Michael MJD's Journey
There's a certain charm with using older hardware, especially if it still comes with a fully functional operating system that acts as a time capsule to the past. However, it's also just as fun to see if you can cram Windows XP on it, and then try to run Half-Life at a good framerate. If the latter option is more to your liking, you'll enjoy this YouTube video where someone tries to do just that with a touchscreen MacBook from 2011.
The feat was performed by Michael MJD on YouTube, who has a track record of tinkering with computers and operating systems. A little while ago, Michael came across an interesting touchscreen MacBook from 2011, modified by Lingraphica for accessibility purposes. After showing off a video of the MacBook in action, Michael's next quest was to see if it could run the tablet version of Windows XP.
As you might expect, the process featured a lot of headaches and setbacks. For one, the Windows XP tablet operating system Michael downloaded from the Internet Archives seemingly takes note of what hardware you're using during installation. If it detects incompatible hardware, it opts to install regular Windows XP without the tablet-based features. And given how Michael wanted to show off the tablet version of Windows XP, he had to use a custom ISO to unlock them.
Next up were the driver-based woes. Michael tried to get the touchscreen working and calibrated, but every time he ran the installer, it would claim that the license had been modified and instantly closed itself. After a while, he discovered that the license text file had some corruption at the end that kept tripping up the installation. Once he fixed the license agreement, Michael could install the calibration tool and use the touchscreen perfectly.
Finally, he used Boot Camp to get the rest of the drivers working, and it did a surprisingly good job of getting the MacBook set up for Windows XP. All of the media buttons on the MacBook worked, and the audio came through fine. The only issue was the graphics driver, which Michael had to download from Nvidia directly to get running. Once Michael got everything set up, he showed off the Windows XP tablet features, including the Ink Ball game working on a touchscreen. Then, as per his channel tradition, he got the original Half-Life game running on it.
Michael links everything he used in the description, just in case anyone else out there has a touchscreen MacBook they want to turn into a Windows XP machine. But even if nobody does, it's still an amazing feat and well worth a watch.
