Oh OK fair enough I didn't know Windows Update only downloads the bit of the Service Pack it needs, but honestly, service packs are coming to the end of their days.

It's possible... It's still a lot easier to make new SP1 discs from a cumulative service pack than from hundreds of hotfixes.

IIRC, the Windows 7 service pack is merged with the Server 2008 R2 service pack, so there'd be some extra stuff in there.

I have a bone to pick with SP3. I bought and set up my parents' Dell years ago. I have it right now doing some work on it. I noticed that it was running SP2, so I (stupidly) thought that some of their issues might be fixed if I upgraded to SP3.

Well, it did not resolve the issue that I later fixed through other means. It DID, however, install Genuine Advantage or whatever that piece of garbage is called that is now claiming that the version of XP Home that I purchased with the Dell is pirated software.

SP3 doesn't install Windows Genuine Advantage, it's just that to download SP3 from Microsoft, you probably needed to go through a "Genuine Check" so you could get to the download page.

As for your problem with WGA, I am not it's biggest fan, and yes it has struck me once or twice before including on this legitimate copy of Windows 7 Pro x64 I am running on on my custom-built and on XP Home on a PC I had a while back, if you purchased the machine second-hand, see if you can get in touch with the seller. If you installed it yourself or it was pre-installed by Dell or installed using their RnR CDs, speak to Microsoft about the problem, they should have a helpline?

On the note of Windows 2000, I guess 2000 isn't plagued by this "WGA" nonsense that later versions of Windows are, but I keep hearing it can be installed on 2000 and flag your copy of 2000 as non-genuine.

On my Windows 2000 Pro machine...



On my XP machine....



On Windows 2000 to download like Media Player 11 for XP, MS still requires me to validate using WGACheck... but the new version doesn't run on 2000 (here is an old version that does work and validates - http://koti.mbnet.fi/vaultec/genuine_w2k.php )

P.S. Notice Windows 2003 ain't in that 1st list, it's the same as 2000 in that aspect

Possibly. I'd just never encountered it before I started upgrading client computers to SP3, so I assumed it was something new. I never had trouble with the download page, or the installation. But now you're making me think I'm misremembering because I seem to remember seeing Genuine Advantage in a bundle of M$ updates.

The machine I'm talking about was new and the OS was preinstalled by Dell.

This is not the first issue I've had with Dell in re M$.

To tell you the truth, I never had much luck with Windows 2000. I tried to install it and use it on a rig I built myself back in 2004. Even though XP was already available, and quite polished - I thought I wanted to have some experience with 2K (already had XP on a different PC). Basically from day 1 the machine had issues - it would freeze, reboot, crash with IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL and a number of such nice things. I will never know if it was faulty hardware, or some hardware/OS incompatibility, as I ended up taking the computer back to the shop, replacing the motherboard, the CPU and the power supply, and installing XP on it.

Win 98 (or to be more accurate, 98 SE), I still run to this date on the old K6-2 rig, and it runs pretty well. I understood that 98SE was a significant improvement in stability - it hardly ever locks up (not that I use it often), although I remember in the past it used to. Then again, it's blatantly incompatible with a lot of newer software, which just doesn't run on it.

About 30% of the time I turn it off, it get stuck at "shutting down screen", and I have to turn it off, but that's no biggie.

What works for me on the only Win98SE system I am still running (Gateway desktop) is to log out of Windows, then at the sign-on screen give it the 3-finger salute (CTRL-ALT-DEL) and click on the Shut Down button. In my experience this resulted in a much better chance that the system would indeed shut off instead of getting hung (95% success rate).

As far as 2000 goes, I'm not running it all that much any more. I still have two or three 600-series systems that I use from time to time. All the other systems are XP or W7.

Yeah WGA doesn't apply to Windows Server 2003 and XP Pro x64 Edition, don't know why, but XP Pro x64 is based on Server 2003 so that's why it won't work on XP x64.


