Our home network server trashed its boot drive two days ago so my daughter and I have been busy with getting everything up and running again. We use Rat-tech methods extensively in that all of our hardware is sourced from computer recyclers and then upgraded and modified using more recycled parts. It doesn't cost much money to do this, but some recyclers don't check over what they sell very well if at all which can lead to problems. I'd sourced several 1Tb sata hard drives from a recycler and they were supposed to be in good condition, - only they all failed one after another which was frustrating to say the least.
We've just dumped using Windows, changed over to Linux and then discovered that Debian Linux has a utility which can read the S.M.A.R.T. chip on a hard drive's PCB. Surprise, surprise, - all the failed hard drives had suffered overheating in the past which had caused them to fail. Guess which computer recycler is getting no more business from us again
Something we don't lack for is spare hardware so we rebuilt the server using scsi hard drives which tend to be stone reliable and then had to get the software side of things sorted out to suit the new hardware. That's my daughter's job since she's the one who studied computer science at university. Hardware assembly and modification is my thing so we make a good team. The upshot is that we are now up and running again. Two days without broadband internet is cruel and unusual punishment!
The whole no more Windows 7/8.1 thing and being compulsorily upgraded to Windows 10 is a pain in the behind which is why we've decided to use Debian 8 instead for our everyday computing needs. I like Linux and ran Fedora on my Compaq laptop for some years. Getting PC games to work on Linux is a hassle though as I could never get Wine to work properly without a huge amount of messing around.
I own a great many games from the Windows 98 and XT era some of which didn't really run properly on Windows 7 and 8.1 so I decided to gather up some of the old but goodie P4 era hardware I had lying around and build up a retro gaming machine. And what's more I intended to use Windows XT as the operating system.
'You can't do that,' said my daughter, 'because the XT activation server has been shut down.'
'Oh yes I can,' was my reply so my daughter rolled her eyes and left me to it.
I won't go into all the tech details because it will most probably make your eyes glaze over, but I chose an Intel motherboard with seriously good architecture and a P4 processor from the final heroic incarnation of this processor class before Intel finally gave up on trying to beat the laws of physics in the attempt to make it even more fast and powerful.
Everything went together fine and then I submitted myself to the exercise in patience known as loading Windows XT onto a computer. As predicted by my daughter the horrible 'You have 30 days to activate XT before your world caves in' message popped up out of the task bar. But I had a secret that I wanted to try out. Basically what I did was rewrite the installation timer in the registry so that 30 days now became 10 years. The way I see it if I'm still wanting to use Windows XT 10 years from now I'll worry about it then.
So now I can play all my old favourite games to my heart's content and everything works as it should.
