Earlier we covered how to get Windows Vista running on your PS3 but because of its lag time it truly wasn’t useful for much else than a demonstration of how far we can stretch the PS3. If you want something that’s actually somewhat usable, Windows XP is a far better option and that’s exactly what we’re going to cover today. The basic principle is similar so Windows XP runs on an emulation layer on Linux on the PS3.

1. If you haven’t already, you need to install Linux on your PS3 before you can continue since Windows Vista is run on 100% emulation.
2. Download Qemu 0.9.1
3. Install by opening a terminal (System > Accessories)
4. Type “sudo apt-get install qemu” in the terminal, then press “y”
5. To install Windows XP, create a folder on your desktop labeled “Windows”
6. Open the folder, right click in the blank space, and click open terminal here
7. In terminal type “qemu-img create xp.img 2G”. This creates a 2GB hard disk drive for use in Qemu
8. On your computer (not your PS3) create a Windows XP install disk with nLite. Search around the web for a good guide on making a decent nLite ISO with minimal system requirements. My disk is down to about 95MBb in size, but it can go much further lower in size, this is just with some of the minor stuff removed.
9. When finished copy the WinXP ISO to your PS3 either by USB stick, iPod, burning the ISO file to a disc (the actual ISO file not an image from ISO), or whatever means you got.
10. Copy the ISO in the “Windows” folder you made on the desktop, this should be the same folder as xp.img
11. Rename it to something simple such as xpinstallcd.iso
12. Open the Windows Folder, right click, click open terminal here
13. Type “qemu -cdrom xpinstallcd.iso -hda xp.img -m 64M -boot d”. Note the 64 is the amount of RAM you would like to reserve for Qemu, remember you’re running Linux already and more isn’t always better
14. A new window should open running a virtual machine (emulation) of an Intel x86 Processor which can run WinXP
15. After Windows XP is installed all you need to do to run XP is to type “qemu -hda xp.img -m 64M”
16. BONUS: To transfer files to Windows XP, first make an ISO of the files with a tool such as PowerISO, MagicISO, etc
17. Copy the ISO file to your PS3 and put it in your Windows folder on your desktop, and mount it as a CD-ROM. Here’s what the command may look like: “qemu -cdrom my_files.iso -hda xp.img -m 64M”
18. Copy the files off your CD drive in XP

Image/Flickr/acb

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