My Virtural Machines (and other old stuff)

I love old OSes (Windows 7 mwah), running old software, and old(ish) games. Now I'm gonna talk my head off about what I'm setting up!

Initial Post Date: January 22, 2025

What I Had

Before I decided that my laptop was running like shit and I needed a fresh Windows install, I had a couple of things on my computer. The one that was the most set up was my Windows 2000 Professional. I got the .iso off of the Internet Archive (and it actually came with a product key) and set up a purple theme and SAPARi to mess with. This is also the only VM I have a screenshot of, because I thought it was cute lol. I put that photo below!

a screenshot of a windows 2000 desktop with a purple theme

I also had Windows XP and Windows 7 VMs. I couldn't get a product key for the WinXP one, but I was using UTAU software, tracker music stuff, and trying to do a thing with a midi keyboard on the Win7 machine.

"Had"?

So when I did the aforementioned reset, I exported all of my VMs to an external hard drive. Today (1-22-25) I redownloaded Virtural Box and loaded them back in, and that process seemed to go smoothly. Unfortunately, none of the VMs ran when I hit start! I got some error about hashes not matching up... so i gave up. (　；∀；) I decided to start over because there wasn't much on my old VMs anyway, so there's not much loss. Just some things I wanted to give a try. I may try and fix them later but that is a project for another day.

What I'm Currently Up To (as of 1-22-25)

I've been thinking about old chat systems recently. I saw AeroChat and I thought it was really cute but I didn't want to risk installing it. Today I saw a MattKCBites video on AIM and a lightbulb went off in my head. People still work on old software to make it work in the modern day and I can fucking download it! And use it!! I actually have been sitting at my desk for hours now like a shrimp, so I am going to write my plans down, take a shower and maybe eat something, then come back.

Here's what I want to do:

  1. Get working versions of all of my old VMs
  2. Put the old software I had back in them (ex: SAPARI, UTAU, tracker stuff)
  3. Install AIM and re-setup the ChivaNet server and what not
  4. Check out NINA.chat and escargot.chat (thanks ashton!)

Okay I'm going to go do boring self care stuff now and I'll be back.

Next Day (1-23-25)

I did not come back I got sad and I got in bed lol. I went out and got sun and socialized today, so i'm gonna use the energy from that to do a little more today. Because I have a lot of other things to do that are of high academic priority, I'll download all of the .iso files I need to remake my VMs.