The challenge is back on.
Not on some new machine. Not on borrowed hardware or a fallback plan.
It’s back on the original netbook — the Samsung NC10 — the one that crashed, screamed, shut down, and begged to be buried. The one that refused to POST. The one that beeped at me like a microwave with abandonment issues. The one I pulled apart, resurrected in an actual oven, and still, for some reason, kept fighting for.
Let’s back up.
You Know That Feeling?
The crash wasn’t even dramatic. No BSOD. No kernel panic. Just... silence.
JAWS went quiet. The system stopped responding. The screen stayed frozen like it was too afraid to admit it had died.
Then came the reboot.
Then nothing.
Fan spun. Lights came on. Screen stayed black.
Then came the beeps — one long continuous scream followed by five sharp, evenly spaced beeps. And again. And again.
That’s not a Windows problem. That’s not even a Linux problem. That’s hardware.
Low-level, irrecoverable, “sorry buddy, it’s been a good run” kind of hardware.
I pulled the battery. I yanked the RAM. I let it sit.
I ran diagnostics — which told me everything was fine, of course.
They lied.
The Pavilion That Time Forgot
While I was halfway through writing the NC10’s obituary, I dug through the salvage pile and pulled out a laptop I don’t even remember acquiring: an HP Pavilion dv9500.
Big. Glossy. 17 inches of late-2000s "entertainment laptop" chic.
One of those machines that came with a media bar, a Nvidia GPU destined to die, and absolutely no consideration for weight or thermals.
It booted.
No screams. No BIOS errors. It just powered on, calm and collected like it hadn’t been abandoned in a closet since Vista SP1.
I didn’t have any drives in it, but it recognized RAM, showed temps, and looked sane.
I ordered a new SSD and made peace with the idea that I might be finishing this challenge on unfamiliar hardware.
That peace lasted about half a day.
Because I still had one last, incredibly stupid idea left.
Five Minutes at 200°C
I pulled the NC10’s motherboard out, stuck it in the oven — 200 degrees Celsius, five minutes, no fan — and baked it. Not metaphorically.
Literally.
It’s an old trick. Sometimes the solder joints inside fail just enough to break continuity. A reflow can fix it. Sometimes.
Sometimes it just melts things and makes it worse.
This time, it worked.
I put everything back together. Plugged it in. Hit the power button. And suddenly, like nothing had ever gone wrong, the machine booted straight into the Windows 7 diagnostic install I’d left on the drive from before it died the first time.
Slow as hell, but it worked.
And right there, I said what I always say before a bad decision:
“Fuck it.”
I wiped the drive.
I reinstalled XP.
Welcome to ISO Hell
And then I descended into the worst kind of Windows XP bullshit.
I had the right license: XP Professional, volume license, the version I’ve carried around for years. But nothing worked.
Five separate ISOs — all of them broken in their own uniquely malicious way.
One wouldn’t run InstallShield. No error, no explanation, just refused to do anything when I tried to install drivers.
Another one had the absolute audacity to say “only an administrator can run this program,” while I was literally logged in as Administrator. Not a regular account with admin rights — the actual built-in admin account.
One hung halfway through install. One couldn’t detect the disk. One installed fine, then refused to boot without freezing.
Every time I fixed one problem, another appeared.
And somehow, I didn’t give up.
Eventually, something clicked. I got an install that booted. That stayed booted.
XP was back.
But it wasn’t functional. Not yet.
80072EFE Is the Sound of My Sanity Breaking
The first thing I did was try to patch the system using Legacy Update — the community-powered replacement for Windows Update, built specifically for stuff like this.
And of course, it broke.
80072EFE.
Connection failure. Possibly update agent mismatch. Maybe certs. Maybe something else.
But I had already updated the update agent. Checked all the files. Installed the right root certs. Registered the DLLs. Rebooted more times than I can count.
Still: no updates.
I walked away for a bit. Came back. Tried again.
Still nothing.
At this point, XP was running — but it was a skeleton. No drivers, no network stack, no security updates, no patches.
And then, by pure luck, I found the holy grail.
No McAfee Required
On an old backup drive, buried under a heap of forgotten junk folders, was a file I didn’t recognize: SamsungNC10_drivers.iso.
No label. No readme. No notes.
I mounted it. And there it was — the original Samsung driver CD, in perfect form.
Audio, video, wireless, chipset, touchpad, hotkeys. Every driver. Every tool. All of it, laid out like someone actually gave a damn back in 2009.
The installer even came with a full interface. A proper one. With progress bars. With real buttons.
Of course, it also tried to force McAfee VirusScan on me, claiming it was absolutely required for system function.
I unchecked that box so hard it probably felt it in 2009.
Then I clicked install.
And everything just worked.
Wi-Fi showed up. Sound returned. Brightness keys worked. Touchpad gestures. Function keys. Battery readouts. Even the mute LED.
No weird registry hacks. No unsigned popups. No sketchy .ru domains.
Just... XP, with all the original parts talking to each other like they remembered what it was like to function.
So What Happens Now?
It’s July 1.
I started trying to fix this machine on June 29.
Two days of driver hell, BIOS error codes, half-broken ISOs, and one actual oven bake later... I’m here.
The HP might still be smarter long-term. It’s faster. It has better thermals. It won’t collapse if you breathe on the keyboard too hard.
But where’s the fun in that?
I’m typing this post from the NC10.
The same one that crashed. The same one that beeped. The same one that cooked at 200C while I stared at the oven timer like a lunatic.
This isn’t just XP running in 2025.
This is XP refusing to fucking die.
We’re back.
XP is done. It was never yours—just a licensed illusion of control. But the future isn’t some retro desktop resurrection. It’s already here, already running, and already free: Android GNU/Linux. It’s a fully free system, maintained globally, available on modern hardware, and built to empower the user. No gatekeeping, no lock-in, no expiration date.
You want a terminal? It’s there. You want to develop, manage files, sync across systems, even run servers? All possible. Android GNU/Linux gives you everything GNU/Linux ever did just mobile, efficient, and everywhere. XP was disposable. Android GNU/Linux is durable, flexible, and yours from boot to browser.
posted from a Pixel 6 running stock Android GNU/Linux. No license keys. No telemetry. Just freedom.