Bytes and Beliefs

Where Technology meets Philosophy and Gaming meets Purpose

  • Dead On Arrival: The Silent Collapse of Modern Hardware

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    Introduction

    There was a time when an upgrade actually meant something – freedom. When new hardware didn’t just do more – it redefined what was possible. It lifted the imagination and the public consciousness to new heights.

    Think of those big updates, now. The GeForce 8800 GTX – the card that made Crysis possible. The Playstation 2, the console that defined the generations coming after it – GTAIII. Metal Gear Solid 2. Shadow of the Colossus. Worlds you could lose yourself in. Mechanics that felt like magic.

    And all of it unlocked by real power, not some artificial licensing requirement or chip verification scheme.

    Fast forward to today. 2025. A year we used to wonder and dream about as children. A year we looked forward to. A year where so many things were supposed to be possible. However, 2025 looks very different in the lens of reality. Today, we’re being sold “upgrades” that do less.

    We have hardware that looks powerful on paper, but is shackled by software restrictions, OS politics, and silent compatibility assassinations.

    Welcome to Windows Update 24H2, Windows 12, and the RTX 5000 series, the latter of which is the most expensive, most hyped GPU generation in recent memory – and it’s obsolete on arrival.

    It can’t run the old.

    It can’t fully run the new.

    And it’s already being left behind.

    Windows update 24H2: The Silent Assassin

    In the tech circles, as of late, has been Windows Update 24H2. However, instead of being renowned for its smooth installation process and series of improvements to Windows 11, it’s being known for the exact opposite – failure.

    A plagued existence

    Introduced late in 2024, Windows Update 24H2 is supposed to be the precursor to Windows 12, which has a planned release date for mid-to-late 2025. Since its release, its caused a slew of issues:

    1. Failed Installations: Users have reported that the update fails to install, presenting error codes such as 0x800F0993, 0x800F081F, and others. In some cases, the update process gets stuck at various percentages, eventually resulting in an error and rollback of the update.
    2. Media Creation Tool Bug: Manually created installation media, particularly those including the October or November 2024 patches, may prevent new installations from receiving future security updates.
    3. Application Compatibility Problems: AutoCAD 2022 and Google Workspace Sync for Microsoft Outlook users have reported issues such as their applications not opening.
    4. Gaming Issues: Games such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Assassin’s Creed Origins, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Star Wars Outlaws, and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora became unresponsive or crashed after the 24H2 update. To date, performance issues with Star Wars Outlaws are still being documented. Furthermore, several titles using Easy Anti-Cheat are experiencing BSOD’s.
    5. Hardware Driver Issues: Intel Smart Sound Technology Drivers, ASUS Devices, Fingerprint Sensors, and HDR have all experienced failures, glitches, or BSOD’s since the update released.

    The Cause

    Windows Update 24H2 is not just an update. It’s a complete, under-the-hood, baseline build update known as Germanium. This build is the precursor to Windows 12. Given the issues with the update, this is quite damning – just imagine the issues that are going to plague the release of Windows 12. You don’t have to take my word for it – look at the facts.

    As to the details of why this is happening – Germanium introduced deep, architectural changes that are not fully compatible with older drivers or binaries.

    Deprecated legacy components

    Microsoft is removing or restricting access to old API’s and legacy components:

    • NTVDM, certain DirectPlay, and older Media Foundation components are gone or unstable.
    • Changes is Explorer, Task Scheduler, and Driver Signature Enforcement are causing legacy utilities and games to crash or fail silently.

    Hardware Changes: NPU’s, Pluton, and DPU Support

    • Microsoft is pushing Neural Processing Unit (NPU) support and Pluton Security Chip integration.
    • Secure Boot and Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) are now more aggressively enforced.
    Why This Breaks Stuff:

    Legacy drivers – especially for audio, GPU overlays, or fingerprint sensors – aren’t designed with these strict requirements or new hardware abstraction layers in mind.

    App Compatibility Mode Tweaks:

    • Compatibility layers for older games and software were altered.
    • The Easy Anti-Cheat kernel-mode interactions started failing due to stricter memory protection and kernel patch guard rules.

