Just wanted to quickly reiterate that the selection of the latest “stable” build (that yes, is from 2021) for this video was intentional. Yes, there are more recent nightly builds of ReactOS - but I wanted to use the most recent “stable” release, as it’s the one most prominently featured on the ReactOS website, and is what most people are going to end up downloading should they choose to test this out. Nightly builds are even more experimental, and as stated on the site “you're more likely to encounter regressions at the cost of new features.” Because of that, I thought they were better saved for a future video should people be interested. And if you’d like to see that, let me know!
I'd love to see that. Not just for the utter catastrophes that may ensue, but also to see how they stack up compared to the latest stable release here.
I would be interested! The driver system needs to be worked on (it's non-functional in its current state), and so any kind of feedback in any form could be handy. Provided a ReactOS developer/contributer watches the videos you upload.
I am so invested in this OS, thinking I might get my modernized windows 7 someday but the lack of interest of devs and other partners makes me very sad....I think of it as my favourite windows replacement since i am addicted to the windows ecosystem and given the future windows update it is less of windows....
Wish you tried a nightly build, the release build is missing three years worth of updates. Unfortunately our release manager refuses to promote the nightly builds and also refuses to branch a new release so we're kinda stuck :(
@@DarkestVampire92 I didn't get any crashes with the nightly build half a year ago, and I would suspect it's not too different now. And otherwise you have one build for each night that passes, so maybe the issue wasn't there a few days earlier or later.
I mentioned the nightly builds in this video but decided against using one as I wanted to get the latest stable build. Not opposed to trying the nightlys sometime though!
I'm looking for a place to start And everything feels so different now Just grab a hold of my hand I will lead you through this wonderland Water up to my knees But sharks are swimmin' in the sea Just follow my yellow light And *ignore all those big warning signs* 🤣
Snappy reporting "Windows XP 64 (32-bit)" is a result of ReactOS presenting itself as a version of Windows that never existed. See the banner on the desktop, reporting NT 5.2. Microsoft's 32-bit NT 5.2 only existed as Windows Server 2003; 64-bit NT 5.2 came in both Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Professional x64 varieties. By selecting "Workstation" in ReactOS's setup, it sets the ProductType in the registry to WinNT (as opposed to ServerNT), and because ReactOS is targeting NT 5.2, that combination results in a SKU type that never existed in Windows itself. Snappy is probably seeing NT 5.2 and ProductType=WinNT, the only valid combination from Microsoft existed with Windows XP x64. But then, being a 32-bit operating system, it makes a non-sense sounding term appear in the installer.
One thing I love about ReactOS is the people behind it do watch videos like these and give feedback. I made a video about ReactOS once and they gave some feedback.
The last one is false actually. I've witnessed how WinRAR falsely gave message about "corrupted" password-protected .rar file, but after activation it started working without a hitch.
It would genuinely be cool to see a project like ReactOS take off one day, what with all the problems modern Windows has and the fact that Linux is not exactly a drop-in replacement. Sadly it probably won't ever happen. Oh well. We can dream I guess.
@@artvandelay1720 for gaming, most of the time linux works well. but if you want to talk about office software, you're going to quickly run into issues and see how much linux is lacking in that space. there's so, so much software built only for windows that can't run with wine at all and it really sucks
I remember testing Reactos in the middle of 2006. It's amazing how everything, apart from the look, remains exactly the same as I remembered it. Kudos to the developers for still spending so much time on a system that is clearly far from usable.
The issue is that we have not enough active developers, and our release management is kinda absolute crap (and ignoring that the website isnt promoting the nightlys, which are 3 years of updates infront)
@@TheCustomFHD Just out of interest. How far do you think we are from a version of ReactOS that it is possible to use as a daily driver? Do the nightlys fit that bill?
ReactOS would be a brilliant alternative to trying to find and install old versions of Windows on older systems, however even now nearly 30 YEARS after development began, it is just not in a state where it can be considered an alternative to those old versions of Windows.
Having known of reactos for a long while, ~decade, iv always wished it would actually be a fully functional direct replacement to modern windows. Like graphic drivers and all working for modern hardware. Obviously an extremely tall order, but would be cool to see.
Having known of reactos for a long while, ~decade, iv always wished it would actually be a fully functional direct replacement to modern windows. Like graphic drivers and all working for modern hardware. Obviously an extremely tall order, but would be cool to see.
@JustGausS well nvidia has now added open source support for linux and the proprietary drivers work perfect. Its quite easy to install those proprietary drivers.
@@ericwood3709 The problem with Linux is that, despite it being a brilliant operating system with endless customisation and distributions, that is also it's weak point. For the not so tech savvy person who wants a classic Windows experience without all the bloatware and Microsoft's constant bullshit, there are too many options for a Linux distro that, on the the surface may meet those requirements but in reality doesn't and not just because it is so easy to screw up a Linux install but also because support for older Windows software is spotty at best through Wine. ReactOS would be the perfect alternative because it is kernel compatible with NT but, it is unlikely that it'll ever leave the alpha stage.
@@Soundwave142 Star Citizen is actually a playable game unlike this complete disaster that fails to do even most basic things after DECADES of development.
yeah thats too easy. i had to go trough like 3 dvd drives in my laptop to even get it to install and dont even get me started on installing any driver. the only driver that *worked* was the wifi driver but that would hardlock the os any time i tried to connect to a network that wasn't password protected
I assume that reverse-engineering Windows NT code is exceedingly difficult... Because that's the only explanation I can think of as to why it's still in Alpha after 26 years of development.
@@KaneLivesInDeathYes, and it's why things like Linux, BSD or even SerenityOS (a new, Unix-like OS that is still in early stages) are a lot more usable. Although making an OS from scratch is an absolutely massive feat, it barely holds a candle to reverse-engineering a proprietary OS and trying to make one completely compatible with the original. ReactOS may eventually become usable, but it'll always be 20 years behind Windows
ReactOS is so cool in concept and I have empathy for the devs that they're essentially trying to remake Windows from clean-room reverse engineering but DAMN did they bite off more than they can chew
Our dev team is like 7 active people.. and people are not interested in fixing this up, because all thats shown, is it being broken.. (the nightlys are way way newer and massively less broken (not not broken though.))
