Dead OS Walking: 30 Days on Windows XP in 2025 Day 5: What Happens Now

The challenge is back on. Not on some new machine. Not on borrowed hardware or a fallback plan. It’s back on the original netbook — the Samsung NC10 — the one that crashed, screamed, shut down, and begged to be buried. The one that refused to POST. The one that beeped at me like a microwave with abandonment issues. The one I pulled apart, resurrected in an actual oven, and still, for some reason,…