    AI Integration & System Services:

    • Windows Copilot, Recall and deeper AI integration into the shell and search services require new background processes and telemetry layers.
    • These services increase CPU usage, RAM consumption, and sometimes conflict with third-party software that tries to optimize or replace parts of Windows (Explorer replacements, custom shell scripts, and overlays).

    Updated Installers & Media Creation Changes:

    • Microsoft altered how the Media Creation Tool and update packages validate systems.
    • This broke offline install media and caused “future updates unavailable” bugs due to missing registry keys and service misconfigurations.

    Tightened Driver Enforcement – The Microsoft PC Police:

    • Microsoft is pushing for DCH-compliant Drivers (Declarative, Componentized, Hardware Support Apps).
    • Non-DCH Drivers – common in older ASUS, Realtek, and Intel sound setups – are blocked or crash the system.

    The Onion Is Rotten: NVIDIA 5000 Series

    Expensive. Hyped. Deprecated right out of the gate.

    The NPU Vs CUDA AI Problem

    Microsoft, as noted above, is moving toward AI in a huge way with Windows 12 and the 24H2 update. The problem? It’s designed for NPU’s (Neural Processing Units).

    What Are NPU’s?

    • NPU’s are low-power, highly specialized AI chips
    • Built into Qualcomm Snapdragon X, Intel Meteor Lake, and future AMD Strix Point chips
    • Not part of any NVIDIA card, now and within the planned future

    Microsoft is already offloading AI background tasks like recall, copilot, AI explorer and live transcription to NPU’s. What’s worse? They’re locking features from the user unless an NPU is present.

    So, you figure, I just spent $1500 on my new, NVIDIA 5000-Series GPU, so I should be Windows 12 ready, correct?

    No. I’m afraid not.

    The 5000-Series GPU’s use CUDA, which:

    • Uses more power
    • Is less efficient
    • May eventually be disabled altogether for select OS features
    • AI filters (background blur, upscaling, HDR tone mapping) will increasingly demand dedicated AI acceleration that isn’t CUDA

    The problem is, NVIDIA completely botched this. They:

    • Stubbornly stuck to CUDA/Tensor cores
    • Didn’t anticipate OS-level pivot to hardware-abstracted, platform-agnostic AI accelerators (NPU’s)
    • Completely missed the fact that Microsoft was headed in this direction
    • Are now behind their competitor, AMD, in terms of AI

    The fact that NVIDIA completely missed this, ignored the warning signs, and assumed that developers would stick to their ecosystem and always favor CUDA is pure arrogance. Unmitigated hubris. And the group that suffers the worst? The consumer. You.

    While AMD and Intel secured their place in the AI-powered desktop future with integrated NPU’s, NVIDIA kept building bigger and faster GPU’s – oblivious to the rising tide. Jensen Huang, NVIDIA CEO and once known as the king of compute, may go down as the man who missed the AI revolution happening right under his nose.

    This is yet another black eye for NVIDIA, who fell under scrutiny earlier this year for phasing out 32-bit CUDA applications. This had an extremely detrimental effect on the following game titles (and probably more):

    • Mirror’s Edge
    • Borderlands 2
    • Batman: Arkham City

    The change effects any game that utilized 32-bit PhysX for enhanced physics effects. Without CUDA, these physics effects now are calculated by the CPU entirely, which is painfully slow. In some instances, with a 5000-Series Card installed, the games became nearly unplayable.

    All of this represents a bungle of epic proportions, akin to the Sega CD/32X.

    Not to be undone, Microsoft is now throwing its hat into the anti-consumer ring. Let me reiterate this point – unless you have a machine with NPU’s, you will be locked out of features in the 24H2 release of Windows 11 as well as features in Windows 12. Even if your machine is new. Even if you stuck an NVIDIA 5000-Series GPU in your tower. You are already essentially running a deprecated, obsolete machine.

    AMD’s Strategic dominance

    AMD is now poised to take full control of the AI marketplace in terms of GPU’s. Their CPU’s, such as the AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series already have NPU’s integrated into their designs. All they need do now is integrate these NPU’s into their next series of GPU’s.

    Will AMD Capitalize?

