Whistler Build 2531

Whistler Build 2531

Crusty Windows bootleg
The desktop of Whistler Build 2531
Original OS	Windows XP Build 2531
Release date	Late July of 2001
Author	?
Language(s)	English
Architecture(s)	x86 (32-bit)
File size	493.2 MiB
Download link	Whistler.ver.5.1.2531.English.iso
Date added	January 18, 2022

Whistler Build 2531 (not to be confused with the stock Whistler build of the same name) is a bootleg Windows XP Build 2531 edition, which was created by an unknown author.

It is one of the earliest existing Windows XP bootlegs (predating the earliest nLite bootlegs and Windows XP RTM itself, predates even the DEVILS0WN release of RTM), and possibly the first ever modification of beta Windows XP. Anyhow, it was added into the archive on January 18, 2022. The release date is unclear, but we'll just say late July of 2001 for now.

Description

The bootleg is based on a Release Candidate 2 build of Windows XP, which notoriously had several things added to it that weren't in the original build, such as TweakUI, extra backgrounds, a fish screensaver, re-enabling the bundled Unix utilities from the original build and the removal of the timebomb and activation. It is unclear why exactly the leaker released it like this, but a rumor suggests the author was unhappy with the beta leaking scene at the time and did it out of spite. For many years, this was the only release of Build 2531 available until a team on OSBetaArchive later restored the ISO to its original state, and the unmodified build finally would leak in June 2022.

Other than these changes, the build is the same as the leaked version.

There is another build with similar changes that is even earlier than this one, called build 2495, which was surprisingly not archived earlier in the collection.

Changes from Windows XP build 2531

Look and feel

• New default wallpaper. The default wallpaper has been changed from the default blue Windows XP wallpaper to a colored version of the painting "Reptiles" by M. C. Escher
• 23 new wallpapers included
• 1 new screensaver included

Software

• Grep
• Sach's Marine Aquarium v0.99K
• TweakUI 1.33
• USort
• UFind
• Vi
• WinInfo 2.3

Notes

Bootleg quirks

• The setup routine has been changed slightly. A program called AutoExNT is used to then execute a script named "firstrun.js", which will do a lot of the changes you will see in the OS. The most notable are:
  1. An entire elaborate procedure (involving arcane registry wizardry) solely to remove the timebomb
  2. Restoring the unused Unix utilities in the build itself
  3. Unregistering 2 essential activation DLLs, to complete the timebomb defusal/activation removal procedure
  • Funnily enough, it doesn't clean up after itself properly. A lot of the helper utilities it uses are still present and are never removed.
• The Guest account, among others, is now disabled by default.
• You will get a file copy error on the files "ds16gt.dLL" (sic), and "odbc16gt.dll". Neither of those files exist on the CD, even though it is specified in TXTSETUP.SIF.
• Thanks to the several scripts in place, the timebomb and activation has been removed, so you do not need to change the date.

Gallery

• 

  Setup at a copy error

• 

  Setup at the second copy error

• 

  Setup at a module loading error

• 

  Empty desktop

• 

  Start menu

• 

  System Properties, WinInfo 2.3, and About Windows