The mystery of the WINDOWS XP Installation Music and it's impact on MILLENIALS & EARLY Gen Zers

Do you remember a time when setting up MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP on your 

BRAND SPANKING SHINY NEW COMPUTER you bought at BEST BUY, COMPUSA, FUTURE SHOP, etc.?

Or when upgrading from 98SE or 2000?

A lot of us remember. Those days.

Myself included.

Photo might be from 2006 but.....

Here, I am running WINDOWS XP on that 

SAMSUNG SYNCMASTER Monitor.

I vaguely remember the first time I saw this screen it was a FALL AFTERNOON of 2005 and it was on my MDG HORIZON 2900TV

when my dad had just hooked it up to the wall with a kickass if somewhat small 17" SAMSUNG SYNCMASTER CRT monitor

(Dad, Why didn't we keep the large 21" KDS monitor?)

Anyway, we were setting up WINDOWS XP HOME EDITION on the MDG and I was surprised to see that the setup screen looked like that above.

And I heard a song accompanying it.

(In indication that the onboard REALTEK AUDIO CHIP was working)

And for years, I've always wondered what that song was all about.

But I couldn't hear it again until a a few years later when I discovered YOUTUBE and then heard the song once again.

If you want to hear the song, here's the EMBED Link

?????????

Why does the EMBEDED VIDEO make mention of INTERNET EXPLORER and the year 1996 when this post is all about WINDOWS XP and the year 2001?

Well it's because the song actually predates WINDOWS XP by 5 years and was meant for a piece of software for computers running WINDOWS 95 or WINDOWS NT 4.0.

That piece of Software is the MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER STARTER KIT

This piece of software was meant to introduce USERS to the web browser that MICROSOFT really wanted users to use instead of NETSCAPE which was the hot one at the time of release...

Back in 1996 when DIALUP was still king.

Here's a demonstration:

All credit goes to MICHAEL MJD for his demonstration

Anyway.

Throughout the use of the software, You'd hear the song that you'd later in in XP's installation.

When WINDOWS XP was getting released, there was a need to allow users to bask into what I call the transition from the 20th Century into the 21st Century and that was to put in some Music into the Installation process.

If you want to experience it again without using either an original machine or a virtual machine,

I found this link to itch.io to a game that's also a Simulator:

Windows XP OOBE Simulator on ITCH.IO

For years, people have always wondered who composed the OOBE MUSIC for WINDOWS XP.

People thought at first it was composer BILL BROWN

But ultimately it wasn't.

But still, it was easy to assume he did due to the fact that he composed the sounds for XP as well as compose the music for the XP Tour

Others assumed that it was BRIAN ENO 

Why?

Because he made THE MICROSOFT SOUND for WINDOWS 95.

But ultimately, this was also proven false for ENO's connection to XP because ENO detests MICROSOFT nowadays and ENO prefers to use MAC Computers instead of x86 Machines.

And there was even a fight between people regarding the OOBE MUSIC's similarities to the SAVAGE GARDEN song A THOUSAND WORDS

But it was ultimately nothing short of a COINCIDENCE.

Then in 2011(My least favorite year personally, mind you.)

A song appeared later on SOUNDCLOUD. 

And it's there that the TRUE IDENTITY of the guy who made the song was revealed:

STAN LEPARD (Full name STANLEY JAMES LEPARD)

Was the TRUE CREATOR of the Windows XP OOBE Music and he also revealed that the song was actually composed 5 years prior for the THE NTERNET EXPLORER STARTER KIT in 1996.

And he also revealed that he composed an abridged version of the same song that would be used for the NORTH AMERICA Map for the software ENCARTA VIRTUAL GLOBE 1998

His reveal of the origins of the song surprised many Netizens of WEB 2.0 because they had been searching for almost 10 years the true origins of the song.

And with this surprise upload on SOUNDCLOUD in 2011, the search was put to rest.

Though if you search on SOUNDCLOUD now,

the song has since been replaced with a 2020 remix 

while the original version of the song was eventually reuploaded just with references to INTERNET EXPLORER STARTER KIT.

While the 2020 Remix now says WINDOWS 98 but I've used 98 before and there's no connection with STAN LEPARD and WIN98 as 98's seldom used OOBE SCREEN doesn't even use music.

And 98's music for it's tour is this instead:

While STAN LEPARD has since passed away on FEBRUARY 11 2021 due to INTERCEREBRAL HEMMORAGE,

His profound impact on many a Late Millennial and Early Gen Zer has proven that the song will remain forever Iconic for many years.

Probably with as much of the same impact as CHARLES O'REAR'S famous

NAPA VALLEY BUCOLIC GREEN HILLS/VINEYARD Photo he took, also in 1996.