    Imagine this – it’s mid-2025. Microsoft is about to release Windows 12. Then…bam! AMD announces RDNA 4 + NPU support, all the while being cheaper than the NVIDIA 5000-Series. This would be a complete, unmitigated disaster for NVIDIA.

    These cards would unlock:

    • On-device AI filters in video editing and streaming
    • Accelerated AI upscaling (beyond FSR)
    • Recall and Copilot tasks without CPU support
    • Better thermals and battery life for APU-powered laptops

    NVIDIA would be completely unprepared. Their customers, who just bought what they thought was a top-tier GPU, would realize:

    • Their GPU’s are already lacking core Windows 12 features
    • They have no path to upgrade without buying another brand’s product

    And with CUDA out of the way? Game devs would target AMD GPU’s. What choice would they have? NVIDIA would become second-class.

    The Real Picture is: Microsoft Owns Computing

    Microsoft, by shifting its focus to NPU’s and AI, will be releasing its most divisive and anti-consumer release of Windows to date. Entire ecosystems of machines are going to be locked out or partially locked out because the user either refused to upgrade or simply couldn’t afford to upgrade their hardware.

    Microsoft is acting like a wicked, puppet-master – pulling the strings of corporations to follow them to their folly. They’re hedging their bets that AI is the future of the tech industry and they want to be in complete control.

    This is all aside from their ridiculous driver policy methods that basically ensure any hardware that’s merely a few years old can’t run Windows 11 with any sort of stability, and probably won’t be able to run Windows 12 at all.

    What Can The Consumer Do?

    There is a ray of hope. Remember – Microsoft only thinks it owns computing, but it doesn’t. You do. And you can take computing back in the following ways:

    • Learn to Code – Especially in programming languages that don’t require a proprietary ecosystem (C, C++, Assembly, etc.)
    • Practice Resource-Driven Development Principles – Even during a time when memory and space seem virtually unlimited, remember to be responsible with system resources. If your code can run on older machines, then that’s fantastic!
    • Build Retro Machines – DOS, Windows 95/98, Windows XP, and Windows 7 were all great Operating Systems! No telemetry, no forced updates, no advertisements.
    • Develop Software for Retro Machines – Help the retro community make these machines even more functional!

    And, lastly, subscribe to this blog to keep up-to-date with the latest corporate schemes, retro builds, coding projects and philosophies!

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  • Building the Ultimate Windows 98 Machine: A Complete Guide

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    Christmas, 1998 (1992 by Corrected Calendar’s reckoning). I’m staring at my very first machine – A Gateway Essential 400 with a 333 MHz Intel Celeron Processor. Quite weak, by today’s standards, but when I stared at the pre-bundled CRT and beheld the screensaver that came with the Underwater Theme, I was hooked. I felt as though I was staring at magic. At wizardry. My world changed forever, and it was the only thing around that could take my attention away from my new copy of The Legend of Zelda – Ocarina of Time.

    I loved this thing. From its Altec Lansing speakers to its monolith PC case, it couldn’t get any better for me in 1998.

    It wouldn’t be until 2003 when I ultimately replaced this machine with an HP running Windows XP. Although I was excited to finally upgrade to XP after so many years and so many of my friends having an upgraded, PC experience (ok, it was only, like, one friend), nothing ever got me excited for computing quite like my Windows 98.

    When you run Windows 98, or even something older, you’re in for a magical experience. You can tweak the OS to your liking – you have full control of the system. If you knew what you were doing, you could make it a beast. If you didn’t, the general instability of Windows 9x systems could be a nightmare. But that was the name of the game. With great freedom came great responsibility – something that Microsoft thinks we’re all too stupid to handle these days.

    There was no telemetry, no forced updates, no advertisements in your start menu, no corporate lackey telling you how to use your OS. Your PC was yours and yours alone.

    So now to why I’m writing this – I want, NEED, the younger generations to experience this feeling because they never have. I want, NEED, the older generations to experience this feeling because they’ve forgotten and become apathetic to the current state of technology. Not only am I reaching out, offering you the feeling of true, computing freedom, but I’m documenting my experience with regaining this freedom for myself in the hopes that this can guide you to building a Windows 98 machine for yourself.

