Ah, Microsoft Windows. The thing that we had it so good but got worse over time. Could you tell I hate Windows?

Anyways, let's go back a few years. Fade to black. Fade out from black with the text 1998 in the middle. A "few years" is an understatement, really. That was over 25 years ago now, and we've came a long way since then. In 1998, Microsoft released the RTM version of Windows 98 to the public, an improvement from the predecessor Windows 95. Was it better? I personally enjoy it more than 95. In 1999, Microsoft released the Second Edition of Windows 98, an "upgrade" of sorts that added a few things and stuff I won't get into because all I know is that 98SE is something people grandly enjoy.

With the release of 98, everyone was SUPER HYPED. I think? I don't have statistics for 1998. Anyways, I'm here to destroy it because I'm chaotic evil according to a BuzzFeed quiz I did 5 minutes ago. I wasn't honest on the questions, I just wanted to make this statement because I'm funny. Atleast, I like to think so.

What's the plan? Simple, we install a fresh copy of 98, and then we open the VHD file I installed the aforementioned system to and start mass filling sections with random bytes using HxDs fancy "Fill selection" tool. What does this do? In my terms, which I'm always right, it just takes the existing data and starts shooting it with 9mm bullets until it dies. HxD is the weapon, and I'm the murderer. If you wanna follow along at home, go right ahead. I'm not the fucking hex police or whatever.

As you saw, that was just an ol' fresh copy of Windows 98. I'm so considerate, saving you the time and effort of having to watch the install process go ahead. Anyways, nothing is really different from any other image you find online (I took that myself!) apart from the fact it's at the default resolution because I hate you all and none of you deserve the glory of having a higher resolution image. Wanna take it for yourself? Sure.

Let's first prepare it for the lobotomy I'm about to give it by force powering it off without any consideration for the ACPI present. Boom. Done. Now we open HxD.

"Woah. Cyrix. What the hell. This is too complicated for my brain....." I can hear you say. Hold your horses, this is nothing special. I hardly understand it myself, if I'm being honest. You can see at the very beginning offset there's nothing. We're not going there, though, we're going way down. You're probably saying to yourself, "What the hell.. why aren't we corrupting the first few offsets..", and, before I continue, stop internally monologuing to yourself. We're not corrupting the first few offsets because, according to my thoughts, that will just earn us a spot in the INSERT BOOTABLE SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER. We don't want that. We want it to still boot, because what's the point of a lobotomy if we don't get to write down on clipboards how a metal thingamabob in the brain caused problems? Who would've expected that?

Anyways, let's scroll all the way down. Around the halfway point, we have unreadable stuff. Atleast to us, though to the computer that's the stuff that lets you look at furry art on Bluesky. It's as simple as shift clicking two points. Let's shift click a first point, around the offset of 06AC10F0, and then smack PG DWN a few times to get to 06AC26E0. Then, we hit Edit, and Fill selection..

Now the fun begins, we select "Random Bytes", keep it at 0-255, then hit the big fat OK. Simple. But woah, make sure to make a backup, as hitting the wrong point can completely cause you to have an unbootable machine. HxD automatically makes backups, though. Not to worry. Hit CTRL-S to save your masterpiece of a VHD.

Now we boot the virtual machine. Let's check out the results. Ignore ScanDisk's incessant attempts to check your disk. It's the equivalent of a Microsoft MVP on the forums telling you to sfc /scannow when your computer started smoking. It does nothing fun.

Okay, booted. But woah, my password list file is damaged? What the fuck??? That's a shame, but whatever. Let's trek on.

You're probably expecting me to be like "Woah, my computer IRL started smocking??? What the F???", but, no. When you hit such a small offset range, you don't get much. For example, that's the only thing I could find wrong. The password list was damaged. And I don't even have a fucking password set. Unless some DOS person is gonna be like "U stupid idiot when u name ur user LPT1 it freaks out and causes it to not be able to retirtevre e apasswrod listtt.qw.;[ta;[s]]" which is okay. Correct me if I'm wrong because I wholeheartedly like NT based Windows better apart from anything recent.

Rinse. And. Repeat. Scroll up or down and do the exact same process as before until you get something better. Try not to hit half of the VHD at once, or do. I'm not your mother. I'm gonna go ahead and privately hit more, though. Give me a few seconds.

I hit a bit more this time. Two times, actually. Nevermind, three times. If it wasn't obvious, doing this is a tedious process, because at any time you could hit the wrong point and have to start allover again. As I'm writing this it's booting up. 98 is so majestic. We got rid of perfection! Don't mind the bluescreens every time you do something slightly wrong or the slowness because computers weren't the greatest at the time.

The best error I've got so far is ScanDisk complaining about an invalid long filename thingy or whatever DOS-based windows struggles to do. Great. Now I got an "Error loading KERNEL. You must reinstall Windows." See? The best error I got was a password file being fucked over and next thing I know I can't boot back into Windows. Luckily HxD creates a .bak file. Just get rid of the .bak part of the extension and you have your fine and dandy 98 hard drive image. I think. But wait, we got something?

Call the police, powrprof.dll failed to load. If you have a keen eye, you might notice like, 4 things are missing from the desktop. And my sound is gone. Why'd they take my SoundBlaster AWE32 PnP away???? We've also lost all the start menu items, though they still are present.

Okay, that's about it. Nothing fun, just things missing. Let's hit it some more, but just for safety I'm going to copy the hard drive image as it is now.

For your pleasure, I decided to omit all the details about every single missile strike on the random byte filling. Half of it caused it to not boot, and when it did, nothing interesting really happened. No funny theme fuckery or anything. Though, it no longer complains about a fucked PWL. Isn't that nice. I also feel like I'm on a 486 considering how long this takes to boot now. I don't know why. It just takes a good extra 20 seconds.

After a while, I eventually hit the offsets where the .vxd files were lingering. I started getting errors on bootup about them being damaged. Wow, I really felt like I was shifting into 3rd gear now. And stalling. Because all I lost was the My Documents icon. I was going to change the theme myself to something nice and beautiful but turns out the Display applet, and multiple others, are missing. If things keep disappearing I'm going to get very sad.

Continuing on, I continued to randomize the bytes all around. Until, I got an error about the registry being él fucked. It told me "We're gonna restart for you and repair that for you." and, even though, that's not what I wanted, it insisted upon multiple resets. I've never seen this before, surprisingly. Normally it just refuses to boot if the registry is gone, but I guess I scored lucky. The second this "repairs", if it does, I'm going to hit the exact same point, because I can just ignore the error message.

Rebooting, it actually managed to "fix" it, or atleast to a degree it doesn't notice how fucked it is. Well, I keep my promises; i'm hitting the same point. If you've made it this far and are still reading, thanks, I think. I rant a lot and I'm glad you're reading all this and probably wondering how fucked my head is.

Anyways, it's been too long and I'm tired of applying random bytes. I did like, 30 different fills in random spots and got nothing fun happening. I'll update this when I can be bothered for a Part Two. Don't be disappointed, DIY it if you want too see fun results. I just wanted to document on how you can corrupt your own Windows, at home!