A YouTuber’s Baffling Project: Installing Windows on a PSP

A YouTuber took on a challenge to install Windows 98 onto a highly impractical device – the Sony PlayStation Portable.

Despite being popular choices, the Asus ROG Ally X and Lenovo Legion Go have received criticism for their poor compatibility with the portable form factor, mainly due to Windows 11.

Despite the impracticality, YouTuber and modder Jiga Tech was determined to take the concept even further and push it into the realm of brilliant absurdity.

In a previous video, Jiga had modded a 2008 PSP 3000 by adding extra software. One of the applications was DOSBox, a popular DOS emulator. Jiga planned to use this software to install Windows 98.

Right away, Jiga encountered an issue. The PSP does not have a keyboard port, so Jiga had no choice but to refer to a manual in order to utilize different button combinations to mimic keyboard functions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58roVvNGNN0

Can You Install WINDOWS On The PSP? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58roVvNGNN0)

Once the install files were transferred to the appropriate PSP directory, Jiga proceeded to install Windows on the device using DOSBox. However, the initial efforts resulted in an ‘error loading user.exe’ notification.

The process was marked by extreme difficulty as Jiga encountered problems with drive letters, encountered multiple error messages, and experienced a complete lock-up of the PSP due to DOSBox crashing.

To address the various issues, Jiga repeatedly switched between his PSP and PC, generating multiple drive images in an effort to create a format that the PSP could successfully load.

Despite encountering a seemingly insurmountable issue with Windows 98, Jiga decided to switch from Windows 95, which also proved to be ineffective, before ultimately settling on Windows 3.1.

The PSP successfully reached the boot screen and Windows 3.1 was able to load, but unfortunately, it was unable to perform any other functions.

At this point, Jiga concedes and tells his audience, “There is no way to run Windows 98 on a PSP.”