Posted 21 August 2023 - 11:46 AM
I live in a town in a developing country. I have five computers. Three Windows XP desktop computers, a Windows 7 desktop computer and one Windows 10 laptop computer, which previously ran on Windows 8 and on 8.1. My last Windows XP desktop computer, a HP workstation xw4000, which used a Pentium 4 processor and currently has 256 megabytes of RAM, and currently runs on a 32-bit version of Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2. This computer was bought in the 2010s, after my previous Windows XP computer which had a Pentium III processor, stopped working. In its early days of usage in my home, it had 768 megabytes of RAM and initially came with Windows XP, and it was upgraded to Windows Vista. As a young kid at the time, I loved using Windows Vista on this computer, playing games like Purble Place and InkBall on it. Some time later, it was upgraded to Windows 7, which just recently came out back then. Windows 7 did work, but it did not work perfectly fine. A while later, the computer's 512MB RAM card was damaged, decreasing the computer's RAM to the current amount (256MB, as mentioned in the beginning.). Then it was downgraded back to Vista, which didn't properly work on it either, as the RAM's amount is below that of Vista's system requirements. So it was downgraded back to XP. XP worked perfectly fine like it should. But due to my attachment to Vista on it, I was sad, as I wanted Vista again on this computer. After that, what's even strange about this computer is that copies of Windows XP (including some bizarre bootleg copies of XP that are made to resemble Windows Vista, 7 and Mac OS), were installed on this computer MULTIPLE times, until one last time in 2017. After one installation of Windows XP on this computer back in 2015, the computer's internal sound card stopped working. I was sad that the sound card stopped working. Yet I was also happy that it still worked. It was last semi-regularly used back in 2017, after which I bought a new computer running Windows 7, which I still use today. During the P4 computer's lifetime, in 2014, I bought a Windows 8 laptop (HP Compaq 6710i, which would later be upgraded to Windows 10, and become downgraded to 8.1, and become upgraded back to 10), as a result I began using the laptop more than my XP P4 computer due to its age. Now, the Windows 10 laptop stopped working as well, but its hard disk drive is still usable and accessible. But let's go back to the XP P4 computer. After I got the Windows 7 desktop computer, my XP P4 computer was NOT used for 4 years, until on Christmas 2021, when my Windows 7 computer had an issue, similar to the current issue that my P4 is facing, which prevented it from working properly. So I used my P4 in its place. After the 7 computer was repaired, it worked again, and still does to this day. On 15th of January on this year, I used my P4 again, this time, conneced with my Haier 1080p LED TV. It worked fine once again, but my LED TV sadly stopped working shortly thereafter on that same day. Fortunately, it was repaired, albeit still having issues a week ago. Let's go back to the P4 issue. After the LED TV was damaged on 15th of January, some time later, we decided to use an LCD monitor that we formerly used on our 7 computer. It worked fine once again for many months we played Super Mario Bros and 1942 on my NES emulator, played Sonic, Castle of Illusions and others on my Genesis emulator, played F-ZERO 64 and others on my N64 emulator, watched videos on VLC media player, played Pinball and other built-in games, and drew pictures on Paint until recently, some weeks ago, when it stopped working properly, instead it doesn't turn on at all, and a "tup-tup-tup" sound is being made by its external sound card that we bought, months ago to replace its faulty internal sound card. Also it's two DVD drives stopped working properly. The first day, when it did this, some time after it worked once again. Some days later, when we switched the plug of this computer on, the "tup-tup-tup" issue was still prevalent, however it did not work again like the previous time when the issue occurred. After some days, we just removed its casing and removed and put back it's 256 MB RAM and it worked again but the display is not showing at all saying "No VGA cable" despite it was connected to one. I gave this to MEGA Computers, a shop in that town, which failed to repair this due to its age. They suggested a replacement Windows 7 or 10 desktop computer with Intel core 2 duo and 2GB RAM. Due to the confusing updates, we had a conflict, and we decided to return the P4 to our house with no replacement.