Most of my info comes from fellow Youtuber MICHAEL MJD's video of the Song's origins

And yes, I should have been mentioning this on my UPCOMING blogpost about WINDOWS XP but I decided to leave this separate from the upcoming post because a blogpost about the most iconic song we've heard in our childhoods deserves a post of it's own.

NINTENDO FANS, Where were you 10 years ago?-The October 20th 2016 reveal of the NINTENDO SWITCH+Legacy of the Hybrid Console

About 10 years ago, 

I was just starting a College semester before I dropped out suddenly before New Years 2017.

I was just chilling out, doing my PERSPECTIVE DRAWING ASSIGNMENTS, 

When all of a sudden, I saw something on my Wii U ESHOP account where NINTENDO had just announced a new Console slated to be released on MARCH 3 2017:

I could not believe my eyes what I had seen.

It was the hyped NINTENDO NX that I read about on GAMEINFORMER magazine when I was reading up information about 

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD.

And the name of this new system was revealed to be called

I was a little perplexed about what this was all about since I've read about a planned successor to the Wii U in the wake of it's commercial failure.

First inkling was around 2014 where I read rumors about a combo system called FUSION

The console that plugged in the TV would be called FUSION TERMINAL

while the secondary screen would have been FUSION DS.

This.... seems a little misconstrued because normally, the terminal would be the external peripheral while the main host is the computer bit like how they did computing with those MINICOMPUTERS in the 1970s....

While NINTENDO never did a PORTABLE DS TERMINAL to interface with the home console,

A similar concept to what would eventually become reality with the PLAYSTATION PORTAL handheld which would interface with the PS5.

But that wouldn't happen for at least a decade later....... from SONY......obviously...

Anyway BACK TO NINTENDO,

The idea was to bridge together handheld and tv gaming in order to make development easier due to issues and differences between developing for a game console/computer vs a handheld like a 3DS, PS VITA, or Smartphone.

Then, I read about the NX project which kicked off shortly before the unfortunate passing of SATORU IWATA in JULY 2015.

And then, BAM!!!

NINTENDO SWITCH was revealed on OCTOBER 20th 2016 as a reveal trailer.

And the rest of the commercial spoke for itself before the HYBRID CONSOLE's launch on MARCH 3 2017.

Compared to the FUSION concept I read back in 2014, this was more of a HYBRID CONSOLE where you can play the console as if it were a handheld but it can also become a TV CONSOLE when you put the handheld into the DOCK.

Like I said, to make development easier and less costly due to the hybrid nature.

Now about the Commercial,

I was also pleasantly surprised to find out that it was filmed in my home city of VANCOUVER, BC.

According to this article by DAILY HIVE:

The entire Nintendo Switch commercial was filmed in Vancouver

There's a plethora of locations to look at and be familiarized with.

But if you want my words instead of a website link, well, if you insist:

I believe this house is located somewhere at 3570 ETON STREET in Vancouver.

Of course that's not my house!

It's hard to see through the smoke but....

I could tell that that area is where the entrance to BURRARD SkyTrain Station is.

This scene....

You can't fool me NINTENDO. 

That's obviously STANLEY PARK.

What about this BRIDGE?

That's obviously the underside of CAMBIE STREET BRIDGE....

But this one seems to be the on the DOWNTOWN VANCOUVER side.

The underside I'm more familiar with is the one that's near OLYMPIC VILLAGE STATION near the BEST BUY that I like to frequent at times.

At first, this scene confused me since I knew what the Lobby of YVR Airport looks like from the inside... at least before you go down the escalator or stairs from the SKYTRAIN level.

But after some reading, I realized they couldn't use the actual AIRPORT to film the Reveal so they just repurposed the BCIT CAMPUS Building at the SEA ISLANDS near RICHMOND, BC.

And finally

This is obviously PACIFIC COLISEUM at the PNE grounds in VANCOUVER.

I think the last time I was there was to watch DISNEY ON ICE in 2010 but I could be wrong.

This photo of me playing on a DSI XL 

was taken after the DISNEY ON ICE show of NOVEMBER 26 2010

The reveal also showed other areas in VANCOUVER but a lot of them are places I'm unfamiliar with despite having lived in VANCOUVER for over 28+ years so that's why I didn't touch on them.

Anyway,

The NINTENDO SWITCH would later be released on MARCH 3 2017 and it's success became one of the fastest selling consoles on the market that allowed NINTENDO to regain the HOME CONSOLE market they lost to SONY & MICROSOFT during the Wii U days 

Not even the first ADMINISTRATION of DONALD TRUMP was enough to deter NINTENDO from releasing their console to the masses on 2017 to great success.

Though his attitude on OVERSEAS manufacturing did force NINTENDO to move manufacturing away from CHINA to SOUTHEAST ASIA in 2019 to limit the impact of DON's original tariffs.

Though that didn't stop NINTENDO from releasing a HANDHELD only variant of the SWITCH in 2019

The NINTENDO SWITCH LITE.