@@TheCustomFHD I love what you guys are doing. 7 people making an OS. That's incredible, especially with the breadth of needed compatibilities to make a windows NT compatible OS.
@@Alacrysta (ill have to note that "7" in this case was a rough guess, but there doesn't seem to be much more of actually active people that often and repediatly develop for ROS atm.. inactive devs we have some more obviously.) And while i say "our" or "we", all im really doing is keeping up with the community and developers, as im interested aswell in what they are doing, and because i wish to help some day aswell.. but yeah ill see to forward the positive feedback-
I hope you enjoyed the few beers I bought you guys. It has certainly changed over the years but I remember helping out a butcher to have his old ERP system running on XP. It was using serial to connect to the registers (cash registers) and it was a whole mess. Certainly there is somebody still running 98 who could benefit from ReactOS.
Thank you. I tried ReactOS when I was in my mid 30's and I see not much changed now when I am in my early 50's, so I don't have to do that myself again. I guess I should check this channel if anything is new when (if?) I am in my late 60's-mid 70's.
A video of reactOS running on the Xbox xould defo be interesting and would shed some well deserved light on that project, I'd love to see reactOS fully working and running xbe executables at the same time, that would be next level...
i primarily do testing of the Nightly builds on certain types of hardware you may have seen some of my tests on the ROS twitter account, while i don't class myself as a member of the Dev team as such, i would say it's compatibility with certain devices out of the Box is impressive
The idea for ReactOS made some sense in the late 90s/early 2000s when the project started. Hardware support on Linux was a mess, so aiming for driver compatibility was a sensible goal. Nowadays pretty much all hardware works on Linux, so Linux with Wine is much better option for running Windows apps without Windows. Especially after so many Windows version have been released since the XP era that ReactOS is trying to recreate.
Another easy option these days is to run Windows in a VM under Linux, which wasn't really a viable option in the early 2000s. Windows 8.1 and earlier run very well under VirtualBox. I've used this method to do USB passthrough for a flatbed scanner that didn't have native Linux support.
@@zoomosis That requires a Windows license (or the willingness to pirate it) though, which kind of defeats the point - if you _have_ Windows, you never needed ReactOS in the first place.
@@kFY514 I buy my PCs used and they all have valid Windows licenses so that's never been an issue for me personally. Though if ReactOS was primarily designed for people who want Windows but don't want to pay for it, that's a pretty niche target demographic.
@@zoomosis Why else would you clone Windows from kernel to GUI? Maybe "not want to pay for it" is a bit of an oversimplification, there's also the philosophical aspect of open source code and freedom/security/transparency/etc. that comes with it - although people who care about that probably aren't too keen on running all those proprietary Windows drivers and software that ReactOS was designed to run. So... yeah. The project idea never was particularly sound, especially in retrospect.
One for ReactOS: I was observing this project almost from day one. And I loved how it progressed from a once command line only, to a graphical, and later to an online available system. I use it from time to time in a VM to test how some apps work in ReactOS - and they do! Mainly GPL software seems to run fine, but what I test the most is Altirra (THE authentic Atari 8 Bit Emulator). Even the sound works, if you install the VBox sound driver from the Software! Managaer.
31:30 I'm surprised that you didn't go straight for the "Create a restore point" option and the top of snappy driver installer after all the previous system lock-ups!
50:15 the version you have is 32-bit! However, the installer itself is 16-bit, if you manually copy the files to the hard disk and manually create the registry entries, the game works fine. (it has some load/save issues in newer Windows systems however, but there are fan made patches to fix this bug)
I would have tried loading the driver .inf files directly rather than using the OEM setup executables, since the executables might have been trying to read non-existing resources.
Ah man, I hoping ReactOS was an operating system built using the React JavaScript framework, cause we totally need JavaScript running the operating system.
Seeing this I feel like them calling this the "stable" branch might be a little bit of a stretch. Considering the NUMEROUS problems, I feel like seeing a few nightly builds through the years to re-explore some of these things to see if they're still issues could be interesting.
28:56 The black screen is from trying to initialize the video card and failing again. The reason it's black instead of blue is that you picked "Debug" so it sent the blue screen information out the serial port and is waiting for WinDBG or RosDBG on another computer to send a message back through the serial port -- ideally, a driver patch for figuring out where the video card is, but more realistically a message saying "ignore this and TRY BOOTING ANYWAY" -- but with no debugger to tell it what to do it's just going to sit there. 44:15 FrontPage is trying to use Internet Explorer in a special authoring mode that Wine probably doesn't support. It also thinks you're holding down a weird key combination, putting the toolbars in Customize mode.
43:32 I can explain the menu duplication and inability to type here. The OS thinks at least one of your Control and Alternate keys are stuck down. I've verified that you can duplicate menus on Office 97 (on actual Windows) by holding those two keys down. The fix is to press and hold both Control, Alternate, and Shift keys for a brief second and then release. It's an old trick dating back to the DOS days whenever the OS thinks any keys are stuck.
I didn’t know you could duplicate the menus like that under Windows, that’s pretty funny! But now that you mention the stuck keys, I think that’s exactly what was going on
The keys being stuck thing rings true even on modern software and hardware. While I never had to do it on my current Apple Silicon Mac, I wouldn’t be surprised if it will happen at least once during its lifetime.
28:50 Pretty sure it was waiting for you to connect a debugger, since it very likely 'checked, while in Debug Mode hence why it hung visually (because iirc you would have the debugger command whether the kernel continues running or not).
Traditionally: 1. Install chipset driver (INF) FIRST. Some computers, especially around the P3/P4 era do not operate correctly without this installed because the INF installs the power management and USB and other stuff on the southbridge/PCH 2. Install network 3. Install GPU 4. Install Sound Sound is the least important, and usually the most fiddly because many of the sound cards are actually bridge cards (eg ISA to PCI, PCI to PCIe) so if it's a bridge card that means it needs the bridged driver installed before it can found the sound card. Which is why these sound cards are often these monster of installers and not simply a "discoverable" inf file. In practice, unless the MB is something exotic, (eg RAMBUS), you should probably try to find the latest INF, Network, and Sound drivers for the motherboard from the manufacturer's website. I suspect the reason the soundmax locks up is because it's running into a wall in trying to install the MIDI, and you might rescue the OS install by actually turning it off in the BIOS. Sound Blaster PCI cards are super fiddly. You need an exact 1:1 match for the card.
