Tommy

That's definitely no fun! I'd be seen as the over-qualified one of course, since I have many tech skills and several certifications.

Office 2007 Standard only includes Word, Excel, PointPoint, and possibly Outlook from what I'm seeing. I actually thought it was only in Small Business and upwards to be honest. I personally think there are too many flavors of Office. It should be condensed down to Student and Teacher, Standard/Small Business, and Professional. So much easier to keep track of.

Go into Safe Mode via F8 before 98 starts to boot. *If* you do get into safe mode, right click my computer on the desktop, go to properties. Click on the Performance tab. Click on File System. Click on the troubleshooting tab. Check "disable all 32-bit protected mode disk drivers" click ok and then reboot into normal mode. See if setup will finish properly now. If it does, you might just need Rloew's SATA patch. My current project computer even with using IDE and an IDE hard drive, it still required the SATA patch to work perfectly. But try that and see if you get anywhere because the third part of setup does act strange if there's a problem with the disk drivers.

We need to start getting this list a bit more updated. Can anyone who uses Windows 2000 test the ongoing support list in the first post of this thread and find out what works and what doesn't work? If support has ended, we need to have that documented. I know Skype for a fact is pretty much dead in the water as far as support. But since I use a patched environment, it would be helpful if anyone who doesn't run KernelEx or has an extra installation that is SP4 UR1 vanilla could test some of those programs and report their statuses so we can update the ongoing support list for 2016.

Bumping to add information I've recently tested Office 2007 Professional Plus in my Windows 2000 environment and it mostly works just fine except for a few things that have been documented I believe by blackwingcat. Outlook 2007 is broken. It mostly works but it cannot send email from my test, which basically renders it useless right there. I also believe that Publisher 2007 crashes as well, but I cannot remember what the conditions were offhand. Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007 seem to work just fine. I didn't give Access a whirl since I don't think many people here care about it. So for people that either require or at least could use Office 2007 on Windows 2000, it is possible, as long as you don't need Outlook or Publisher. I'm not sure if anyone has found a way around those issues or not.

I can't resist bringing this one back up. Oh lordy, the fun I have calling store support when I'm at work. So, basically I call level one support who knows probably less than I do and they tell you things to do that you've either already tried before calling or you know for a fact are a big waste of time. I had one of my user roles accidentally erased earlier this week and our work email is tied into those roles. So my email was taken down and it's actually a big part of my job. So I was able to regain access to my email address when I got my user role back, but all my email was gone, it was a clean mailbox. So here's where it got fun. Any reputable company backs up their data on a regular basis. I work for a multi-billion dollar company so I figured they absolutely must do this. I call up store support and get the ITS department (ITS is a very big slap in your face type of term for them to use for most of their people). I tell the woman what happened and asked if my email could be restored from a backup. She tells me "Wellllll, probably not.....but I will forward it on to level 2 support." Probably not? Really? I mean....REALLY? So something finds a vulnerability in your system and either a good portion or even the entire exchange server gets taken down and wiped out, and you don't have a backup in place to restore it? Haha. Anyway, later in the day I get a call from Level 2 support. This is a guy who knows what he's talking about. He said that it was actually no problem and in fact my "old" email account was still there so he was able to relink it back to my system login and bam, all was settled. How some people get into ITS in the first place is beyond me.... Then just yesterday, I had to laugh because well...my internet stopped working. I have the combination phone/internet modem through my cable company. I get on the phone and of course you get the machine to walk you through "steps" that people like us already have taken. And the one step was...please unplug your modem! So....I kind of laugh and I'm like, "Okay! :D" I unplug it and surprise surprise, the woman machine disappears! You mean they couldn't detect I had a phone/internet modem and doing something dumb like that would happen? Eh, I already tried rebooting both to begin with, I know the standard procedures. So to save me the headache, I just took my modem in and had them swap it for a new one. Although at first I had a bit of activation trouble, I got it activated and all is well. Sometimes I always felt like the dumb one not to have all the answers...but I wonder...how do these people on the other end feel when the only things they probably know is that a computer mouse doesn't eat cheese because it's not alive.

Does the second part actually finish or does it get hung up while detecting hardware?

