True, I should’ve probably waited for the community patch that’ll fix these issues.

And yet, every other game I’ve tried so far (including several with better graphics) actually worked out of the box without requiring Windows or even driver updates, or having to spend ages compiling shaders. 🤷‍♂️

Yeah, probably, though computers take space, and electricity… though, admittedly, these days you can probably run a mail server on a raspberry pi (if you can get your hands on one) powered by a potato… 🤔

The plan sort of was to eventually (once I can afford a new machine) move everything to VMs, with GPU pass through for the gaming one (I can’t afford a dedicated gaming machine — nor have the space for it — and I want something I can easily reset to a clean installation in case of Denuvo and similar malware without messing with my work software), but moving the servers and firewall to a small dedicated machine might indeed be a more realistic (and maybe even cheaper) approach…

“Graphics card not supported.”

Find out I have to update Windows.

Hadn’t updated since around 2018 and everything worked fine, but OK, fine, let’s try it.

Can’t figure out how to reenable Windows update (it kept trying to come back, like a dog swallowing and revomiting its own puke, so at some point I’d disabled it with extreme prejudice, and it seems it stuck).

Manage to find a Microsoft tool that’ll update Windows 10 to the latest version without going through Windows update.

Upgrade assistant does its thing and at seventy-something percent complains VirtualBox isn’t compatible and must be uninstalled. Yeah, not doing that, got my family’s mail server in there. I was only 2 major versions behind, shouldn’t’ve been a problem, but all right, have it your way.

Update VirtualBox, looks like Upgrade assistant is finally happy, after a couple aeons Windows is updated.

“Graphics card not supported.” Fuck. You.

Update graphics drivers (couple more aeons; in for a penny, in for a pounding).

While Nvidia does its thing, try to start the VMs in the new version of VirtualBox. “Can’t start operating system”. Well, fuck.

Eventually figure out that at some point around version 6 VHD support got fubared and Oracle never fixed it. This is why I don’t update.

Start converting VHD disks to VDIs, which should fix it. What’s a few more aeons between friends.

While I’m at it the drivers finish updating. Try to start the game again, third time’s the charm.

Fans reach take off speed! Main screen goes black! Logos start showing! It lives!

“Compiling 1 of 7000 shaders”

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

System grinds to a halt. Finally manage to open program manager and kill the game. Probably shouldn’t have started it while I was migrating the virtual disks. (The fact that it’s a 980ti probably doesn’t help either, but hey, it’s worked perfectly till now, including with Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur’s Gate 3, and by jingo it’ll work with Starfield).

“It just works.”

Anyway, meanwhile the disks finish migrating, and at least now the VMs work. Update the VirtualBox extensions just to be sure, reboot the VM…

Black screen.

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

Find out at some point the display drivers got fubared for Windows 2003 / XP and Oracle never fixed it. Manage to start the VM in safe mode and uninstall the VirtualBox extensions; after fixing the display settings, it sort of works again. Yay. Second VM is staying with v5.x extensions, thank you very much.

Say what you want about Bethesda (they almost certainly deserve it), but at least they ain’t Oracle.

Sigh.

Gonna eat something, relax a bit, and leave the game to compile shaders while I sleep.

With luck, tomorrow it’ll be done, and it’ll just work.