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>A LAN isn’t legitimate unless at least one person has to reinstall Windows along the way. Never a truer phrase spoken.

hypercube33 3y ago
A buddy of ours has the nickname gremlin to this day. If he touched your PC it was guaranteed to bsod or just die. he spent lan parties trying to get his PC working, reinstalling windows...etc
- jholman 3y ago
  We had a friend like that too, actually. We all made some mumbling explanation about "electrostatic discharge" so that we felt less uncomfortable being so superstitious, but yeah people would leap in front of him to avoid him touching their stuff. But yeah, he was one of the crew, so it's not like we were gonna not-invite-him.
CableNinja 3y ago
Still dont know how it managed to work, but my buddy had an XP box that he was gonna use for our lan party, but it went sideways. The only thing i had was a win 2k cd. We repaired using the 2k cd, got the system up, in a really fubar hybrid mode, where parts of the system acted like XP, and other parts acted like 2k
- exikyut 3y ago
  Do you remember what parts acted like what?
  - CableNinja 3y ago
    Not entirely. I do remember that the login screen and control panel became 2k like
- bombcar 3y ago
  The dirty secret was windows XP was just a skinned Win2k and the components were very similar. I remember resisting XP for awhile and instead editing INF files so drivers would install on 2k for me.
  - CableNinja 3y ago
    Yeah, i suspect thats the only reason it worked. If it had been ME and 2k it probably wouldve burst into flames
  - Shorel 3y ago
    I think it was more like: XP was Win2K with added DirectX and the skins. And yes, they started as the same kernel and drivers.
- ogurechny 3y ago
  Ah, yes, the manual repairs in the primitive recovery console. Look for .SYS and .DLL files with suspicious dates (unlike the others), overwrite them with EXPAND'ed originals from the setup disk, try booting the system. Had to do it recently on an old XP system after testing early 2000s tool that had no idea service packs existed, and “updated” system files.
conradfr 3y ago
A lot of drama with graphic card drivers as well (for the people too poor to have a 3dfx). Also managing to have everyone on the same patch for $GAME could waste hours.
- JD557 3y ago
  > Also managing to have everyone on the same patch for $GAME could waste hours. This one hits close to home. IIRC, in some games it was not even that obvious that someone had a different version (e.g. maybe they just wouldn't be able to see the server in the list), which made everything take even more time. That just reminded me that circa 2010 I created a Google Sheet with a list of all the games we used to play, which patches to download and from where. By that time it was getting quite hard to find some patches to older games.

A buddy of ours has the nickname gremlin to this day. If he touched your PC it was guaranteed to bsod or just die. he spent lan parties trying to get his PC working, reinstalling windows...etc

jholman 3y ago
We had a friend like that too, actually. We all made some mumbling explanation about "electrostatic discharge" so that we felt less uncomfortable being so superstitious, but yeah people would leap in front of him to avoid him touching their stuff. But yeah, he was one of the crew, so it's not like we were gonna not-invite-him.

CableNinja 3y ago

Still dont know how it managed to work, but my buddy had an XP box that he was gonna use for our lan party, but it went sideways. The only thing i had was a win 2k cd. We repaired using the 2k cd, got the system up, in a really fubar hybrid mode, where parts of the system acted like XP, and other parts acted like 2k

exikyut 3y ago
Do you remember what parts acted like what?
- CableNinja 3y ago
  Not entirely. I do remember that the login screen and control panel became 2k like
bombcar 3y ago
The dirty secret was windows XP was just a skinned Win2k and the components were very similar. I remember resisting XP for awhile and instead editing INF files so drivers would install on 2k for me.
- CableNinja 3y ago
  Yeah, i suspect thats the only reason it worked. If it had been ME and 2k it probably wouldve burst into flames
- Shorel 3y ago
  I think it was more like: XP was Win2K with added DirectX and the skins. And yes, they started as the same kernel and drivers.
ogurechny 3y ago
Ah, yes, the manual repairs in the primitive recovery console. Look for .SYS and .DLL files with suspicious dates (unlike the others), overwrite them with EXPAND'ed originals from the setup disk, try booting the system. Had to do it recently on an old XP system after testing early 2000s tool that had no idea service packs existed, and “updated” system files.

conradfr 3y ago

A lot of drama with graphic card drivers as well (for the people too poor to have a 3dfx). Also managing to have everyone on the same patch for $GAME could waste hours.

JD557 3y ago
> Also managing to have everyone on the same patch for $GAME could waste hours. This one hits close to home. IIRC, in some games it was not even that obvious that someone had a different version (e.g. maybe they just wouldn't be able to see the server in the list), which made everything take even more time. That just reminded me that circa 2010 I created a Google Sheet with a list of all the games we used to play, which patches to download and from where. By that time it was getting quite hard to find some patches to older games.