Day 4 is up. And XP might be dead.
I thought I had the system stable. It booted. It ran. I was ready to start bridging Discord to IRC.
Then it paused. No crash. Just silence.
Then it rebooted.
Then it beeped. Loud. Continuous.
Then five beeps and a pause. Over and over.
That’s not a software failure. That’s a BIOS screaming about hardware.
I tried XP one last time.
It made it to the Windows screen.
Then black.
Then the Samsung logo.
Then Windows.
Then black again.
Looping. No recovery.
I broke the USB rule and booted into Debian. It worked—barely.
Espeakup is stuttering.
The install is dragging itself forward like a dying animal.
This is not normal.
I'm writing this from my Surface Pro while the netbook stumbles through what might be its last job.
If there’s a Day 5, it’ll be a miracle.
If there isn’t... you already know the title.
Read the post:
fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/dea…
#WindowsXP #BlindComputing #RetroComputing #OldHardware #DeadOSWalking

Day 3 of running Windows XP in 2025 is up.
I opened Enafore to check my Mastodon replies. It worked—for a few seconds. Then the notifications started. And they didn’t stop. Ping. Ping. Ping. I couldn’t reply. I could barely move the cursor. I watched the system buckle in real time.
So I tore XP apart.
I disabled over thirty services, deleted Windows File Protection, nuked the prefetch cache, rewrote shutdown behavior, and killed every background process that wasn’t strictly mine. If it touched the network, tried to log something, or ran without permission, it’s dead.
And you know what? Enafore runs fine now. JAWS doesn’t read new posts live, but I don’t care. I can read. I can reply. XP obeys.
Discord, though? Wouldn’t even load in the browser. Just a blank page. So tomorrow, I’m pulling in what channels I can through IRC. It’s not over.
Read the full post:
fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/dea…
#WindowsXP #Retrocomputing #BlindComputing #Accessibility #IRC #Mastodon #DeadOSWalking

Day 3 of running Windows XP in 2025 is up.
I opened Enafore to check my Mastodon replies. It worked—for a few seconds. Then the notifications started. And they didn’t stop. Ping. Ping. Ping. I couldn’t reply. I could barely move the cursor. I watched the system buckle in real time.
So I tore XP apart.
I disabled over thirty services, deleted Windows File Protection, nuked the prefetch cache, rewrote shutdown behavior, and killed every background process that wasn’t strictly mine. If it touched the network, tried to log something, or ran without permission, it’s dead.
And you know what? Enafore runs fine now. JAWS doesn’t read new posts live, but I don’t care. I can read. I can reply. XP obeys.
Discord, though? Wouldn’t even load in the browser. Just a blank page. So tomorrow, I’m pulling in what channels I can through IRC. It’s not over.
Read the full post:
fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/dea…
#WindowsXP #Retrocomputing #BlindComputing #Accessibility #IRC #Mastodon #DeadOSWalking