I've found out using the executable to install drivers will always fail. You either have to manually extract the files or install it on a Windows machine and copy the files onto a thumb drive.
honestly this really does remind me of using windows 95/98 back in the day. so many problems with drivers and blue screens and reinstalls lol. id say these guys are on the right track but they still have a long way to go
Hello from ReactOS team! Thank you for the very nice and thorough video! Your efforts are truly appreciated! However, could we kindly suggest a tweak to the title? It might unintentionally mislead viewers, especially those new to the project. While it may seem like you're testing the operating system in 2024, it's clear that 0.4.14 isn't cutting-edge for that year. In actuality, you're testing the system based on its 2020 codebase. Since then, the project has made significant strides in stability and compatibility. ReactOS version 0.4.15 is on the horizon with a massive list of changes, and it will be set to release relatively soon. Anyone eager to explore its improvements can check out the nightly builds.
@@SuperArt1st What's misleading about it though? It's 2024 and he downloaded the version that's recommended on the project's official website. I'm not trying to be mean about it or anything, but I do think that the team needs to resolve whatever internal issues are preventing them pushing more frequent stable builds. That way they can avoid situations like this where people are trying outdated versions.
@@shockwave952 you are right, but..... This is not a dispute about politics, where you can appeal to anything, including someone’s organizational problems. This is computer science. Version 0.4.14 is 99% based on code not from 2024, but from 2020. That's just a fact. Let's be careful with the facts and try to avoid slippery statements and understatements
@@SuperArt1stWhat? They're just talking about what is on the website. If something is marked as "nightly" it's implied to be a less stable, not recommended version. Why would (what is effectively) a demo video show off the versions of the OS that aren't recommended?
With those driver installers, usually they extract to the temp directory, and clean up when you exit the installer. So have a look while the installer is still running, and copy it elsewhere. I use that method a lot to install 64 bit XP drivers on Windows 10/11.
Looking at the development, 0.4.15 will likely be release in quite a long time in the future since the team are really doing under-the-hood changes with QA along the line. Perhaps it's still buggy and unfinished, but that's what you can expect from voluntary non-profit open-source OS
Michael last tried ReactOS over four years ago and the stable version is from 3 years ago so the stable version is only about one year later than the previous version that was tried. It would be more interesting to see what a more recent build has to offer.
Hey Michael what you tried was a release builds that has a bugs that are resolved in nightly builds It would have been better to try Nightly builds to give it a better chance
The moment I saw him honestly suggest using that ancient release build my heart sank. I get that the ROS developers wanted to switch to a longer release cycle, but it results in ROS n00bs usually picking that crusty old release build. Renders this whole video pointless, basically, since it's no longer 2021 or 2022.
ReactOS 0.4.14 is what ReactOS themselves offer on their website, so it’s the solid “end-user” choice because it’s what a normal user will start with. It’s unfortunate, but it’s not on MJD.
the driver installer issues is likely only because there is no "windows/system32" folder after all you are using a WINDOWS installer if the packages could be redirected dynamically to "reactos/system32" it might work perfectly every time
at least this thing can run Doom and Monika can explore the whole ReactOS without any blue screen slapped in her face (actually I have to recompile the whole thing for a year and let DDLC run in scripts)
@MichaelMJD 2:33 regarding that video suggestion...if none of your original xbox are working or if want to add another layer of jank...there is Xemu the orignal Xbox emulator
Honestly, a minor driver issue causing random crashes and bricking your system to where you need an OS reinstall is a pretty faithful recreation of the Windows experience. 10/10
I thought it was just a oh react os installing in 2024 until I tapped and it said the famous but everything goes wrong. WHOOO! grab me some chop suey and this is going to be good
With Microsoft turning Windows into adware, spyware, and probably malware in the not too distant future, people are looking for an alternate OS. Sure Linux is stable but it's also not binary compatible with Windows. There are a ton of software applications that won't run on Linux. ReactOS is the only true Windows clone and, frankly, the fact that they are rendering the Windows API so accurately with a fraction of the dev team that Microsoft has is really impressive. Would love to see a more recent build but on a modern chipset. Using a late 90's computer is not indicative of how someone looking to ditch Windows 10/11 will want to see how ReactOS functions.
Yeah, ReactOS used to release quite regularly, but for the next release they went for a long release cycle, which means that the current 'nightly' builds are so far ahead of the latest release build that it's not even funny. I have been running the nightlies in VirtualBox now and then, and the progress is noticeable. I even get things like audio working instantaneously after an install without fuss. Using the 2021 release seems just like masochism...
@@cyphaborg6598 Lol! As in React,OS! 😆 Jokes aside, I like the idea alot, I just wish it had more development. If I were more articulate with coding, I would probably help out. I hope they are eventually able to get it stable and such. 😎
They so desperately need a Windows Update equivalent. I am pretty sure that if they can patch existing builds quicker, the project will become way more popular.
Thank you!! I’d say it was about a full day of work once I got everything together. I actually got the floppies back in 2020 (they’re all broken and were purchased to make the disk wall). Then I had to get a large project board to glue them all onto.
I wish Reactos got to a more usable state. The UI is just absolutely great, just pure oldschool Windows vibes. Man, I wish Windows 10/11 were like that in terms of GUI design.
As mentioned elsewhere, this build is 3 years old and doesn't have a lot of the recent developments. As an aside, I REALLY wish ReactOS would get some serious development. Or something similar to it. So many people want to run Windows, but don't want to run the current iteration of Windows. If somebody could make a system with the UI of Windows 7/10 but with the backend of 10 that actually ran Windows apps, then it would bring people over so fast it's not even funny.
Classic - Windows Classic Lautus - Windows Royale Noir Lunar - Windows Luna (duh) Mizu - Windows 10 Default Use the Lautus theme because that is what every tech-savvy person had back then.
yea he should have tried the nightly builds which are release daily and are actually more stable than stable release (they actually have a shit release manager that even ROS devs themselves despise due to how much of a XP simp he is)
To be fair, in the intro I never said what you’re quoting me as saying. I simply said that it was my first time using the OS in over 4 years and that I was revisiting it to see how the project is doing. The fact that I was using the latest stable build from 2021 was made very clear.