    Windows 98 (particularly Second Edition) was really a magical OS. It didn’t have the Plug n’ Play problems that plagued Windows 95. You generally didn’t have to mess around with IRQ’s in order to get hardware to function correctly. Most motherboards, at the time, still had at least one ISA slot to support older hardware, like sound cards. It was built on top of DOS, so it had excellent compatibility with DOS programs. It had a “true” DOS mode, so if you wanted to, you could boot into a full-fledged DOS environment. It supported DirectX up to DirectX 9.0c, allowing you to play games well into the Windows XP era. It supported EAX sound, required by many games at the time and into the Windows XP era.

    However, there were some drawbacks. It didn’t natively have USB 2.0 support (fixed now by 3rd party drivers). It was, and still is, stuck using the FAT32 file system, a truly horrid file system that Microsoft decided to keep around in commercial releases of Windows until Windows XP. It didn’t (and often still doesn’t) play nice with more than 512 MB of RAM. Its memory management can be truly terrible if you don’t know how to tweak it right. It has a bad tendency to disable DMA (Direct Memory Access) for your drives, particularly your CD-ROM drive. Yet, despite all of its flaws, I maintain that Windows 98 Second Edition is one of the best Operating Systems that Microsoft ever conceived, rivaled only by the ease-of-use of Windows XP or the work horse that was Windows 7. When you start using it, you’ll realize just how crap Windows 10/11 truly is. You’ll lament having to use newer OS’s and you’ll never want to look back. I guarantee it.

    So how do we set off on this journey to create the Ultimate Windows 98 machine? This would normally require hours’ worth of research, but consider yourself lucky, because I’ve done the hard work for you! All you have to do is kick back, grab a snack, and read on (and also locate the hardware yourself – I suggest ebay).

    The Hardware

    Let’s start with the motherboard (MOBO). In my opinion, the pound-for-pound king of MOBO’s for this task is the ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe. Here’s why:

    • Native SATA Support – this allows you to run Windows 98 on a SATA HDD (yes, I recommend an HDD and not an SDD because of the FAT32 file system) at full speed without the need for IDE emulation
    • 800 MHz Front-Side Bus (FSB) for fast RAM performance
    • Supports dual-channel DDR400 RAM (much faster than PC100 or PC133 RAM)
    • 8x AGP Slot for high-performance GPU’s
    • Intel PAT (Performance Acceleration Technology), which was, essentially, free overclocking for RAM
    • Full Windows 98 driver support for audio, LAN, and chipset
    • RAID support
    • Gigabit LAN
    • 8 USB 2.0 ports
    • 1x FireWire port (kind of fluff, but still cool)
    • Uses Pentium 4 CPU’s (a big, big deal)

    Next, let’s focus on the CPU. With our MOBO, Pentium 4 is the only way to go. For mine, I’m running a 3.2 GHz Northwood model. Do not, do NOT, run the Prescott model – these run extremely hot!

    The rest of the specs are as follows:

    • 1 GB DDR-RAM (I wouldn’t go any higher than this, even with a RAM patcher)
    • Radeon 8500 64MB GPU (you can run something like a 9800 pro, but there are compatibility issues to consider)
    • SoundBlaster Audigy 2 Soundcard for EAX games and cool, MIDI SoundFonts
    • Yamaha YMF-744 for true, OPL3 FM Synthesis for DOS games
    • SATA HDD (12000 RPM’s, although you can get an even faster one if you look)
    • Generic DVD-RW (Windows 98 does NOT have support for DVD’s, but CD’s work fine)
    • 400W PSU (more than enough juice)

    Adjusting MOBO Settings

    As far as MOBO settings, I recommend making the following tweaks:

    • Set the AGP Aperture Size to match the memory on your GPU (mine’s 64 MB). I’ve heard setting this to over 128MB can cause issues, but I have yet to test that claim
    • Make sure IDE Compatibility is off
    • Set Plug n’ Play OS to “On” (or else sound card drivers will not install)
    • Overclock anything if you wish, but I personally don’t because I like to be nice to my old hardware
    • Keep USB support and LAN support on, but disable everything else because your Soundcards are going to need the IRQ slots
    • Make sure your CD-ROM drive is first in your boot order so you can install Windows 98 SE from CD

