Since I cannot afford a new computer at the moment, I decided to try a slightly crazy experiment with my Xeon server.

Ingredients are 1 Xeon server, 1 Linux OS, 1 VMware Server installation, 1 XP Home CD, and 1 use of the nLite tool.

Blend 1 XP Home CD with 1 nLite tool, removing components as desired, and disabling the SFC check for the installer.

Create a new VMware image for a Windows XP Home guest, and set the CD-ROM to point to the ISO image created by nLite.

Install XP inside of 10 minutes, including reboots.

Map a network drive to a machine with some NEF files, install Capture NX. Start playing.

Remember to tell Windows to run Windows Update, even though this machine won’t be going on the net.

61 critical updates to be downloaded and installed.

It’s a bit slow in terms of interface response lag, but the Xeon powers through the RAW files, despite VMware being in the way.