@@MichaelMJD Didn't mean to make it sound like criticism or an attack. We all come on here for the entertainment value. This is MJD, not a review channel ;) Good video. yes it was very clear. Thats how i knew it was a 3 year old version. I thought it was funny to point out. More as a laugh toward ReactOS not tagging their builds as a release often.
The fact they even worked on theme support before getting the driver base stable and functional shows me this project is never going to amount to much sadly.
BTRFS has many more features, supports storing significantly larger files, having more characters in filenames, etc. It also corrupts far less easily. IDK how good the BTRFS support is in ReactOS, and truthfully it probably won't make it much better, but at least you may have less corruption and better filesystem features, assuming it's fully supported. FAT is probably THE WORST "modern" filesystem you could use to boot an operating system...
Just a little advice from 15 years of fixing broken windows installs because of driver shenanigans, install only one driver at a time, reboot, check for stability issues and then when everything checks out move on. And I know ReactOS is not windows but it behaves much like one when it comes to drivers. Also you should install the Chipset driver if your plan on using PCI or the ACPI Table might not get set correctly and the devices will not initialize and the system will freeze. Annotation: I just seen you get Code 39 that means as mentioned above that you chipset driver is missing and that means the Tables as not set to the Board specifications and can therefore not initialize because it uses the system defaults.
A few ideas: 7-zip should be able to extract the drivers from most installations, a shorter way to get to device manager is to right click on my computer and choose manage (at least on Windows, never tried it on ReactOS), when a video driver causes a BSOD, the VGA mode is the way to troubleshoot it, and it seems you haven't tried it.
Just wanted to quickly reiterate that the selection of the latest “stable” build (that yes, is from 2021) for this video was intentional. Yes, there are more recent nightly builds of ReactOS - but I wanted to use the most recent “stable” release, as it’s the one most prominently featured on the ReactOS website, and is what most people are going to end up downloading should they choose to test this out. Nightly builds are even more experimental, and as stated on the site “you're more likely to encounter regressions at the cost of new features.” Because of that, I thought they were better saved for a future video should people be interested. And if you’d like to see that, let me know!
I'd love to see that. Not just for the utter catastrophes that may ensue, but also to see how they stack up compared to the latest stable release here.
I would like to see a comparison of the current state of the nightlies versus the current stable release.
I would be interested! The driver system needs to be worked on (it's non-functional in its current state), and so any kind of feedback in any form could be handy. Provided a ReactOS developer/contributer watches the videos you upload.
Definitely would be interested in seeing that
I am so invested in this OS, thinking I might get my modernized windows 7 someday but the lack of interest of devs and other partners makes me very sad....I think of it as my favourite windows replacement since i am addicted to the windows ecosystem and given the future windows update it is less of windows....
Wish you tried a nightly build, the release build is missing three years worth of updates. Unfortunately our release manager refuses to promote the nightly builds and also refuses to branch a new release so we're kinda stuck :(
Sounds just like with Emulator releases, the stable ones are often years behind.
Are the nightly builds stable though?
@@DarkestVampire92
I didn't get any crashes with the nightly build half a year ago, and I would suspect it's not too different now. And otherwise you have one build for each night that passes, so maybe the issue wasn't there a few days earlier or later.
@@DarkestVampire92 More stable than 0.4.14 thanks to some major registry fixes among other things.
I mentioned the nightly builds in this video but decided against using one as I wanted to get the latest stable build. Not opposed to trying the nightlys sometime though!
Hopefully you make a follow up video using the latest Nightly Build, it is infinitely more stable then the 2021 release
I’m planning on it, and thanks so much for the super chat!!
I hope it happens.
@@MichaelMJD can't wait bro
the time has come 😀
i love michael just completely ignoring the "WARNING INSTALLING A CUSTOM DEVICE MAY FREEZE YOUR COMPUTER OR RENDER IT UNBOOTABLE" lmao
Warnings? Where we’re going we don’t need warnings.
Only errors count
@@MichaelMJD real
I'm looking for a place to start
And everything feels so different now
Just grab a hold of my hand
I will lead you through this wonderland
Water up to my knees
But sharks are swimmin' in the sea
Just follow my yellow light
And *ignore all those big warning signs*
🤣
@@MichaelMJD it might be useful if you install drivers one by one.
Snappy reporting "Windows XP 64 (32-bit)" is a result of ReactOS presenting itself as a version of Windows that never existed. See the banner on the desktop, reporting NT 5.2. Microsoft's 32-bit NT 5.2 only existed as Windows Server 2003; 64-bit NT 5.2 came in both Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Professional x64 varieties. By selecting "Workstation" in ReactOS's setup, it sets the ProductType in the registry to WinNT (as opposed to ServerNT), and because ReactOS is targeting NT 5.2, that combination results in a SKU type that never existed in Windows itself.
Snappy is probably seeing NT 5.2 and ProductType=WinNT, the only valid combination from Microsoft existed with Windows XP x64. But then, being a 32-bit operating system, it makes a non-sense sounding term appear in the installer.
Nothing gives me a heart attack more than the "Safe Mode" failing into a blue screen. Cool OS. lol
Reminds me of Windows 98 (Not SE) and Windows Millenium... :D
One thing I love about ReactOS is the people behind it do watch videos like these and give feedback. I made a video about ReactOS once and they gave some feedback.
"but Everything Goes Wrong..."
Of course, it wouldn't be a Michael MJD video otherwise, that's why we are here
I think the "everything goes wrong" part is pretty average for reactOS videos.
ReactOS and Michael MJD were made for each other.
We enjoy the pain.
Love Michaels vids for exactly this reason
@@sumabich721 This, unfortunately.
please do a video on the newest nightly build PLEASE I want to see what this looks like with 3 years of updates
Good Video but there are three things that are infinte
- The Universe
- The react os dev cycle
- The WinRAR test version
That's more Sun Tzu's job than Einstein's.
@@ChaseMC215 Considering he wrote the art of RAR
You forgot The Star Citizen Dev cycle as well.
Whats with the Mario Kart Double Dash Rainbow Road clouds
The last one is false actually. I've witnessed how WinRAR falsely gave message about "corrupted" password-protected .rar file, but after activation it started working without a hitch.
If this is a build from 2021, you should also consider making a video on the latest 2024 nightly and see if there are any improvements.
there are !