    Prepping your drive and installing Windows 98

    After that’s set, I HIGHLY recommend getting Gparted Bootable for i386 machines. You can either burn the .iso image to disc or use something like Fedora Media Writer to create a bootable flash drive. Once that’s set, boot into Gparted and create one FAT32 partition (and I mean ONE because if you create more than one, Windows will assign the D: drive letter to one of your partitions and your CD drive won’t function in Windows anymore) that doesn’t exceed 128MB in size (Windows 98 doesn’t tend to play nice with larger partitions).

    Tweaks, Drivers and Updates

    Once you’ve got that done, boot into the Windows 98 SE setup and install Windows 98 to your newly minted partition. Once it’s installed and Windows 98 is running, do the following:

    • Backup your registry
    • Edit your Virtual Memory Settings (Right-click “My Computer” -> Properties -> Virtual Memory -> Check “Let me specify my own virtual memory settings”). A decent rule of thumb is to set the min and max to 1.5x-2x your physical RAM, but I have 1 GB in my machine, so I set mine to 512MB and 1024MB, respectively. Anything more seems excessive
    • From there, go to Device Manager, right-click your CD-ROM drive and select “Properties”. Make sure the DMA box is checked
    • Do the same for your HDD

    Next, install drivers and updates:

    • Install your MOBO drivers first (the only thing useful on my disc was the LAN drivers)
    • Install your GPU drivers
    • Install your Soundcard drivers – I installed my Audigy 2 drivers first, then my YMF-744 Drivers
    • Install NUSB in order to get USB 2.0 support, because 1.0 is dreadfully slow and practically worthless
    • Install Loew’s RAM Patcher ONLY if you’re experiencing strange instability or getting “Out of Memory” errors
    • Install the official Microsoft updates from the Windows Security Updates 2004 CD
    • Avoid the Unofficial Service Pack 3 update like the plague – it slows down your system and causes a tremendous amount of instability
    • Install DirectX 9.0c

    You’re pretty much setup at this point, but there are some additional tweaks you can make to really make Windows 98 shine.

    DOS Boot Menu

    Open MSDOS.SYS and either modify the following lines or add them:

    [OPTIONS]
BootMulti=1
BootGUI=0
BootMenu=1
BootMenuDelay=10

    Now on Startup, a DOS menu will appear that will allow you to choose whether you want to boot into Windows 98, or if you’d prefer to boot into DOS.

    Copy and Use FreeDOS tools

    A lot of FreeDOS tools are actually quite a bit better than the old tools that come with DOS. I’d highly recommend downloading FreeDOS and copying over the tools to your HDD. After doing that, add the tools folder to your system PATH. To do so, open AUTOEXEC.BAT and edit your PATH variable:

    PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;C:\FreeDOS\Path-to-Tools

    Where “Path-to-Tools” is wherever you stored the tools. Of course, your PATH variable might contain additional paths and won’t look exactly like above, but you get the gist. So what will this do? Now you’ll be able to open a DOS prompt, or boot into DOS, and simply enter the tool name as a command without having to type the path every. single. time. Quite handy!

    CONFIG.SYS Tweaks

    You should, for better DOS compatibility and Windows memory management, make the following tweaks to CONFIG.SYS:

    [WIN98]
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=C:\FreeDOS\Path-To-Tools\HIMEMEX.EXE
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE

[DOS]
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=C:\FreeDOS\Path-To-Tools\HIMEMEX.EXE

    Optionally, you can edit the DOS section to include EMM386 if you run into problems. Just add “RAM”, without quotes, at the end of the line. You can also add “NOEMS” to the EMM386 line under the Win98 tag, but I’ve personally never needed it.

    The End?

    It’s not really the end, only the beginning! Let me know your thoughts below and don’t be afraid to post any issues and/or questions. I also want to hear your success stories and even some of the cool games and apps you get running! And if you’re really feeling bold, why not dual-boot a Linux OS? The GRUB bootloader generally makes this a breeze!

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