To help clean up the massive amount of pinned threads, I'm following suit similar to a thread in the Windows 98 forum and making a thread for links to important articles. These are articles for tried and true Windows 2000 users and to help keep their systems running as optimally as possible. This thread is a work in progress and can always be added to later for reference. If anyone can think of anything of value that should go here, please feel free to PM me. Windows 2000 KernelEx (HOT!) - A patch of system files made and maintained by user blackwingcat. This is a must have for anyone who wants to use Windows 2000 past EoL support from Microsoft. KDW / FCWIN2K - Depreciated, but still useful in certain situations, especially for setting program compatibility for .exe and .msi files. Created by blackwingcat. Final program versions for Win2K - An ongoing list of final program versions that continue to run on Windows 2000 without unofficial mods such as KernelEx Anti-virus for Windows 2000 - A thread to discuss anti-virus software available to Windows 2000 without KernelEx of UURollup List of web browsers working with Windows 2000 - Discussions on what browsers work with patched and unpatched versions of Windows 2000 USB patches for post Windows 2000 SP4 UR1 - List of files that may help improve USB function even though not highly pushed out by Microsoft Using Win2k on multi-core processor - How to do it correctly PE Tool for creating patches Faster Startup - Experiments with NTLDR to make Windows 2000 boot faster Skype - How to use Skype with Windows 2000 (Page 3/Post #58 is particularly helpful to get Skype 5.5 working with the new Microsoft version limitation check) Office 2007 - How to run it under Windows 2000 SP4 (Requires at least KernelEx/UURollup v11 daily and FCWIN2K to set compatibility in setup.exe) Running Windows 2000 on modern motherboards - USB issues - Modern motherboards can be an issue for Windows 2000, Bluebolt explains how to get around USB issues. (Important Hotstream for Windows 2000) Windows 2000 Unofficial Service Pack 5.2 - Project led by tomasz86, updated only occasionally as daily unofficial rollups until main service pack is compiled. Unofficial update rollups are comprised of blackwingcat KernelEx files as well as a few other modded files by tomasz86. Windows NT4 Visual Update 3 - Make Windows NT4 feel more like XP/Vista Windows Server 2003 Convert from Server to Desktop - How to make Windows Server 2003 work and feel like a traditional Windows XP style workstation Non-specific/Multi-platform 32-Bit / 4GB addressing issue - Information on why Windows 32-bit doesn't address full 4GBs of RAM SmoothText - WildBill's answer to ClearType for Windows 2000/NT4 Creating Memory Dumps

Have you actually succeeded in getting Windows 98 installed on this machine at all? Or at you still stuck at setup?

The SATA patch is a must for full, proper functionality. Even with an IDE connector and set to IDE mode, it's still treated like SATA for some odd reason. So I needed that for sure. The RAM patch is only optional but since I want to use more than 1GB of RAM, I'm using it as well. What's strange is because I'm almost sure I tested Windows 98 on Revision 1.0 and it worked just fine without the SATA patch, so what they did to change the board between Revision 1.0 and 2.0, I really don't know. But I think some major improvements were made to this board, especially because there are different types of capacitors on this one as opposed to the last one. Maybe it was right on the line of the improved ones. I know of course that has nothing to do with SATA/IDE operation, but I do think there might've been some major changes that weren't really cosmetic, but deep within the board itself since except for the few new caps and located in different spots, the boards are visually identical.

The only chipset drivers I used were LoneCrusader's.

I'll do that, even if it doesn't matter, I'd actually have a completed list in device manager. Once I really "finish" this machine, I'll PM you with the details to add it to the Windows 98 hall of fame.

They don't seem so bad on Windows 98 that I can see, but on Windows 2000...they could be a nightmare. Instead I'd use the BVRP Connection Lite utility instead of the Linksys utility. So now I'm thinking if and when funds exist, a PCI-Express NVidia GeForce 6800 256MB, would that work with the latest available drivers? I'm using modded drivers that I found somewhere but can't remember where now, it says it's driver version 82.69 and supports up to 8xxx, but I think 6800 would well serve my needs, especially if PCI-Express. Does anyone know if I should be just good to go with that?

I downloaded the one from the Gigabyte site, it says it's suppose to be for Windows 98, but it will not install and I can't seem to extract the inf file for it. But it's not a big deal since like I said, I'm using wireless since I don't want to run a wire to my bedroom. This board I think is just plain HD audio, it's the azailia codec. I have seen though where there are boards that can switch between the two but I don't think this one can since it's just auto or disabled, those are the only two options to set. But of course like I said, my Sound Blaster has me covered in the sound department so onboard sound is no big deal to me. I just ordered a Pentium Dual Core for this machine, it's the E2220 which I think is the fastest Pentium for it. I wanted a bit more clock speed but I didn't want to spend a lot for the actual processor nor did I want one that sucks 95 watts of power so I think this will be a good balance. It's a bit over a 500MHz speed boost which will help a little bit. But so far this machine is running great, I'm liking it!

NVidia GeForce 6200 USB Works fine out of the box Linksys WUSB54G Creative SoundBlaster Audigy I'm good! All is up and working just fine.

Major Update: The SATA patch was needed. Both drives work perfectly under 32-bit protected mode. Both drives didn't even need reconfiguring, they just work now like they're suppose to. So if anyone is having problems with their machines like this..the SATA patch may just be what you need. It's well worth the investment. What's nice is I can even use SATA drives themselves now (:

For most of the test, I've left the DVD drive disconnected and it made no difference as far as how the hard drive itself operated and is detected within Windows.

I think they're both set to Cable Select. Not an ideal situation to have them on the same channel but for as much as I use the DVD drive, it really doesn't matter if it's on the same channel or not.

