Windows 10 on AMD X2 3800+ ?

OK amazingly enough it worked.

This old computer from 2006 can boot into Windows via VHD somehow, don't ask me how it did it.

It was fun to see Windows 7 in it's bare form. I even recorded some videos but maybe pointless for now.

Not boot freezing occured so far, not yet sure why.

I should have enabled write-caching on the usb drive as soon as possible.

Downloading service pack 1 seemed to get stuck... which is an issue with all these usb drives...

Little file writing simply stalls the entire disk or stick somehow.

Maybe bug in windows or drivers not sure.

But I doubt that service pack 1 will work and I am kinda fed up with downloading updates and such.

However I shall give it one last try (no I wont I am done with windows see below) and then I will go to linux and

https://lutris.net/downloads/

Maybe that will be much more fun.

However what kinda ****ed me off about windows is I told it to not install any updates... and during shutdown it still tried to download sp1 or it did some stupid scanning and all that annoying boring useless stuff.

So I am done with wasting my time on windows.

I think it's fair to give linux a try and see how it does.

I tend to try two distributions which are easy to use:

Linux Mint

and

Ubuntu.

Or maybe some other linux flavor.

I am not yet sure which linux distro is best for windows gaming.

So I will google that first.

Later,
Skybuck.

Ok I am going to skip Linux Mint for now, because it might not be suited for gaming and I might have to install to much myself which I want to avoid

So I will try the following, according to this site;

https://itsfoss.com/linux-gaming-distributions/

7. Ubuntu game pack

and if that fails or if I dislike it then

9. Sparky Linux GameOver Edition


Ubuntu is maybe a little bit mature... so I ll try that first... but I kinda wanna try spark too cause I haven't done that yet...

But for now I wanna give ubuntu a shot... see if it can get this crazy game working !

That would be spectacular cause so far windows failed bad.

Bye,
Skybuck.

I changed my mind. I will try Sparky Linux first cause it seems more recent from 2019, 11 month... just 2 days ago.

I need a really recent wine version to have any chance of running battlefront 2.

So hoping that it's updated somewhat.

SPARKY LINUX HERE I COME ! LOL.

Hope WinToUsb support it ?!

Hmmm maybe that tool only for windows...

I better google how to install linux onto usb stick ! =D

Bye,
Skybuck.

I tried this tool:

http://unetbootin.github.io/

However it did not format the usb stick, so it ended up installation it's **** in the second partition.

Then as I rebooted the computer surprise surprise windows 7 actually survived it wish was kinda funny.

This does shed some doubtfull light on the reliability of these tools but ok.

One wrong move of me and I **** my main system which would loose years of work collecting stuff.

However if I go back and forward from laptop to PC switching usb stick around I risk damage to my hardware/usb ports.

As I write this I realize risking my main system is to precious.

And thus I must divert these risky operations to file systems and disks to the laptop.

So from now on I will continue my experiment, but from the laptop... all risky write operations will be perform on mother's laptop cause she doesn't use it for much anyway.

This does cost some additional time switching stuff around...

I dropped the tiny usb stuck twice or three times on the ground already trying to plug it in the back of the PC lol.

It's more of an usb thumb... I get it now haha... yeah tiny.

Anyway... ?? I am gonna have to download these isos to the slower harddisk of the laptop... and these tools as well... kinda sucks...

But I have to do it for safety reasons... Kinda wanna try these tools on my main system as well, but I already did that... but for now it's time to divert the risk... to less important system... hahah much less importants.

This last experience kinda scared the **** out of me... linux also scares the **** out of me.

One mean linux developer building in something nasty into one of these tools and my main system is ****ed... but I ran that risk anyway when I run these distros...

Perhaps it's better to run them first on laptop too.

Yeah I will try that...

Though last time I tried to run a linux distro on laptop it completely failed...

No laptop drivers in Linux.

However perhaps time has changed.

This will be an interesting experiment to run linux on this laptop.

I guess I will now have to format the usb stick and say goodbye to windows once again.

BYE WINDOWS.

MAybe I should backup it to the usb 4.5 tb drive but don't know how to do that yet...

And it's C or E drive is ****ed now anyway with sparky linux files...

Didn't take too long to install windows 7 so not that much time lost...

Shame to see it go it could have been handy some time if main OS somehow fails... but it's been stable for a long time. Though sometimes it does have a 10 minute boot issue... This is where very maybe USB boot might be nice.

That is also one of the reasons why I want to experiment with usb boot.

Come to think of it. If Sparky Linux can read NTFS drives then I could boot sparky linux in emergency situations and circumvent the risk of a 10 minute boot time... so that could be cool and solve that boot issue once and for all which is kinda funny.

I doubt this is going to work on laptop... but gonna give linux a fair shot at impressing me ! LOL.

I don't think toshiba or those harware manufacturers put too much time and effort in writing linux driver... but who knows...

Here goes nothing.

Don't know for sure how to format this USB stick... for Sparky Linux... kinda weird I have to format it myself.

Will read up on this... I also read something about spark being able to be side by side with current os... hmmm... might become a problem to get this thing booting... kinda weird... maybe it's just a parition issue... maybe I just need to select other parition... I selected M which was WinToUsb parition.

I dont see any other parition... so this is getting weird... very weird...

Better read up on how that tool is supposed to work... this unetbootin or I may have to try another tool.

Bye,
Skybuck.

This unetbootin tool probably didn't work as intended because WinToUSB used a VHD method to boot into windows 7.

So unetbootin does not know about that and completely ****s up it's intention ?

This is most likely cause for it to have failed this big.

Gonna format the drive to whatever... my favorite NTFS... then see if it can work.

Hmm doubtfull but gonna give it a try.

Bye,
Skybuck.

Anyway it turns out this unetboot tool is a total joke and junk...

