I used to love this OS on my lower end hardware, i know it has been moved to the unsupported by MS side of the fence. But on my T60 with GMA 950, would it be of any benefit?

2000 is still very viable, depending on what you require from it... It still runs modern web browsers (these days my #1 requirement for viability).

At a base level, 2000 is just XP without the "pretty", I still love it's "find" over XP's

You gotta remember 2000 is NT 5.0, XP is NT 5.1 not much of an upgrade.

If your machine is better then 400MHz and 256MB ram, I'd personally go with XP, configured right it will be faster (like 33% or more). On lesser hardware 2000 is a better fit (Although XP can be tweaked majorly to achive the same, the same tweaking on 2000 will do the same). "Out of Box" 2000 for older machines, XP for newer.

Once you take away all the bells and whistles, there isn't much of a difference between the two operating systems. (built-in CD writer support, Remote Desktop Connection, Internet Connection Firewall, Fast User Switching, Windows Movie Maker, XP Style Themes)

Most if not all the "bells and whistles" 3rd party apps do a much better job then XP ones as well. It's a "you get what you pay for" kind of thing (except the 3rd party ones that come to mind are FREE open source )

On a T60, it is not worth any (minor) speed improvements over xp/vista/7. on a older system (lower than ~T30), it may be better, but you would want to be carefull since updates are no longer being made. ultimately, unless you have a specific reason to run 2000, I would highly reccomend xp or higher.

If you have older hardware/software that requires 2000, it is viable, but you will want to be carefull with it.

For someone with good computing habits, updates are not so important. I use "unsupported" OS's all the time... last virus I had on a mchine of mine is "I Love You" on a networked machine at the office when my boss opened the e-mail

Use a goot HOSTS files, hardware firewall (router), and avoid dubios places/software (treat your computer like your... well, just be carefull where you put it and what you let touch it ), then it's all good.

This is my first system with intel GMA video (mom has a dell with a intel 4500 chip in it, my tower has a 9800GT) i was not quite sure on how Xp would act on that system

a GMA 950 will run windows vista/7 and aero just fine - it is entirely viable for xp or later (infact I would highly reccomend those). If all you are worried about is the performance of the video, don't. It won't be able to play games, but it can handle windows fine.

*EDIT* it won't play games really well, but it will show something on a screen - that is enough for me, it all depends on who you are and how picky you are.

I still run Windows 98 SE on my 600E, and I don't have any problems at all that come from the OS or my system itself. 2000, being two generations in advance should still do what you need it to do.

I find that with an "obsolete" OS, viruses are not a problem.

And as ozzymud said, if you know how to maintain your computer, software support should be irrelevant.

The major reason to use XP over 2000 would be if you wanted to run some software that simply wouldn't run on 2000. Anything that needs a version of .NET Framework beyond 2.0 or anything built with MS Visual Studio 2010 would not work for example. I only upgraded from 2000 because I was forced by software I needed to run. I probably won't upgrade from XP until that happens again.

+1 to jdrou for that... I forget why I was forced from 2k to XP, 98 to 2k was for working with DVD ISO's... I avoid .NET like the plague... so it wasn't that... but I will definately be on XP till I am absolutley FORCED to switch... If it works, don't fix it

Major reason I changed on my home systems was games; many newer games won't install on Windows 2000. Also some game-related user-made utilities require .NET 3.5 or 4.0.
At work I was forced to install MS Office 2007 when we switched from Novell GroupWise to MS Exchange email systems and that doesn't officially support Windows 2000.

Most newer games I'm not impressed with OR I play on one of the various consoles with my son.

My "new" *heh* games I play on the PC are things like Empire Earth AOC, Oblivion, Civ IV (Empire Earth is the ONE not letting me move totally to Linux, still a FAIL with wine although there has been progress, it now starts to run these days )

These awesome old games, running on older OS's(new at the time of the game), on NEW hardware is definately sweet... beats playing a game where all 3 are "new" hardware/software/os... quality is awsome, gameplays is fast and smooth, and bugs were long ago fixed

No, not really. 2000 is old, and now abandonware. Why not modify your Windows XP CD to remove loads of components, using nLite (free download)? I have a 150MB Windows XP Pro SP3 ISO I made with nLite, literally the barebones of the Windows XP operating system and it is very speedy even on 64MB RAM inside a virtual machine! So that would be my recommendation.

#1, abaondonware from Microsoft is a myth, Microsoft retains all rights to it's older software/OS's, While they might not try to enforce theft of their old stuff, they have definately not abandoned it, I once emailed them about Windows 3.0, they clearly have no intentions of making even something this old freely available.

On the subject of nLite, I agree, it is AWESOME... and for a gaming rig you can get the cd down to like 85MB

The legalities of the distribution are questionable (with time you could recreate leggally unsing nLite), but take a look at the "features" of MicroXP v0.82...