By 2021 with the release of the OLED model,

OLED Nintendo Switch

it was obvious that the SWITCH was starting to show it's age, 

especially with the release of the PS5, XBOX SERIES X, 

the RTX 30 series cards from NVIDIA and the AMD RADEON 6000 Series.

(Intel ARC didn't exist until MARCH 2022.)

There were reports of a successor being in the works but we'd had to wait until almost the last minute before DON's second inauguration when the SWITCH 2 was announced in JANUARY 2025

As for my experiences with the NINTENDO SWITCH,

I was champing up the bit to get one back in 2017 but I had to wait 7 months before I could get mine at the EB GAMES at the former OAKRIDGE MALL before it was gutted to be replaced with a newer mall on it's very same plot of land.

And I've been playing on my SWITCH ever since that purchase.

This photo of my SWITCH was taken on my iPhone 6S on 

December 7 2018, 

the day I went to METROTOWN MALL to pick up my pre-order for

SUPER SMASH BROS. ULTIMATE.

Now this photo, This was taken on my 21st Birthday on 

DECEMBER 13 2018.

The guy on the right is ME. 

This was before I grew my Beard.

If you're going to ask about the guy next to me, his name is ALTAN THOMAS.

By 2019, I lessened my usage of my SWITCH due to my original grey JOYCONS starting to drift so when Pokémon SWORD was released, I got some new JOYCONS but then during SEPTEMBER 2020, they drifted too so for a good while I swore off buying JOYCONS and instead bought a PRO CONTROLLER at my LOCAL LONDON DRUGS in MAY 2021.

It was also around the time LEGEND OF ZELDA SKYWARD SWORD was released on the SWITCH so I bought that too.

Then my SWITCH crapped out on me for some reason on SEPTEMBER 2022 so for almost 2 years, I was without a SWITCH until I bought the OLED at SHOPPERS DRUGMART in OCTOBER 2024 but little did I know that It was a stopgap purchase to prepare me for the SWITCH 2.

That above is the SWITCH 2 I bought on LAUNCH DAY June 5 2025.....

At my local BEST BUY in DOWNTOWN VANCOUVER.

(Also, My mother was having abdominal surgery that day.)

So far, I've been using my SWITCH 2 more often than my OLED but that's ok.

I do need to get a newer AVERMEDIA Capture Card the does 4K/60FPS as the one I have is just a 1080p one with 4K passthrough but to me, that's not enough. 

I want to capture in 4K.

"Too Costly? How about you take it for a test drive?"-APPLE's TEST DRIVE A MACINTOSH campaign from the mid 1980s

When APPLE released their MACINTOSH 128k Computer to the masses on JANUARY 24 1984,

The company was expecting this product to CHANGE everything we knew about COMPUTERS by  FIERCELY telling people to abandon the COMMAND interface and embrace the GUI.

While it did entice people,

Not many people were sold on the MAC 128K at first.

One of the major reasons was it's price: US$2495.

Why pay that much money for a new COMPUTER that's mostly a GUI when you already have a COMMODORE 64,

Atari 800XL,

or even APPLE's own good ole APPLE IIE system

that's already doing the things you need?

Even an IBM PC Clone was really all you need at the time.....

Undaunted, APPLE, under the tenure of JOHN SCULLY,

decided to run a series of ADs:

That was a generic commercial featuring a MOUSE disguised as a CAR to emphasis the TEST DRIVE nature of CAR DEALERSHIPS.....

Essentially what the commercial was going for was that yes, APPLE knew they price their computers higher than other companies but we all know that APPLE's known for refusing to lower down the price because not only does that guarantee lower profit margins but it also means selling the machines at a loss which APPLE obviously doesn't want to do.

So to let people know about their computer's capabilities without having to upsell on the higher cost, the dealers can let users test drive the computer for a day or two before returning it to the dealer until the user is ready to cough up the $2500 dollars needed to buy a MAC in 1984.

Such confidence from APPLE in the mid-1980s.

There's also a series of TEST DRIVE A MACINTOSH commercial that.... just watch:

(This one is my personal favorite)

Anyway, what some of these commercials signify is that APPLE thinks people are one day going to get so frustrated with COMMAND PROMPTS that they'll chuck their CGA monitors out the window or into a wall and seriously consider buying a MACINTOSH.

That's a little....... unrealistic in the reaction but what it does mirror is the frustration DOS users have with trying to free up CONVENTIONAL MEMORY in their computers

Fighting with Conventional Memory is something that has ceased by the time WINDOWS 95 showed up around the corner in AUGUST 1995.

I've heard APPLE dealers hated the TEST DRIVE campaign as to them, it hurts their business as well as rough handling of the test units, especially when their supply were insufficient for demand.

Nonetheless, the MACINTOSH 128k sold pretty well to a point that it outsold the infamous IBM PCJR computer......

