery. Like it knew.
Eventually, I got Debian booting from USB.
That’s where things are now. The netbook is chugging through a Debian install—slowly. Painfully slowly. Slower than I ever remember it being on this same class of hardware, years ago.
Espeakup is stuttering.
The system lags between each spoken word.
Even just navigating the installer feels like dragging a dead weight uphill.
I don’t know if the drive’s failing, if the memory’s dying, if the CPU is cooking itself alive, or if everything’s just quietly falling apart at once.
But something is very, very wrong.
If the install finishes without catching fire, I’ll run diagnostics. Try to figure out what broke. Try to see if anything’s even worth salvaging.
Meanwhile, I’m writing this from my Surface Pro.
The fallback. The lifeline. The machine I said I wouldn’t use unless I had to.
I had to.
Because this isn’t a blog post anymore.
It’s a deathwatch.
And I don’t know if XP’s coming back.
I’m not calling the series off. Not yet.
But I won’t lie to you: it’s not looking good.
If Day 5 happens, it’ll be on borrowed time.
And if it doesn’t?
You’ve already read the title.