I'm going to try that now. In the meantime, it does not detect my DVD drive at all, despite it being a true IDE device. Edit: NOIDE isn't found in the registry.

Let's hope so!! I know for a fact now the problem is the Dual IDE channels. I tried the Windows Me drivers which I believe may have worked on my ASRock board, but it's been too long and I can't remember. But those didn't fix the issue either. It boots just fine in safe mode, in fact it'll boot into regular mode just fine as well as long as I remove those controllers. But if I don't, it soft-locks when booting. But if I do, then it goes into regular mode and prompts me to install the drivers. If I ignore the prompts, the machine hard locks, but if I install the drivers, I can proceed as normal until the next boot and then it starts over again. As for what you mentioned, I planned on using Wireless lan, a separate video card, and separate audio card. So if I can get past this crap, I should be good to go. Edit: So being the dinkhead that I am, I just thought about disabling 32-bit protected mode drivers via the troubleshooting tab. Now at least I do not have to keep removing those drivers to get into normal mode. This is not what I'm after, but it's a very temporary workaround at best.

I already flashed it to the latest possible version, so I think it's at F8f right now.

Haha, I know. XD Anyway, a slight update. I removed the IDE controllers and I was then able to finish setup. So I managed to get just a bit further than I did before. It's complaining about vnetbios.vxd right now, which I am investigating. But I will get this working if it kills me.

So, this is a really fun motherboard that I bought and actually didn't realize that the one I own with a bloated capacitor is its ancestor of the same model, except Rev 1.0. I thought for sure I got Windows 98 on there with no problems at all. So let me start out where I'm having issues. It's got 1 IDE port on it, fine. Well, not fine actually. Even with IDE mode completely enabled, Oak CD-ROM driver cannot even find the actual drive. So great, must be some sort of SATA interface regardless. So, I managed to get Windows 98 mostly installed via flash drive and now is where I'm having issues. The one error I got dealt with the IDE driver where one device is using 32-bit mode and the other is using compatibility mode. Of course it didn't say which one...but once it would restart both would use compatibility mode. Fine. Well, I got to the third part of setup and it asked me to put the time in. As soon as I hit okay after making my selections, screen goes blank and it basically just freezes up. So now is where I'm sort of stuck. I'm still working on it and waiting for something to happen as I'm typing this up, but while reading another thread on it, it says check here before resulting to Google because Google isn't your friend when it comes to finding genuine Windows 98 information. So while poking around, I used LoneCrusader's machineX.inf patch and loaded it successfully, to my knowledge anyway. So I'm not sure exactly what is going on right now. I am able to get into safe mode just fine. I'm using a PCI card for video instead of the onboard. I have Rloew's RAM patch installed for precaution. But this is where I'm wondering if maybe the SATA patch is needed. I don't want to just purchase it without knowing if it'll actually fix my problem or not. But considering that the 98 bootup CD isn't recognized while using boot with CD-ROM, I'm guessing that's an issue. Help please?

I might do that. I actually ordered a different motherboard and it's on its way. But I'd still like to examine this board and see what's going on with it. The actual hardware I'm sure is good because it works just fine on another board, so I'm guessing either the BIOS chip *could* be failing, or maybe one of the pins on the board for the CPU is just a bit off. I don't know if the battery is short circuiting or not but something extremely weird is going on because even after I remove it, it takes a lot to get it back up and going again. The battery isn't vertical so I know it's going in the right way, but I have seen those vertical ones before. The motherboard itself is actually quite flimsy and that's one thing a lot of people complained about with this board so even though it might've been somewhat state of the art with features at one point, I think there are boards that were better made. I went with my favorite brand, Gigabyte. If all goes well, I'm praying it'll arrive tomorrow. But once I have this other board out of the case, I will examine it more carefully. I do notice that the northbridge fan is very flaky too so I don't know if it could've overheated at one time and caused *some* damage or what because it's just a fan, really no heatsink at all so I wouldn't say that's out of the realm of possibility either. In fact if it sits for more than a few days, I literally have to stick something in there to make the fan start moving again. So that is one of my bets as well.

Hey, thanks for replying Drugwash. I think there are a few things that I can rule out. The PSU should be fine since I've used it on several other boards and they've worked just fine. That of course doesn't always mean it's fine, but I think it can be ruled out. I didn't think to look at the CPU contacts, so I could start there since it's an easy thing to look at. I don't recall seeing any bad caps but of course there could be something that I can't see easily. But the CPU itself and RAM was used in another board and it worked perfectly fine, but that board has a bloated cap unfortunately and even though it works, it needs replacing. I'm really thinking something with the BIOS could be up, that or something controlling it. But it just seems so weird that putting in a battery makes it no longer bootable. And the funny thing is...I never get beeps out of it, at all. I was able to get a little key tick sound out of the speaker, but that's it. Since it's an award bios, usually those will at least emit one beep when you first boot the computer. Not this one though.... :/