Irony is, the thing that didn’t work was something that’d been paid for. Again. That’s twice this has happened now.
Pop the disc in, over a perfectly legitimate install of Windows, to wipe and upgrade (from within the installer, so it can detect Windows first). Naturally, it doesn’t work. So I pull out a legitimate Windows disc to flash at it. Of course, it doesn’t work. On one of the installs, it wasn’t even an OEM modified disc (I’ve got a Windows ME disc here from Gateway which it also choked on, later) — but alas, it would not work.
Aharrrr! Thar be pirates lurkin’!
A quick sail over to them thar dangerous peer-to-peer waters quickly patched up the problem, especially when I can download an OEM disc image (~400MB) faster than Windows XP actually installs. Not that anyone ever would, of course. Yarrrrrr!
It’s now installing rather happily, just for the record. And there are separate licenses for each of the computers Windows XP is being installed on (or has been installed on), and the pirated copy of Windows 98 isn’t in use… but it sure simplified the installation process! Thank you, Gnutella!
