Tommy

I honestly haven't used XP in such a long time. I do still use Windows 2000 as my main machine and never experienced any issues whatsoever. However, since XP is a bit more mainstream, that might be a bit different. I think this whole MS apocalypse was just ridiculous though. It's not like right after the last patch Tuesday, a million exploits were just waiting to be hacked into because they weren't patched. I really don't think XP is any less secure than it was 4-5 years ago. That's just my opinion though.

I knew cleartype wasn't enabled because I never used it and I recognized this issue right away from the past as well. I dunno if this still occurs with new GeForce cards and drivers or not as I haven't used XP in ages and ages.

I'm thinking maybe antialiasing because the default font looks slightly choppy whereas the nVidia font looks nice and smooth, so that's kinda what I'm guessing.

I actually noticed this very same thing years and years ago and with me being a bit OCD on certain things, this really bugged me. nVidia GeForces always did this to me with the drivers installed but if it was just the standard Microsoft driver, it worked just fine. Maybe it's some sort of font smoothing?

Windows 2000 was actually suppose to replace both Windows NT and Windows 98, but that didn't happen. Windows 2000 replaced NT while Me replaced 98. I think that happened for the same reasons a year later that XP came out and there were lots of compatibility problems. Why do you think Application Compatibility was introduced in the first place? Windows XP was a Windows NT kernel OS and on the gold version, many programs for Windows 9x wouldn't run on it or really had to be forced to. In my opinion, it wasn't until Service Pack 1 and especially Service Pack 2 that many of these problems were ironed out and also more XP things were introduced or patches for existing software was produced. I think that's why even though Windows 2000 wasn't so widespread, even though it was and in my opinion, still is, the most stable OS there is. Windows 7 in my opinion is just a hugely patched up and poorly rearranged Windows 2000/XP OS. One of Windows 2000's downfalls is the fact it lacks a wifi connector, so you need to either rely on an adaptors client to connect to wifi or use something like BVRP Connection Lite. That's one of the big reasons many couldn't use the OS today. However, with all the unofficial updates and patches by the members of this community, it has really prolonged the life of Windows 2000 and I still use it to this day, although it's getting a bit harder in some areas. The worst part seems to be video editing and using software that utilizes DirectX10+, which luckily blackwingcat does include a DirectX10 stub in his kernel extension project which does help a lot, there are still some versions of software that using his tool, no matter how hard you force, it just will refuse to install at all saying that you need Vista or higher to run. But I myself would certainly agree with the OP, Windows 2000 had the best potential of all the Windows OSs and I think Windows 10 is still going to be garbage. I do not like all this online integration AT ALL. It was bad enough with Windows XP activation....but with so much of the web going into Windows 10, and even in 8.1....one does wonder, why is it being so forced? Out of all Windows users, how many truly utilize that sort of capability? Or are they just putting it in because they can? Is there a reason you still can't use a web browser to do all your online activities like you could in the past? Oh, so you can retain your settings on all computers with Windows 10 that you log into.....BIG DEAL! I'll stick to my non-big brother version of Windows, thank you very much. I will use Windows 2000 until I can't anymore, then it's on to Linux.

I haven't tried screen capture, just video capture, which actually works quite good.

Okay, so I've gotten D3DGear to work on my fresh install of Windows 2000, here's what I did. Installed your extended kernel project version Windows2000-KB935839-v24cG-x86-ENU (with the GameGuard fix) (also using older version for specific reasons) I made sure DirectX 10 stub was installed. I then downloaded these files from dll-files.com. dxgi.dll, d3d10_1.dll, d3d10_1core.dll which are all oversion 6.0.6001.18000. Works just fine!

I believe I used your latest kernel extension with the DirectX 10 stub and I downloaded one of those dll files from the internet. I had it working perfectly until the evaluation time ran out.

I'm putting this here since it's extremely specific to Windows 2000. My trial expired on my D3DGear software and I really don't want to spend $35 for a license. My question is, is there any software out there that can basically do what D3DGear can do that will actually work on Windows 2000. Many of the alternatives that I found will not work, even some that will work with Windows XP, I cannot install on Windows 2000. What I need is software that I can record gameplay with but will also record from my webcam, similar to Markiplier and other lets play gamers. Any suggestions will be well appreciated.

It's 'essential' that you use a different AV software. lol On a serious note though, I used MSE a bit and honestly, I didn't see how it protected me from much. I'd rather get a few false positives from AVG than nothing at all from MSE as I think with all the time I've used MSE or had clients that used it, it didn't find much of anything if at all in the line of viruses whereas other suites like AVG did.

It looks like standard RAM is 256MB and the max is 512MB. I thought Windows 95 was a bit different than Windows 98+, wasn't it 384MB that caused Windows 95 to have problems or am I remembering that wrong?

What's the exact model and number of the Sony laptop? That might be able to tell us something. 12 years old would be about 2003-2004 so it could have a few issues but nothing that we probably couldn't figure out. As for the fix, I don't think there would be a limit to the actual fix. I had to use the fix on my virtual machine and when I did, it worked just fine after that.

I don't know how they expect this to be mainstream because A:) Not everybody has internet that has a computer B:) Unless they make the internet have 100% uptime with no hiccups or interruptions, it's nothing but a big headache when services go down.

