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This article is not very clear. After the author realizes that they don't have low-level access privileges they just... do the thing that failed 20 times before

This article is not very clear. After the author realizes that they don't have low-level access privileges they just... do the thing that failed 20 times before and suddenly it works with no explanation as to why.

Dilettante_ 2y ago
The authentic Windows XP experience!
unnouinceput 2y ago
No, he was not realizing that. Was wondering if that's the case. The realization comes later with understanding NT vs FAT conversion that was happening. Hence why the upgrade route via W2000
smaudet 2y ago
I think clean installation failed, there is/was another installation route with upgrade. I agree that the low-level explanation is lacking, but in fairness dosbox-x doesn't sound like it offers that (out of the box). I'm guessing what happened, the boot sector etc. were installed by 98, win2k had some way of converting from FAT32 to NTFS, and the winxp installer just sets some flags and dumps install files on disk somewhere. Getting all that from "it's the NT conversion" is a stretch, but.
- felsqualle 2y ago
  That's my current theory as well. IMHO that's the reason why an upgrade from 98 to XP failed while it ran successfully by using Windows 2000 as the base installation. Note that I was totally skipping the text-based installation stage when upgrading from Windows 2000 while I got it when starting the installation from Windows 98 - that's where the "NT conversion, stupid!"-theory came from.
jaredhallen 2y ago
The way I read it is that instead of trying to upgrade directly from 98 to XP, they went from 98 to 2000, and then to XP.
layer8 2y ago
They tried upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows XP, hoping that it would work like upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 did, but it didn’t. Then they realized that upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 and then to Windows XP might work, and it did. It’s important to realize that Windows XP was the successor both to the NT line (Windows NT/2000) as well as to the DOS-based consumer-oriented line (Windows 95/98/ME), hence upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows XP is the natural path, whereas upgrading to Windows 2000 in between is kind of a detour.
kelnos 2y ago
Yeah, I was really hoping to see a deep-dive with debugging and tracing tools to figure out why those files failed to copy. But still fun to see the end result, with XP running.

Dilettante_ 2y ago

The authentic Windows XP experience!

unnouinceput 2y ago

No, he was not realizing that. Was wondering if that's the case. The realization comes later with understanding NT vs FAT conversion that was happening. Hence why the upgrade route via W2000

smaudet 2y ago

I think clean installation failed, there is/was another installation route with upgrade. I agree that the low-level explanation is lacking, but in fairness dosbox-x doesn't sound like it offers that (out of the box). I'm guessing what happened, the boot sector etc. were installed by 98, win2k had some way of converting from FAT32 to NTFS, and the winxp installer just sets some flags and dumps install files on disk somewhere. Getting all that from "it's the NT conversion" is a stretch, but.

felsqualle 2y ago
That's my current theory as well. IMHO that's the reason why an upgrade from 98 to XP failed while it ran successfully by using Windows 2000 as the base installation. Note that I was totally skipping the text-based installation stage when upgrading from Windows 2000 while I got it when starting the installation from Windows 98 - that's where the "NT conversion, stupid!"-theory came from.

jaredhallen 2y ago

The way I read it is that instead of trying to upgrade directly from 98 to XP, they went from 98 to 2000, and then to XP.

layer8 2y ago

They tried upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows XP, hoping that it would work like upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 did, but it didn’t. Then they realized that upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 and then to Windows XP might work, and it did. It’s important to realize that Windows XP was the successor both to the NT line (Windows NT/2000) as well as to the DOS-based consumer-oriented line (Windows 95/98/ME), hence upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows XP is the natural path, whereas upgrading to Windows 2000 in between is kind of a detour.

kelnos 2y ago

Yeah, I was really hoping to see a deep-dive with debugging and tracing tools to figure out why those files failed to copy. But still fun to see the end result, with XP running.