I dragged my grandad’s mystery attic PC into the light and decided to see what would happen if I hit the power button after (potentially) 20 years. I knew basically nothing going in—just a very early-2000s case covered in Internet Explorer branding, dual DVD drives, a floppy drive, and the kind of rear I/O that screams “Windows XP era.” Inside, things got even weirder: a Windfast motherboard, a sketchy “switching power supply,” three RAM slots (why?), and a disgustingly dusty, unbranded graphics card that turned out to be an Nvidia Riva TNT2. The wild part: it actually powered on… but wouldn’t get past POST. I ended up buying a £5 PS/2 keyboard off Facebook Marketplace, then chased the real problem—dead RAM. Once I pulled the bad stick, the machine finally behaved, recognized 2GB DDR1, and booted straight into a fully intact Windows XP Professional install. From there, it turned into a proper time capsule: bus photos on the desktop (of course), old music files, Chrome from the early days, and a bunch of genuinely sentimental family stuff I didn’t expect to find—plus some classic scam email moments. I shut it down, had a think about backing it up for privacy, and I’m seriously considering making this PC a recurring “channel icon” for future experiments.