Though later in 1984, APPLE would have fierce competition rising from another company and one that's been at APPLE's mercy since 1977

But that's a story for another time.

Maverick Quickie-Irony at it's finest+A little correction based on my own experiences

I refuse to use A.I tools for writing, animation, etc.

Hard work is where it's at....

That being said, 

I saw something in my FACEBOOK feed and well... just read it.

As much as I despise CHATGPT

(I get annoyed when I see people use it as their daily driver),

It's rather funny to see the CHATBOT raging at the RAM PRICES you see nowadays....

Of course, I've got one correction:

WHO'S SEEN 32GB RAM DDR5 priced at the $80 range?

My 32GB DDR5 dual channel ram kits cost me around the $150 range...

Before the price hikes EFFED it all up.....

Though the difference is that the user who asked the BOT was asking about his G-SKILL kit.

I use CORSAIR for my RAM but then again,(even before the hikes) RAM prices differs between manufacturers and classification:

For example, CORSAIR's DOMINATOR series are more costly than the VENGEANCE series....

Oh and I almost forgot: PRICING differs between both how much GB you need as well as how tight the CAS LATENCY(CL) rating is..... as well as how high the MEGA-TRANSFERS(MT) the ram kits are rated for(Though those ratings need to have XMP or AMD EXPO activated.)

Yeah Yeah.... MAVERICK QUICKIE....

But at least my QUICKIES are HUMAN TYPED with my own hands and my own keyboards whether they're from my LAPTOP or my MECHANICAL KEYBOARDS.

Not something I'd type in my BLOG so instead, 

I've got a major SNEAK PEAK for you fine readers:

Yeah, we know what this CONSOLE is but It's for anniversarial purposes.

But you'll have to wait til OCTOBER 20th to get the surprise but trust me, this will be a fun post for us all when that day comes.

The SSD is now 35 years old

Did you know that the SSD is 35 years old now?

Tough to imagine that since we've been starting to SSDs more than ever since the mid-2010s but it's true.

We all know what an SSD is,

Flash Storage with no moving parts, unlike a hard disk which is a spinning platter and read-head arm system.

But the development of the SSD goes all the way back to the year 1991,

In that year, 

Sandisk(Originally referred to as SUNDISK) demonstrated a way to make FLASH STORAGE that uses less ammount of power, performs much faster, and doesn't use moving parts...

Plus, it be NON-VOLATILE meaning that even if the power is cut off either through a power button press, unplugging, or power outage, 

The SDD would still retain it's contents.

Although the SANDISK SSD you see up there was meant to connect to an IBM compatible system using the IDE(or SCSI) interface,

Not many people flocked to their COMPUTER STORES like COMPUSA, CIRCUIT CITY, BEST BUYs, etc.

Just to buy an SSD for their PC.

Remember, This was 1991.

Most people had 386 or 486 machines,

And RAM prices were INSANE back in the day so not many people had maxed out systems due to the higher cost.

(Not helping matters was GEORGE H.W. BUSH'S 1990 TAX HIKE)

So SSDs had a far lower capacity back then due to the higher cost.

(A 20MB SSD for an IBM PS/2 LAPTOP cost US$1,000 back in 1991)

In the later years, the SSD became better as the speeds improved as well as the cost per GIGABYTE lowered but even then as we entered the beginning of the 2010s,

The SSD still wasn't ideal.

Remember Netbooks like them HP MINI's?

They came in two configurations:

One with a large capacity 2.5" hard drive

&

One with a limited capacity (but still faster) 2.5" SSD.

It wasn't until sometime around after 2015 that motherboards started to include this thing:

While the earliest INTEL motherboards started to have M.2 SLOTS, not many people I knew started to use them unless they were really savvy or really curious about the speed difference.

I first knew about M.2 SSDs with my previous MSI Laptop

which had a single SSD slot already installed with a KINGSTON model

Then I got my PS5 in March 2021 and It had a slot to install an M.2 SSD, to which I still haven't put one in there..... yet....

And now almost all of my Computers us M.2 for their INTERNAL storage.

For example,

My rebuilt MAVERICK X870E Desktop uses a SANDISK M.2 SSD to hold my WINDOWS 11 PRO  OS alongside it's Device Drivers due to issues with my previous SILICON POWER SSD from the previous FALCON 7900RT having some issues when it loses connectivity after BSOD.....

And it was about time I went with a respected brand anyway.....

And when I bought my 1TB SSD from SANDISK back in JULY 2026, I realized that the purchase was made during the 35th anniversary of the tech behind the SSDs.

How fitting.

Yeah, there are other SOLID STATE solutions like SD CARDS, USB DRIVES, COMPACT FLASH, etc. 

But they are a league of their own.

My mentioning of SSDs are mostly focused on the SATA & M.2 SSDs.