For XP, WGA is update KB905474 and is downloaded as a "critical update" so it downloads automatically when updating Windows. Sneaky I think, as far as I'm concerned, WGA is not "cirtical" to anybody but Microsoft. The average user won't care if their copy of Windows is genuine or not, only Microsoft will. I'm not advocating piracy by saying this, I'm saying it's only an "advantage" to Microsoft and rather a "disadvantage" to everybody else who has to put up with it.


IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL often points to bad drivers, usually graphics drivers or SATA controllers or things like that.

I only used 2000 on unit (army) issued machines. It was good, but i didn't have it for long as the army went to XP rather quickly.

98SE is another matter. I used the same T22 from Feb 2003 until Jan 2009 with 98SE on it. I still have it and cloned the disk to an 80GB unit , and also cloned it to a better T22 (with SXGA+) and just need to get the SXGA+ drivers to work (and find them because i don't think i have them!) I still prefer it for older games like the SSI General series, but i don't use it for the internet anymore. That original T22 went around the world with me a few times to some really crappy places, and it still works great.

Yup, the machine regularly hangs at shutdown - mostly with long term browser sessions though, and it never hurt the HDD. If anyone can tell me how to shut off the automatic glacier speed scandisk (actually disk doctor on my machine) after a shutdown hang, that would help.

But its still better than the blinking cursor i am getting with these T30s...

I got and installed Norton Utilities 2000 (still have the original CDs) and that allows me to keep the thing tuned up, with its registry editor, Norton "Speed Disk", disk doctor, etc. Those all worked great, and Symantec's XP and later products frankly suck compared with the Norton's system utilities 2000, or whatever it was called. I also got the last version of PowerQuest Partition Magic, v 8.0 and that works great on W98SE machines. As an old school DOS 2.1 thru 6.3 veteran, I can dig out and fix anything on these old machines.

The best thing i found for XP is something called Tune Up Utilities 11 (I think). It's registry clean is user friendly, and you can use the parts of it that you want and not bother with the rest. I had tried iolo system commander, but hate that company's insistence of constantly going out over the internet to "validate" the install. This was especially bad over in afghan when i had to start the machine and THEN activate the internet connection. That program essentially de-activated itself on me. I killed it off but still get annoying emails from them.

I think i have W2000 restore CDs for the T22, but haven't tried one out, i like W98 SE on the T22s and XP on the T23s and T30s.

XP SP3 - you can not get to it via windows update unless you install the WGA "update". That's microsoft for you. I'm still trying to find the SP3 CD but since I use all Thinkpads that originated from a factory build, it wasn't an issue for me.

this thread was a fun read. I didn't answer my question on my blinking cursor issue, but it was informative.

Note sure if this is entirely what you're looking for but this is what I used to turn off 98's disk scanning http://support.microsoft.com/kb/152404


I recommend CCleaner myself, it's free and does the same sort of thing (registry scans/fixes, disk clean-ups etc), check it out here http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner the company also have a disk defragmenter caleld Defraggler which is also free and works well IIRC. You've got to be careful with these registry cleaning programs by the way, some are misleading, but TuneUP Utilities is all right I think and CCleaner is definitely fine.


The first update for Windows XP you have to download and install is WGA. Amazes me how the first update Microsoft offers for Vista and 7 isn't WGA (or WAT for 7), but you do eventually get WGA/WAT updates, but they're not checked IIRC, so you don't have to download and install them. If you download the SP3 exe and run that you shouldn't need WGA installed I don't think.

Thanks, A31. I'll look into cccleaner. Free is always better, but i will admit tune up utilities is nicely put together, and you can tell it NOT to do specific or grouped registry "clean" actions. It can also de-frag the registry - seems to only need to do this once because every time i checked afterwards, it said not needed.

I found this forum after almost 18 years of using Thinkpads, so while i have a lot of self discovered knowledge, the amount of info to be found here is amazing.