THIS IS NOT A MS RELEASE LIKE THIS POST SAYS... but here is some info about it...
http://forums.techarena.in/operating-sy ... 136059.htm

This literally installs XP in like 5 minutes, runs most software, and definately runs FAST on OLD hardware It blows Windows FLP out of the water... Why can't MS do somthing like this?

Because it's already hard enough to get users like you and me to upgrade. If they actually issued something that works the way people think a computer should work, they'd never convince anyone to upgrade, and then they'd have to come up with a new business model.

Why would you want to use 2000 in this day and age anyway? Would you still use Windows 98 regularly? just use nLite to make XP as I said before.

#1: I own it
#2 It works well for some machines
#3 Why not? (If it runs all your apps, works with your hardware)

It really is XP without activation, themes, and some other minor stuff (nothing 3rd party utils/apps can't fix)

Windows 2000: February 2000
Windows XP: August 2001

Only 18 months difference in release dates Would be less then throwing out Vista for 7 if Vista worked for you.

Well...yes I would, and did until just a couple of months ago. And I very well may set up a new install of 98SE again, just because it works so well on old hardware and is very secure. Take a look at this post:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/151337- ... -for-2011/

That is the feeling I get using 98 myself, but I don't have any proof like some of the posters over there at msfn.org seem to have. However, 2000 might not be as secure as 98, but if one is careful, probably won't be much of a problem using it.

Really? On most computers that I used, 98 and 98SE froze frequently.

I never had problems with any of the Win 9x or ME releases with respect to reliability. Most people who had problems had bad ram and buggy drivers. You did have to reformat the system about every year or so if you installed and removed a bunch of programs (games mostly) since the registry file got bloated and slowed the system down.

I have had win2k systems running for many years at a time with no slowdowns or other isses, it was one of my favorites and I only switched to XP because some games needed it and I wanted a newer IE.

The good thing about old unsupported OS's is that the virus and mallware makers do not support it anymore either. The major issue you have is running some old infected warez from the 90's, and a newer A/V appl should block those.

Running a newer OS like XP on old machines with limited RAM ceilings is not much fun, but the old OS make those machines usable for real work (just use older apps).

My main machine...

Paint Shop Pro 7, UltraEdit 12, WinRar 3.51 (the magazine freebie), Print Shop Deluxe III, My Advanced Label Creator... same ones I bought when Win95 was the norm

I feel a lot of software stopped adding new and valuable features LONG ago... just a bunch of bloat these days.

Just fired up a Via C7 machine with DOS 6.22 and Win 3.1... WinRar v1.54 opened a pile of ZIP and RAR files created with newer versions of the same (bunch of old apogee games, my 5yo LOVES em) And yea, yea, dosbox and all... but playing with an Original Gravis gamepad (1991 version) just can't be beat on the old games

One day I needed to edit a scan with Photoshop and forgot I didn't re install it after the last reformat. Since I couldn't find my V7 cd I installed V 3.05 (for Windows 3.1) on my 3Ghz HT P4 desktop and it ran just fine (allowed me to do the cropping and stuff I needed).

I collect old software (Apps) for Mac and PC, they are still usable and I love those good printed and intelligently written manuals. Gives me something to run on the old machines I collect.

Not to forget the dreaded "Windows is shutting down" screen that used to sit there for hours on end, and Windows would never actually shut-down. 98/SE was terrible for hanging shut-downs, and Microsoft never worked out what exactly was making it hang. The so-called "patch" did not work at all, it just disabled the fast shut-down option which didn't help.

Unless you use a ton of old software, 2000 is virtually useless as hardly anything installs or works. You need a good web browser, and IDK if Opera or Firefox still works with 2000 or not, but Chrome doesn't and Safari doesn't either. I know there are more than four web browsers out there, but if none of the new IE alternatives work in 2000, you can't browse the modern web in IE6 nowadays can you? Chances are your software that works on 2000 will work on XP, so I don't gwt why you don't just use XP?


Not to mention support for 2000 was dropped about a year ago, and as it is based on the NT kernel which all later versions of Windows, expecting Me, are using too, this does not mean it is more secure as it's old. You do know underneath the hood, 2000 and XP are virtually the same right? Therefore, if a virus works on XP, it should work on 2000 too, it's just it depends on how the malware is delivered through the web or whatever, as it may require something like Silverlight which of course does not work on 2000. Only thing is, you are better protected on XP as on XP (or any newer Windows OS), anti-virus manufactures still support it. You try finding an anti-virus for Windows 2000 that doesn't slow you down considerably, the only one I can think of is ClamWin, and if I'm honest, that's a bit rubbish. Windows 2000 is differently showing it's age.


Wow you must have been the only person in the world to not have stability problems with Me! That OS was dreadful, honestly the worst thing Microsoft has ever made. As far as 95 and 98 go, not as bad as Me, but not great either, remember 98 to be quite bad on the stability side of things. As you say, hardware manufactures often didn't bother to re-code drivers for Windows Me, they just used the 98 drivers, but you can't say every single computer running Windows Me at the time had bad RAM, Me was just prone to blue-screening, due to RAM most of the time, but not how good or bad your RAM was, it was about how Me handled the RAM.