The result: BOOTMGR is missing at startup when trying to boot into usb stick.

Some solution might be to use FAT or FAT32...

But I'd rather not for obvious reasons.

I'll go back to rufus, though I think it's going to be **** as well.. but maybe not for linux so gonna give that another try:

https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/linu...-the-easy-way/

Bye,
Skybuck.

The description also shows FAT32... the horror... seems like no way around it for now ? Not sure...

Gonna give FAT32 a try... but gjez what an old ms-dos junk that is...

Bye for now,
Skybuck.

Rufus does have an option to save the usb stick to a vhd.

Wish I knew that before, could have saved some deletes and reinstallment time...

Though I don't know yet how this feature works... does it store the entire usb stick all 128 GB of empty **** ?! Or does it store only files or does it compress ? Hmmm might try this option later.

The GUI has changed since that website though... no more options to mention usb stick booting... I guess it does this automatically soon I will find out

Also enabling write cache on usb stick might not work in windows... maybe the usb stick doesn't have a write cache... that makes sense... haha... there might be a little bit of system ram caching though.

The usb drive/disk of 4.5 tb does have some write cache ram on it's device I think... so I believe usb stick might have it too, but not so...

So far the usb stick is working ok... haven't seen any major stalls yet...

I would have to try utorrent and battlefront2 torrent to know for sure if it will stall or if it will perform well... for now it seems to be doing ok.. only thing I saw stall was windows sp1 download but maybe that was a microsoft server issue or something else...

Bye for now,
skybuck.

OK cool so far it seems to be working.

Sparky Linux is now booted from usb stick.

I do wish rufus had a better write bar to indicate that it's writing a big file. Fortunately task manager/resource monitor showed it was writing stuff to E: and reading from C: so that is how I knew it didn't hang.

Now I will try to proceed with installing sparky linux onto hopefully the usb stick itself and I will record the steps I did below:

1. Download Sparky Linux stable ISO from sparkylinux.org
2. Download rufus from http://rufus.ie/
3. Start rufus.
4. Select Spark Linux ISO
5. Select USB Sticky drive.
6. (Perhaps some other options but this was the most of it)
7. Say YES to both questions, one is to download never syslinx and another is to use ISO... finally say YES to overwrite usb drive.
8. Wait a while till big files are written, use window's resource monitor to see progress if necessary by observing write speed to usb stick.

9. Once rufus is done and ping sound will be played.
10. Restart computer, in my case press F12 to go to boot menu.
11. Select USB stick
Gently not to cause troubles haha.

12. Now I see a blue installation screen, following options are available:

SparkyLinux US English
SparkyLinux US English nosplash
SparkyLinux failsafe
SparkyLinux toram (to ram ?)
SparkyLinux text mode
Boot the first hard disk
More languages...

I will select the first one now

Oh I forgot to read the hint message at the bottom lol... I think it also said tab to edit or something, but it's enter to boot.

13. Pressed enter... now sparky linux is booting... I see bubbles/circles behaving like a snake...

14. There was some short text display but it disappears it did show some APCI errors or something...

Now the screen goes black... after a few seconds:

15. Ok now a mouse cursor appears...
16. Cool a GUI appears.... sparklinux in the background with a logo which looks like sonic the hedgehog lol.

17. Lol feels like windows 95.

I am surprised it works.

It seems to come installed with the usual... browser... office/libre
qbitorrent ! that s surprising.
thunderbird mail client ? or usenet client ? dont know what hexchat is

There is no file explorer icon on desktop though.

Ok I will now try and start battlefront 2 if I can find the file explorer.

First connecting usb harddisk... hopefully sparkylinux can find it and detect it as it plugs in like windows does otherwise a re-boot could be tried.

18. I connect the usb drive to the laptop via e-sata/usb shared port.

I am not sure if this usb port is faster than other non-e-sata ports.

I am dieing to find out about this but ok... I love sate lol.

Cool... Spark Linux asks me the following pop up question:

Removeable medium is inserted:

Open in file manager

Cancel/Ok

This solves my problem if opening the file manager cool.

19. Ok it can read the NTFS 4.5 terabyte drive... NTFS that's cool

Navigating to Starwars Battlefront 2 folder.

Ok now the moment of thruth sort of:

20. Double clicking the starbattefrontii.exe

It opens a file archiver ?!

This is not what I want I want to run this game... hmmm

Now I am stuck and confused.

Is spark already installed ?! Or am I just in the installation program or something ?

It seems to be a full desktop environment.

Can't say I see any game related things.

Very strange.

Maybe I downloaded the wrong ISO... or Sparky Linux is a lie ?!

Dont know how to proceed... very weird... does it need more installment ?!

Well I'll need to google how to proceed with Sparky Linux and how to run windows games.

For now I stop this posting cause it didn't go smooth all the way.

See you later,
Bye,
Skybuck ! =D

Ok,

Apperently there are more steps involved to get Spark Linux working the way it should.

This link is about the sparky installer:

https://www.linux.org/threads/sparky...aming-os.4499/


On the desktop there is a SparkyInstaller.

1. I choose execute...
2. Did the usual..
3. I select the USB stick to install to.
4. Now I need to decide partition crap...

!!!
Install boot loader was default set to the harddisk of the laptop
!!!

Very dangerous !!!

Changed it to usb stick.

I am unsure how to proceed.

Seems like I will need to create a new partion or so... reading website...
This is not very user friendly right now but ok I was warned that some linux knowledge was required for Sparky Linux...

Hopefully I don't **** things up to much... and hopefully that website helps... reading...

Unsure how to proceed need more information:

New partition ?
New Volume Group ?
Edit ?

Gonna to google how to setup partitions for sparky linux or something.

This is always the ****ty bit about Linux.

Bye for now,
Skybuck.