The Dinotower
The machine I do all my experimenting on is a tower my dad got from his work circa 2010. Here's the specs:
- Case - Thermaltake Level 10 GT
- Current System - Windows XP service pack 3
- Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-X58A-OC
- CPU - Intel i7 960
- RAM - 12gb
- GPU - nVidia GTX 560
- Peripherals
- HP Compaq LA2205 wg monitor
- Klipsch THX 2.1 speakers
- Razor Black Widow keyboard
- Corsair Ironclaw mouse
- A drive
- Optical drive
And here are the current issues with it:
- Speakers crackle
- A drive untested
- Front USB ports on the case do not work
- Hard drive bays need cable rework
Right now, the Dinotower is purely for running video games that won't run on anything newer (i.e Black & White). Previously I had Windows 7 and Arch Linux dualbooted, but the install of XP required that the drive be wiped. C'est la vie. The next step is getting Windows 7 back into the mix. I saved a disk image before I reformatted the drive, so hopefully I won't have to reinstall a bunch of stuff. We'll see though.
6/2/2026 - The cable management in this thing is pretty bad right now. It could be worse but it's not good, trust me. I did the very basic test of reseating the front USB cables and suprise suprise, didn't fix it. I wasn't optimistic it would, but it was worth checking. I already needed some new cables for the drive bays, since the current ones prevent the back panel of the case from closing if they're actually plugged into a drive. I have no idea how they used to be set up because that's a new problem. Either way, I'll take the excuse to hoof it to microcenter.
Running Windows XP
You should know first and foremost that I am a tech horder and nostalgia lover. I am aware that emulators and virtual machines make life much easier for lots of people, but I am not one of those people. If I can run it on
the original hardware, I will. That being said, the machine I currently have running Windows XP is not originally an XP machine. Ironic I know, I'm working on getting a "period accurate" machine soon, however
the Dinotower does check the nostalgia box as it used to be the family computer. It was sold with Windows 7 professional (which it's also running) and it still has its original hardware so it's still good for running a lot of the Windows XP era games I have.
The initial installation of XP was a pain in the ass, mainly because it was a learning experience for me and the Windows XP professional installation CD from 2002 I had seems to be corrupted. Once I figured that out it was a matter of grabbing WinSetupFromUSB and a non-corrupted ISO from the internet archive. And then after testing out some games and setting up a network bridge, deciding I wanted to dual boot windows 7, figuring out that since I installed XP on IDE mode (because I didn't want to slipstream drivers out of laziness) I would need to re-install it on AHCI mode in order to install windows 7 properly. Cue me trying to find software in the year of our tarnished 2026 that would let me write a .ima file to fake a floppy with the proper drivers. I ended up using the free trial of WinImage, if you're in the same situation as me.
Alas, my stupidity continued. Since I originally had Windows 7 and various games/software installed on that drive prior to XP, I had made a backup of it with the intention of using the system restore after getting the OS-es installed. Well, turns out Windows 7's restore program requires you to format the drive to restore from a backup. Ugh. So all of that nonsense to avoid spending money on a second HDD was for naught.
Resources & Set up
skipster1337 has a great site with many helpful resources for getting XP up and running. The Windows XP forums are also a good resource for more niche issues you might encounter, as well as fun stuff like customization and games. And of course, one cannot talk about running old Windows versions without mentioning legacyupdate which I have used for both my XP and 7 installs.
If you're looking to browse the web, there's a couple options that aren't just the last working XP version of a major browser. Here's some I've personally tried:
- Supermium is the best in terms of functionality, as in my experience most websites work correctly and it supports the use of chrome extensions, being that it's chromium, and naturally it has the usual chrome problems (i.e being a filthly memory hog).
- There's also Mypal but as stated on the github page, the latest versions run very poorly on XP.
- K-Meleon is pretty cool visually since it has that classic netscape vibe, but it hasn't gotten a proper update since 2021 and the latest version gives me bad certificates. I wish the dev would go back to maintaing it.