Please! +1 for 2024 version
+1
+1
@@softwarelivre2389 +1!
It would genuinely be cool to see a project like ReactOS take off one day, what with all the problems modern Windows has and the fact that Linux is not exactly a drop-in replacement. Sadly it probably won't ever happen. Oh well. We can dream I guess.
Not in this century :D
You know he's trying a 3 yr old version right?
Yeah, would be really cool to have a independent "Windows"
@@artvandelay1720Well, ReactOS's 'native driver support' is very flaky, to say the least, and will continue to be for awhile...
@@artvandelay1720 for gaming, most of the time linux works well. but if you want to talk about office software, you're going to quickly run into issues and see how much linux is lacking in that space. there's so, so much software built only for windows that can't run with wine at all and it really sucks
I remember testing Reactos in the middle of 2006. It's amazing how everything, apart from the look, remains exactly the same as I remembered it. Kudos to the developers for still spending so much time on a system that is clearly far from usable.
This is an old build in this video
The issue is that we have not enough active developers, and our release management is kinda absolute crap (and ignoring that the website isnt promoting the nightlys, which are 3 years of updates infront)
@@TheCustomFHD Just out of interest. How far do you think we are from a version of ReactOS that it is possible to use as a daily driver? Do the nightlys fit that bill?
@@porcupinepunch6893 4.14 is 16 years newer than whatever release was available in 2006.
ReactOS would be a brilliant alternative to trying to find and install old versions of Windows on older systems, however even now nearly 30 YEARS after development began, it is just not in a state where it can be considered an alternative to those old versions of Windows.
Having known of reactos for a long while, ~decade, iv always wished it would actually be a fully functional direct replacement to modern windows. Like graphic drivers and all working for modern hardware. Obviously an extremely tall order, but would be cool to see.
Having known of reactos for a long while, ~decade, iv always wished it would actually be a fully functional direct replacement to modern windows. Like graphic drivers and all working for modern hardware. Obviously an extremely tall order, but would be cool to see.
@@tuneduptechie We do have such an alternative. It's called Linux.
@JustGausS well nvidia has now added open source support for linux and the proprietary drivers work perfect. Its quite easy to install those proprietary drivers.
@@ericwood3709 The problem with Linux is that, despite it being a brilliant operating system with endless customisation and distributions, that is also it's weak point.
For the not so tech savvy person who wants a classic Windows experience without all the bloatware and Microsoft's constant bullshit, there are too many options for a Linux distro that, on the the surface may meet those requirements but in reality doesn't and not just because it is so easy to screw up a Linux install but also because support for older Windows software is spotty at best through Wine.
ReactOS would be the perfect alternative because it is kernel compatible with NT but, it is unlikely that it'll ever leave the alpha stage.
"Acknowledge that this is an alpha"
reactOS will never exit out of the alpha stage.
Like Star Citizen? Wait I'm probably insulting ReactOS..
@@Soundwave142 I can't wait to run Star Citizen's release version on React OS's first Beta.
@@vogonp4287 LOL that is damn funny.. 🤣
@@Soundwave142 Star Citizen is actually a playable game unlike this complete disaster that fails to do even most basic things after DECADES of development.
@@LastofAvari well trying to reverse engineer windows fully is difficult, thats why wine depens on linux drivers
an everything going wrong video about reactOS? well now this is just getting far too easy
yeah thats too easy. i had to go trough like 3 dvd drives in my laptop to even get it to install and dont even get me started on installing any driver. the only driver that *worked* was the wifi driver but that would hardlock the os any time i tried to connect to a network that wasn't password protected
or even password protected
What I really want him to find the simplest computing task like installing Word and finding a way to brick his pc while doing so
I assume that reverse-engineering Windows NT code is exceedingly difficult...
Because that's the only explanation I can think of as to why it's still in Alpha after 26 years of development.
@@KaneLivesInDeathYes, and it's why things like Linux, BSD or even SerenityOS (a new, Unix-like OS that is still in early stages) are a lot more usable.
Although making an OS from scratch is an absolutely massive feat, it barely holds a candle to reverse-engineering a proprietary OS and trying to make one completely compatible with the original. ReactOS may eventually become usable, but it'll always be 20 years behind Windows
00:00 Including WinRAR's free trial
And "Activate Windows" popup
And Visual Studio load time
When winrar free trial ends react os is in beta
ReactOS is so cool in concept and I have empathy for the devs that they're essentially trying to remake Windows from clean-room reverse engineering but DAMN did they bite off more than they can chew
Our dev team is like 7 active people.. and people are not interested in fixing this up, because all thats shown, is it being broken.. (the nightlys are way way newer and massively less broken (not not broken though.))
@@TheCustomFHD I love what you guys are doing. 7 people making an OS. That's incredible, especially with the breadth of needed compatibilities to make a windows NT compatible OS.
@@Alacrysta (ill have to note that "7" in this case was a rough guess, but there doesn't seem to be much more of actually active people that often and repediatly develop for ROS atm.. inactive devs we have some more obviously.) And while i say "our" or "we", all im really doing is keeping up with the community and developers, as im interested aswell in what they are doing, and because i wish to help some day aswell.. but yeah ill see to forward the positive feedback-
Not realy, they reverse engineer the NT Kernel and run Wine software on it. The problem is the NT Kernel is the most vital component of Windows!
I hope you enjoyed the few beers I bought you guys. It has certainly changed over the years but I remember helping out a butcher to have his old ERP system running on XP. It was using serial to connect to the registers (cash registers) and it was a whole mess. Certainly there is somebody still running 98 who could benefit from ReactOS.
8:45 "the application failed to initialize succesfully"
That does make sense when you think about it.
Average windows error:
no that does make sense
this gives off "Task failed succesfully" vibes lmao
@@michaelp_c not if you re read it
I hope you used the nightly build, the latest "release" build is 3 years out of date. which was released 16 December, 2021
He didn't.
@@vkvo2000pain, in my experience; the latest nightly is much more stable and works much better than the latest release.
That floppy wall is absolutely glorious
Thank you. I tried ReactOS when I was in my mid 30's and I see not much changed now when I am in my early 50's, so I don't have to do that myself again. I guess I should check this channel if anything is new when (if?) I am in my late 60's-mid 70's.
