algorithm being cracked.

But of course, how does that help me?

Unironically, I had purchased this for a whopping £4.68

No, really here’s the receipt. What a bargain!

Of course this is a legit copy with a legit key. But the online activation servers are all gone, and it looks like I’d have to call someone asking about my 22 year old copy of Windows, that I’ll load up and quickly forget.

Since I’m going to use QEMU, 0.90 with pcap support I thought I’d share the startup options:

set loopback=\Device\NPF_{3DF0EC5D-7FBE-46DF-ACF8-EF5D8679A473}
set vmnet1=\Device\NPF_{3BC364F4-5A15-405D-926C-C594383F0323}
qemu -m 512 -L pc-bios ^
-hda xphome.vmdk ^
-soundhw es1370 ^
-net nic,model=pcnet,macaddr=52:24:00:33:00:01 ^
-net pcap,devicename=%loopback% ^
%1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6

I had high hopes for this thing. Clearly misplaced ambitions.

First up, it’s an upgrade version. So that means instead of installing XP I had to waste my time installing NT Workstation 3.51, then installing XP. Yuck. And of course it just want small FAT disks of the 2/4 gigabyte boundary type as it’s 1994. Not the bright future of 2002’s Windows XP.

I don’t know why Qemu 0.90 has issues with XP detecting the CD-ROM drive, but yeah that sucked. I wanted to load up some more insane SNA experiments, but there is no DLC / 802.2 driver for XP Home. wow.

At least once it’s satisfied, we can format the disk as one big happy partition, and we can get on with our lives.

Installation is rather uneventful, however we are instantly reminded that we have only 30 days to go. Since we have that nasty CD-ROM issue that means shutting down, and booting back up, but with this fun program on an ISO image, xp_activate.

I did try to make a call, to activate my Windows, but the connection was terrible and I’m not even sure if these numbers were right. No I mean I know they didn’t work.

So I did what all legit users end up doing, using the crack for my 21 year old copy of Windows.

And just a few clicks later, it was done.

Windows XP Home is activated.

I don’t know if it’s even really going to last, I didn’t try anything else, actually I already deleted it. And the XP folio is back on the bookshelf.

Not only is there no DLC, did you know you can’t uninstall TCP/IP? At least you can unbind it from your NIC. While it does have IPX/SPX there is no built in Netware client. When they said HOME they meant it!