Depends what your idea of "limited RAM ceilings" is. XP will run fine on 384MB RAM, or maybe even 256MB at a push, and it also depends what you install on it. If you only install the programs you need on XP with half a gig of RAM, it runs fast, but if you fill it with junk software you got free with computer magazines from the late 1990s/early 2000s like my Grandad often does, it runs slow. Yes I do agree with you on using the older applications and an older OS to make working on these PCs easier and smoother and faster, but seriously, what sort of computers are you running on if it cannot handle Windows XP?

I still don't really get why you want to use an old, outdated and somewhat slow (especially boot-times!) OS, but if it makes you happy, I'm not stopping you. I'd recommend XP anyday of the week over 2000.

When XP was still 2 or 3 years old, I did prefer 2000 because at that time, 2000 was far more stable than XP. But XP became more reliable after SP1 and even better after SP2, and that finally convinced me to fully migrate from 2000 to XP. Looks like the XP-to-Vista transition was kind of similar: at first Vista was very slow and after using it for a few months I went back to XP, but when I tried Vista again after SP2 came out, I liked it much more and now I prefer it over XP.

I liked my Windows 2000 interface too.

It can be done, but it might not work so well for a laptop where power consumption is an issue; Windows 2000 doesn't seem to be able to power off USB ports.

There's someone on the MSFN forums backporting post-EOL XP patches for 2000, and someone writing a DLL wrapper for unsupported XP APIs. There's a skinning and alternate ClearType implementation too. Theseprograms still run on 2000, some with a bit of tweaking.

Vista is definitely better than XP no doubt about that, but I liked it when I first tried the RTM (with no service packs) and I found it to be OK on a machine with a Pentium 4 2.8GHz and 2GB RAM. I never really had any problems with Vista. However, out of the box, Windows 7 has been pretty stable, and SP1 was released a few months back now and it seems to have made it a bit more stable. But t be fair, I think the days of service packs are kind of gone now, as they are just gigantic roll-ups of updates, have you seen the size for Windows 7 x64 SP1? It's about 800MB, far too big IMO.

Service Packs include all previous patches, so the large size is expected. You're not supposed to download that file manually unless you're mass distributing it anyway.

I do.



I remember that... Mine stopped freezing regularly after I installed one of the service packs. I rarely have problems now.



My solution is to tell my computer to restart in MS DOS mode. Occasionally, I get a black screen with a blinking cursor that never responds, but I don't get stuck on the Windows shut down screen.

As an IT engineer, working on many PCs which will eventually need to be updated with Windows 7 SP1 (as well as XP SP3 still, many Windows XP installation CDs I have or the customers provide do not include SP3, most with SP2 or even some with SP1), it's very handy to have an executable version of the service pack whenever you need it. Downloading and installing service packs through Windows Update takes forever I find.

My solution was to just power off using the button on the PC and make sure the option for "Run ScanDisk after bad shutdown" (or whatever it was, I forget now), was disabled. Seemed to work well enough and my hard drive was never damaged in the process of doing this. It was Window's own fault it wasn't shutting down properly, not my fault. I don't know if Ms-DOS mode worked or not, I never tried it, but what I do know is that this was as big issue with Windows 98 and is well documented across the web, and the "patch" offered by Microsoft didn't work.



Yes, but what I'm trying to say is why don't Microsoft just send out each update to Windows Update individually, rather than having one big service pack that takes a long time to install and whilst you are installing it, prevents you from using your computer? Also, I believe there is a way to remove most updates you install via Windows Update if it messes up your system (I think it's in the update history, but I've never had to do this so I don't really know), but if a service pack messes up your Windows (I've had this problem with XP SP3 in the past), I'm sure there is a way to remove it if you know what you are doing, but there is no obvious way to remove it, and by the time you've spent ages trying to figure out how to remove the service pack, you may as well have bitten the bullet and just reformatted your drive and re-installed Windows, after having backed up your files first, obviously.



As an IT engineer, working on many PCs which will eventually need to be updated with Windows 7 SP1 (as well as XP SP3 still, many Windows XP installation CDs I have or the customers provide do not include SP3, most with SP2 or even some with SP1), it's very handy to have an executable version of the service pack whenever you need it. Downloading and installing service packs through Windows Update takes forever I find.

Don't quite know why this post has turned out a bit funny.... as far as I can see I've put the quotes in right, so IDK what's gone a bit wrong? Hopefully still readable?

That's already how it works; Windows Update only downloads the parts of SP1 that you need, which leads to an ~80mb download per computer. If you insist on downloading the network package, then it can't simply assume that your system is in the latest patched state, and hence must include everything. I think previous service packs were the whole shebang even when delivered through Windows Update. It's also way easier to slipstream one service pack than a couple hundred partially overlapping updates.

Pretty sure SP1 uninstalls just like a huge hotfix. It makes backups of the files it replaces unless you choose to obliterate those post-installation.

EDIT: I think you have quotes in a quote.