So we got a Michael, and he's attempting to install a jank not-Windows OS.
Michaelsoft Binbows LIVES!
"But everything goes wrong" should be a MichaelMJD t-shirt.
A video of reactOS running on the Xbox xould defo be interesting and would shed some well deserved light on that project, I'd love to see reactOS fully working and running xbe executables at the same time, that would be next level...
i primarily do testing of the Nightly builds on certain types of hardware you may have seen some of my tests on the ROS twitter account, while i don't class myself as a member of the Dev team as such, i would say it's compatibility with certain devices out of the Box is impressive
23:58 - You can also just drag the Luna theme from a XP install and it will work quite well. I've tried it myself on a VM.
The idea for ReactOS made some sense in the late 90s/early 2000s when the project started. Hardware support on Linux was a mess, so aiming for driver compatibility was a sensible goal. Nowadays pretty much all hardware works on Linux, so Linux with Wine is much better option for running Windows apps without Windows. Especially after so many Windows version have been released since the XP era that ReactOS is trying to recreate.
Another easy option these days is to run Windows in a VM under Linux, which wasn't really a viable option in the early 2000s. Windows 8.1 and earlier run very well under VirtualBox.
I've used this method to do USB passthrough for a flatbed scanner that didn't have native Linux support.
@@zoomosis That requires a Windows license (or the willingness to pirate it) though, which kind of defeats the point - if you _have_ Windows, you never needed ReactOS in the first place.
@@kFY514 I buy my PCs used and they all have valid Windows licenses so that's never been an issue for me personally.
Though if ReactOS was primarily designed for people who want Windows but don't want to pay for it, that's a pretty niche target demographic.
@@zoomosis Why else would you clone Windows from kernel to GUI? Maybe "not want to pay for it" is a bit of an oversimplification, there's also the philosophical aspect of open source code and freedom/security/transparency/etc. that comes with it - although people who care about that probably aren't too keen on running all those proprietary Windows drivers and software that ReactOS was designed to run.
So... yeah. The project idea never was particularly sound, especially in retrospect.
I started running Linux in 1995 and it was way better than what I'm seeing here.
One for ReactOS: I was observing this project almost from day one. And I loved how it progressed from a once command line only, to a graphical, and later to an online available system. I use it from time to time in a VM to test how some apps work in ReactOS - and they do! Mainly GPL software seems to run fine, but what I test the most is Altirra (THE authentic Atari 8 Bit Emulator). Even the sound works, if you install the VBox sound driver from the Software! Managaer.
31:30 I'm surprised that you didn't go straight for the "Create a restore point" option and the top of snappy driver installer after all the previous system lock-ups!
50:15 the version you have is 32-bit! However, the installer itself is 16-bit, if you manually copy the files to the hard disk and manually create the registry entries, the game works fine. (it has some load/save issues in newer Windows systems however, but there are fan made patches to fix this bug)
Yes… but it’s not solely 32-bit, which is what I was referring to.
@@MichaelMJD yeah what I wanted to say is that there isn't other "official" versions that are 32-bit only (including the installer)
I would have tried loading the driver .inf files directly rather than using the OEM setup executables, since the executables might have been trying to read non-existing resources.
Ah man, I hoping ReactOS was an operating system built using the React JavaScript framework, cause we totally need JavaScript running the operating system.
Seeing this I feel like them calling this the "stable" branch might be a little bit of a stretch. Considering the NUMEROUS problems, I feel like seeing a few nightly builds through the years to re-explore some of these things to see if they're still issues could be interesting.
28:56 The black screen is from trying to initialize the video card and failing again. The reason it's black instead of blue is that you picked "Debug" so it sent the blue screen information out the serial port and is waiting for WinDBG or RosDBG on another computer to send a message back through the serial port -- ideally, a driver patch for figuring out where the video card is, but more realistically a message saying "ignore this and TRY BOOTING ANYWAY" -- but with no debugger to tell it what to do it's just going to sit there.
44:15 FrontPage is trying to use Internet Explorer in a special authoring mode that Wine probably doesn't support. It also thinks you're holding down a weird key combination, putting the toolbars in Customize mode.
I had problems installing reactOS 6 years ago but I installed it on virtual machine 5 years ago and it works
I remember having that set of speakers at work. They got nice and loud when the sales floor left for the day.
43:32 I can explain the menu duplication and inability to type here. The OS thinks at least one of your Control and Alternate keys are stuck down. I've verified that you can duplicate menus on Office 97 (on actual Windows) by holding those two keys down.
The fix is to press and hold both Control, Alternate, and Shift keys for a brief second and then release. It's an old trick dating back to the DOS days whenever the OS thinks any keys are stuck.
I didn’t know you could duplicate the menus like that under Windows, that’s pretty funny! But now that you mention the stuck keys, I think that’s exactly what was going on
The keys being stuck thing rings true even on modern software and hardware. While I never had to do it on my current Apple Silicon Mac, I wouldn’t be surprised if it will happen at least once during its lifetime.
@@MichaelMJDNot on Windows generally; is a feature specific to Microsoft Office, first debuted in Microsoft Office 2000.
Here are the times Michale got: Blue screens:
10:24
10:39
10:45
11:01
27:11 (YAY!)
28:04
28:10
53:23
Pop-up errors + issues:
6:41
6:53
7:29
7:36
7:40
7:42
8:37
8:46
9:01
11:44
12:09
13:26
14:03
18:29
18:33
20:03
20:34
22:06
24:24
25:27
34:56
48:22
49:25
49:42
49:55
49:59
50:03
50:32
50:46
51:01
Time where where he got locked up:
4:22
9:45
15:49
16:48
16:58
17:28
17:45
37:49
52:58 (kind of)
Status:
Total blue screen errors: 8
Total Pop-up errors + Issues: 30
Total Locked up errors: 9
Everything in total: 47
28:50 Pretty sure it was waiting for you to connect a debugger, since it very likely 'checked, while in Debug Mode hence why it hung visually (because iirc you would have the debugger command whether the kernel continues running or not).
