Windows Minty OS

*Note: this is episode 46 of the XP Blackmoon Trilogy series*

Does anybody remember the 2012 film titled *Wreck-It Ralph*? If you haven’t seen it already, I’ll gladly tell you what it is:

It’s a film made by Walt Disney Animation Studios that’s about a bad guy named Ralph as he tries to rebel against his bad guy role with dreams of becoming a hero.

I remember watching that movie so much, I liked the scenes that had the Sugar Rush racers, which are a group of characters from that film that are candy themed racers and they all look so cute.

One of them was named "Minty Zaki", she is that green apple-themed racer of whom I can regard as being the cutest of the racers. She is the queen of the ice cream set in jewel, always has an ace up her tasty sleeve, especially when it comes to racing. Refreshing and full of resources, Minty Zaki is a defender of good causes, but for the wrong reasons. She is also my favorite character in the film series, though like the other racers, she isn’t really as popular unlike Vanellope who is the film's secondary protagonist.

But what if Wreck-It Ralph came out in 1999 instead of 2012, because I'm here to tell you something like that which happened at Microsoft during the year 2000.

In 1997, Disney released a game titled "Sugar Rush Speedway", a confectionery themed kart-racing game featuring the candy-themed racers. Like I said earlier, Minty is one of them. They have been included in Sugar Rush-themed packages for operating systems such as Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and IBM's OS/2 Warp.

Once upon a time in late 1999, Disney and Microsoft were on a collaboration with each other working for creating, testing, and finalizing operating systems centered on each of the 15 racers shown in the game. One of them was called Windows Minty OS. The team of software developers had been working tirelessly for many months to create the Minty operating system, hoping for it to be the most advanced operating system ever in history. However, as the release date drew closer, strange things started to happen as files would randomly disappear and then reappear in the most unexpected places, the screens would often flicker, strange whispers were heard coming from the speakers, and cryptic error messages often displayed. Despite these strange bugs, the software developers were not able to fix these bugs before the designated release date, and so, the Minty OS was released in early 2000 with the bugs unpatched. Shortly after the release date happened, users of the Minty OS started reporting strange occurrences on their computers, these are some of the things they saw:

Some users claimed that their desktop icons would move around on their own and sometimes files would even disappear before reappearing in unusual spots. Some users claimed that their screens would flicker, and cryptic messages were shown, others said they heard strange whispers coming from the speakers, even if the computer was turned off. Some people also said that programs would open by themselves, other said that their task bar would randomly change colors every time they tried shutting down the computer, others said that they claimed to have seen a figure resembling Mickey Mouse, except he is all black and that he had white glowing eyes, and every time they tried to click away from the screen, the figure would follow their cursor no matter where it goes. Some reports also claimed that the desktop background would change to show disturbing imagery involving Minty herself whenever the user leaves the room, others claimed that their menus would open up by themselves and every time they tried closing it, their desktop background would brighten for a little bit.

It seems that the Minty OS had a mind of its very own.

After these reports, Microsoft worked for many months to develop patches to fix the strange glitches. After the patches were developed, people would download them so that they could use the Minty OS with a sigh of relief that the glitches are gone.

Meanwhile, I have nowadays been hired as a worker at Microsoft, and recently I stumbled upon a computer with the Minty operating system installed on it. When I turned on the computer, the boot screen showed Minty standing on top of the Windows logo on the left of the screen. When the computer finished booting, the startup sound that played was the same one used in Windows 2000 and Windows Millennium Edition. The user interface was similar to the interface of other Windows versions at the time. The desktop background was a drawing of Minty sleeping in bed with Swizzle Malarkey, another racer from Sugar Rush. At first, everything was normal while using the operating system, until the strange glitches started happening.

Files would disappear and then reappear in new spots, cryptic error messages often appear before disappearing suddenly, strange whispers were sometimes heard coming from the speakers, as if the computer was trying to talk to me, the menu would open up by itself sometimes, the video player would sometimes run by itself and disturbing videos would often play in the background.

As the glitches continued, shivers were being sent down my spine. I had to click on the Internet Explorer icon, where it took me to the welcome page, when I came to the start menu. I clicked on the Microsoft website, then I had to click on a link to fix the patches to the glitches, as I was trying to install to patches to the glitches, the distorted Mickey Mouse figure appeared and said, "Do not dare to escape my path! You will soon regret it!". I ignored what he said. As the installation process was going on, the system itself started repetitively sending out error messages containing cryptic messages appearing to be warning signs not to install the patches. I ignored the warnings, and the computer began to restart itself.

Once I finished downloading the patches, the glitches stopped, and I could finally use the Minty OS with a sign of relief.

To this day, the legend of the Minty operating system continues to haunt some people to this day, waiting to appear in their nightmares soon.

Credited to JunoTehPlanet, edited by Hayden the Toe Jammer