w2k alpha

[Dialup Jon Norstog]

---------- Original Message -----------
From: Maurice Hilarius <maurice at harddata.com>
To: Linux on Alpha processors <axp-list at redhat.com>
Sent: Fri, 09 Jan 2009 16:17:57 -0700
Subject: Re: w2k alpha

> Oliver Falk wrote:
> > ..
> > So what's the truth now? Do they expire or not? Not that I'm planning
> > to  actually *really* use it, but reinstalling it all the time doesn't
> > make much sense as well :-) Having a spare disk with an installation
> > Windows for Alpha at hand sounds good. I've seen some tools that work
> > on Alpha-Windows that I'd like to give a try...
> >
> > Best,
> >  oliver
>  

Oliver, Maurice,

W2K RC1 (build 2072) was supposed to expire after 444 days; the trick with the
BIOS date was supposed to get around that. There was a hacker who called
himself "the RC1 Whore" who distributed from a dutch .ftp site a version of
the OS which had its time bomb deactivated. Also on that site was a "cleaned"
version of the registry hive file.

FWIW, the hacked version is the one to have, especially if you are multiple
booting Tru64 and Linux.  Tru64 will whack the clock to something like the
year 2055, then AlphaBios whacks it into the past. Your computer never knows
what year it is!  When I was using multiple OSes on my home Alpha box I was
always getting email from people informing me that it was no longer 1905.


jn