11:00 And now, for a taste of things to come
Not even started it but seeing that's a 55 minute long "but everything goes wrong" video I know I'm gonna like it
Traditionally:
1. Install chipset driver (INF) FIRST. Some computers, especially around the P3/P4 era do not operate correctly without this installed because the INF installs the power management and USB and other stuff on the southbridge/PCH
2. Install network
3. Install GPU
4. Install Sound
Sound is the least important, and usually the most fiddly because many of the sound cards are actually bridge cards (eg ISA to PCI, PCI to PCIe) so if it's a bridge card that means it needs the bridged driver installed before it can found the sound card. Which is why these sound cards are often these monster of installers and not simply a "discoverable" inf file.
In practice, unless the MB is something exotic, (eg RAMBUS), you should probably try to find the latest INF, Network, and Sound drivers for the motherboard from the manufacturer's website.
I suspect the reason the soundmax locks up is because it's running into a wall in trying to install the MIDI, and you might rescue the OS install by actually turning it off in the BIOS.
Sound Blaster PCI cards are super fiddly. You need an exact 1:1 match for the card.
I've found out using the executable to install drivers will always fail. You either have to manually extract the files or install it on a Windows machine and copy the files onto a thumb drive.
It can actually boot to desktop on bare metal now in some cases. That's progress. BTRFS tends to work smoother in my experience btw.
BTRFS is known to be up to x2 faster but it is more ReFS than NTFS or ext4
The 16-bit programs that require NTVDM would run if you install WineVDM from the ReactOS Application Manager.
honestly this really does remind me of using windows 95/98 back in the day. so many problems with drivers and blue screens and reinstalls lol. id say these guys are on the right track but they still have a long way to go
The endless reinstalls are causing late 90s Linux install PTSD triggers.
Hello from ReactOS team!
Thank you for the very nice and thorough video! Your efforts are truly appreciated! However, could we kindly suggest a tweak to the title? It might unintentionally mislead viewers, especially those new to the project. While it may seem like you're testing the operating system in 2024, it's clear that 0.4.14 isn't cutting-edge for that year. In actuality, you're testing the system based on its 2020 codebase. Since then, the project has made significant strides in stability and compatibility.
ReactOS version 0.4.15 is on the horizon with a massive list of changes, and it will be set to release relatively soon. Anyone eager to explore its improvements can check out the nightly builds.
It's not really fair to call this video misleading when the ReactOS website markets 0.4.14 as "our latest and greatest".
@@shockwave952 they mention the caption, not whole video. The caption could be misleading
@@SuperArt1st What's misleading about it though? It's 2024 and he downloaded the version that's recommended on the project's official website.
I'm not trying to be mean about it or anything, but I do think that the team needs to resolve whatever internal issues are preventing them pushing more frequent stable builds. That way they can avoid situations like this where people are trying outdated versions.
@@shockwave952 you are right, but..... This is not a dispute about politics, where you can appeal to anything, including someone’s organizational problems. This is computer science. Version 0.4.14 is 99% based on code not from 2024, but from 2020. That's just a fact. Let's be careful with the facts and try to avoid slippery statements and understatements
@@SuperArt1stWhat? They're just talking about what is on the website. If something is marked as "nightly" it's implied to be a less stable, not recommended version. Why would (what is effectively) a demo video show off the versions of the OS that aren't recommended?
With those driver installers, usually they extract to the temp directory, and clean up when you exit the installer. So have a look while the installer is still running, and copy it elsewhere.
I use that method a lot to install 64 bit XP drivers on Windows 10/11.
Ooh, now that's smart.
Wouldn't be an MJD video without everything going wrong
Looking at the development, 0.4.15 will likely be release in quite a long time in the future since the team are really doing under-the-hood changes with QA along the line. Perhaps it's still buggy and unfinished, but that's what you can expect from voluntary non-profit open-source OS
+1 for a video on the nightly builds. 🙂
Totally understand why you chose 'stable' though.
I'll always watch anything going wrong with any OS install haha, great video!
Michael last tried ReactOS over four years ago and the stable version is from 3 years ago so the stable version is only about one year later than the previous version that was tried. It would be more interesting to see what a more recent build has to offer.
Looked up the last BSOD code, it means that there's a memory leak issue.
0x000000B4 appears to mean pretty much the same thing as 0x00000116 in Vista and later. (0x00000116 is VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE)
The first full version of ReactOS is basically the OS equivalent of Half Life 3.
10:00 filesystem and registry corruption. Hard off were a big nono in 0.4.14, mostly fixed in 0.4.15
17:23 "Warning: You were about to uninstall this device, so we stopped that from happening."
I love this project. I hope more voluntiers will contribute.
The inf file that failed with the multimedia driver install is the actual driver file. You never installed the driver, itself.
You know its a long video when it ends with: but Everything goes wrong
Hey Michael what you tried was a release builds that has a bugs that are resolved in nightly builds
It would have been better to try Nightly builds to give it a better chance
The moment I saw him honestly suggest using that ancient release build my heart sank. I get that the ROS developers wanted to switch to a longer release cycle, but it results in ROS n00bs usually picking that crusty old release build. Renders this whole video pointless, basically, since it's no longer 2021 or 2022.
ReactOS 0.4.14 is what ReactOS themselves offer on their website, so it’s the solid “end-user” choice because it’s what a normal user will start with.
It’s unfortunate, but it’s not on MJD.
It's still a perfect Windows replica!
Blue screens may even occur more frequently than with the original. What an achievement!
lol ReactOS has given me tons of issues in the past trying to get running on older hardware. Great video!!
the driver installer issues is likely only because there is no "windows/system32" folder
after all you are using a WINDOWS installer
if the packages could be redirected dynamically to "reactos/system32" it might work perfectly every time
I'm confused why you didn't pick the unstable builds, as they should be more stable, since it's in beta anyway.
at least this thing can run Doom
and Monika can explore the whole ReactOS without any blue screen slapped in her face (actually I have to recompile the whole thing for a year and let DDLC run in scripts)
@MichaelMJD 2:33 regarding that video suggestion...if none of your original xbox are working or if want to add another layer of jank...there is Xemu the orignal Xbox emulator
Honestly, a minor driver issue causing random crashes and bricking your system to where you need an OS reinstall is a pretty faithful recreation of the Windows experience. 10/10
I thought it was just a oh react os installing in 2024 until I tapped and it said the famous but everything goes wrong. WHOOO! grab me some chop suey and this is going to be good
what????
@@ZesCrew2 I was just about to have chop suey for lunch and saw the video.
With Microsoft turning Windows into adware, spyware, and probably malware in the not too distant future, people are looking for an alternate OS. Sure Linux is stable but it's also not binary compatible with Windows. There are a ton of software applications that won't run on Linux. ReactOS is the only true Windows clone and, frankly, the fact that they are rendering the Windows API so accurately with a fraction of the dev team that Microsoft has is really impressive. Would love to see a more recent build but on a modern chipset. Using a late 90's computer is not indicative of how someone looking to ditch Windows 10/11 will want to see how ReactOS functions.
no brainer, Windows 7
Kind off expected cause that build is from 2021.
The nighty builds offer more features and crash in less comedic ways.
Yeah, ReactOS used to release quite regularly, but for the next release they went for a long release cycle, which means that the current 'nightly' builds are so far ahead of the latest release build that it's not even funny. I have been running the nightlies in VirtualBox now and then, and the progress is noticeable. I even get things like audio working instantaneously after an install without fuss. Using the 2021 release seems just like masochism...
"Hopefully this'll be the only time we have to reinstall" Foreshadowing is a narrative device in whic-
Just in time for a new vid a few secs late? IDC I FNALLY GET TO TYPE ON TIME MY FULL HEART DREAM :)
My bot has parsed your entire profile and has determined you are a LLM.
@Michael MJD please block and report this account.
@@papa_goobs LLM?
@@porcupinepunch6893Large Language model. Basically Chatgpt or other AIs
This looks like the authentic turn-of-the-millenium windows experience to me! All the crashes fill me with nostalgia
I wish ReactOS will support NTFS format in the next alpha build.
any channel with a "half life rule" gets an instant sub from me. lol
I don't know why they named it React OS, because it doesn't! 😆
Maybe it was a suggestive naming scheme?
As in "react you !@#$ " lol
@@cyphaborg6598 Lol! As in React,OS! 😆 Jokes aside, I like the idea alot, I just wish it had more development. If I were more articulate with coding, I would probably help out. I hope they are eventually able to get it stable and such. 😎
They so desperately need a Windows Update equivalent. I am pretty sure that if they can patch existing builds quicker, the project will become way more popular.
Out of curiosity, how long did it take to set up the floppy disk wall? It looks awesome by the way!
Thank you!! I’d say it was about a full day of work once I got everything together. I actually got the floppies back in 2020 (they’re all broken and were purchased to make the disk wall). Then I had to get a large project board to glue them all onto.
Cool! Thank you :)
@@MichaelMJD A new video where everything goes wrong. YYYYYEEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH-
@@MichaelMJDwow!
I wish Reactos got to a more usable state. The UI is just absolutely great, just pure oldschool Windows vibes. Man, I wish Windows 10/11 were like that in terms of GUI design.
As mentioned elsewhere, this build is 3 years old and doesn't have a lot of the recent developments. As an aside, I REALLY wish ReactOS would get some serious development. Or something similar to it. So many people want to run Windows, but don't want to run the current iteration of Windows. If somebody could make a system with the UI of Windows 7/10 but with the backend of 10 that actually ran Windows apps, then it would bring people over so fast it's not even funny.
Would be very interested in seeing this using the nightly build instead of the "stable" release.
Sir, why you have so many save icons on your wall? 😋
The floppy wall caught me off guard
I've finally found it. The OS that crashes more and has more problems than Windows ME. This video was well worth the 1 hour...
Classic - Windows Classic
Lautus - Windows Royale Noir
Lunar - Windows Luna (duh)
Mizu - Windows 10 Default
Use the Lautus theme because that is what every tech-savvy person had back then.
MJD: "Let's see how much progress they made over the last 4 years" (edit: paraphrasing)
Also MJD: *proceed to test a 3 year old build*
LMAO 😅
yea he should have tried the nightly builds which are release daily
and are actually more stable than stable release (they actually have a shit release manager that even ROS devs themselves despise due to how much of a XP simp he is)
To be fair, in the intro I never said what you’re quoting me as saying. I simply said that it was my first time using the OS in over 4 years and that I was revisiting it to see how the project is doing. The fact that I was using the latest stable build from 2021 was made very clear.
@@MichaelMJD Didn't mean to make it sound like criticism or an attack. We all come on here for the entertainment value. This is MJD, not a review channel ;) Good video.
yes it was very clear. Thats how i knew it was a 3 year old version. I thought it was funny to point out. More as a laugh toward ReactOS not tagging their builds as a release often.
I gotcha! My apologies :)
it isn’t an MJD video without everything going wrong.
The fact they even worked on theme support before getting the driver base stable and functional shows me this project is never going to amount to much sadly.
Your patience is legendary. Great video!
@28:10 Safe mode without graphics driver is called VGA, like on XP. The option was right there.
"Everything Goes Wrong..." soooo, basically the average MJD video? 😁
For SimCity 2000, if you go in the WIN95 folder on the CD that should be a 32-bit installer.
I respect ReactOS for what it's set out to do. Even with the source code leaks, they were pretty strict in ensuring that it's a clean room effort.
BTRFS has many more features, supports storing significantly larger files, having more characters in filenames, etc. It also corrupts far less easily. IDK how good the BTRFS support is in ReactOS, and truthfully it probably won't make it much better, but at least you may have less corruption and better filesystem features, assuming it's fully supported. FAT is probably THE WORST "modern" filesystem you could use to boot an operating system...
Just a little advice from 15 years of fixing broken windows installs because of driver shenanigans, install only one driver at a time, reboot, check for stability issues and then when everything checks out move on. And I know ReactOS is not windows but it behaves much like one when it comes to drivers. Also you should install the Chipset driver if your plan on using PCI or the ACPI Table might not get set correctly and the devices will not initialize and the system will freeze.
Annotation:
I just seen you get Code 39 that means as mentioned above that you chipset driver is missing and that means the Tables as not set to the Board specifications and can therefore not initialize because it uses the system defaults.
A few ideas: 7-zip should be able to extract the drivers from most installations, a shorter way to get to device manager is to right click on my computer and choose manage (at least on Windows, never tried it on ReactOS), when a video driver causes a BSOD, the VGA mode is the way to troubleshoot it, and it seems you haven't tried it.
if it ever leaves beta it'd be cool for playing old windows games