What are the computer specs that you're trying to run Windows 95?

I've attempted to install Microsoft Security Essentials on Windows 2000 as well. I don't think it was WGA that stopped me so much from doing it but it seemed to me that setup would crash or wouldn't finish, even if setting compatibility mode. Just tried version 1, I passed the genuine verification but as soon as it tried installing, then I got a critical stop crash error and it wouldn't proceed any further.

Not really much help, and I've also seen where PCIE doesn't work with Windows 98, but I installed an ATI Radeon X600 PCIE card in a computer with Windows 98 and was able to get the graphics working. I know that for a fact. What happens when you try installed the driver? Does it just say that it can't find any nvidia chipset? Maybe because it's go graphics, it's a bit different? Have you tried forcing the driver to install by doing it the manual way though the device manager and browsing the driver pack for the correct driver?

I'm actually glad you posted that reply. A bit off topic but in regards to what you posted, I have a GeForce 6200 AGP 8X manufactured by PNY and using the nvidia drivers, AGP acceleration is always disabled, I can never get it enabled. Should I try the drivers on the actual CD and see if that fixes anything?

Glad to hear another OoT fan roams the board! I do know my DirectX is up to date, but I haven't installed KernelEx and forced the June 2010 package yet, but I don't know if that would make a difference or not. I'm pretty sure it was with those two cards I had issues in Windows 98. Funny though because Windows 2000+ worked just fine with the latest drivers. So it might be a bit of DirectX issues with the driver itself. If I recall correctly, I didn't have problems with other 3D games, but I haven't done any further testing with those drivers. I may give Glide64 a try. But I guess I'm just more curious than anything as to why this happens. It's usually newer drivers that resolve problems, not create them. But of course we all know that's not always the case. But apparently something clashes with 6x.xx+ with this card and Windows 98. I really wish I could remember if this happened on XP or not, I didn't think so but then again maybe it did and I'm just not remembering correctly. All I remember is one day back in 2005 I managed to get a driver update and so many things in the emulation was all screwed up to the point the game was unplayable. It wasn't just a slight irritation, it was just downright unplayable.

So I know talking about emulators is a bit of a no-no, but what I want to know is something that's been bugging me since the mid 2000s. With certain GeForces (specifically GF4MX4000), why do the older drivers actually work better? Allow me to explain a bit further. A favorite game of mine has always been Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time. I do enjoy playing this game on my computer and I still remember to this day using another older GeForce on Windows 98, I believe it was a GeForce 2 MX400 (both of these are PCI cards) and updating the drivers one day. After the update, all the grass turned completely black and textureless. There were also a few other models that became colorless along with the fairy texture being all messed up as well. Reverting back to the older driver worked just fine. Fast forward back to now, the same thing occurs but one a different computer. I have this card in a HP Vectra VEi8 (which is not the same one I've been posting about, which was a VLi8), and I have Windows 98 installed on it. In order for my game to work correctly, I need to use Forceware version 53.04. If I use even something like 77.72 which is still relatively older, it still doesn't work properly. Since I found a Forceware version that works correctly, I don't really want to go messing around with it. It seems whatever driver this started in, it was never corrected in any of the releases up until NVidia stopped making Windows 98 drivers all together. So my question is...is there anyone out there in the Windows 98 community that knows exactly why this happens? It's almost always implied that newer drivers are better and almost always corrects problems. That is not the case here. And so there is no confusion, I'm using Project 64 v1.6 with the default Jabo's Direct3D8 1.6 video plugin. I know there are a few alternatives out there but I've always preferred these ones because they're fast and simple to configure and use. But according to the FAQ manual, my videocard should be well beyond the minimum and above recommended video card specs.

Tested and it works! Great job! Now we can finally use Skype on Windows 2000 again.

Hi blackwingcat, Actually, the only glitch in the demo version is that there is eerie background music that is suppose to play and it doesn't, but other than that I think everything works just fine. But it's the remastered demo that doesn't play the background music, doesn't play the phone call at all, and also doesn't play the suicide mouse theme when he comes about. Here's what should happen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSexxSZtCtg There is a glitch where some things stop playing if another track takes over, that is normal. But on my setup, I don't hear any of that. All I get is the PN Mickey jumpscare scream and the switching of cameras and turning off cameras.

Did you play the remastered version? That's the one that's really problematic, at least in my environment. I only hear a few sound effects and that's all in that game. Since I'm a minority, it's hard to have others test it for you since they don't have Windows 2000.

Ooh, how are you tricking the installer into thinking that you're on Vista? I heard that Pale Moon doesn't support XP anymore because they're using a newer SDK from Microsoft or something. Basically I just used the tool included in Blackwingcat's KDW wrapper package. Though he said it's obsolete, I still use it for the tool which you can use to set compatibility for the installer, or you can even change what it displays in the registry and doesn't have any ill effects. Sometimes though I've had to actually use the option to change the registry to a different Windows version because the installer didn't care if I set the version of Windows before clicking install for some reason. I bet it might even work to install Pale Moon on XP. I bet there's no difference in the packaging, except it just looks to see if you're running Vista or higher. Although I noticed Flash 17 with Pale Moon and watching YouTube videos makes it stumble a bit at times on Windows 2000. I haven't tried it on anything else but sometimes I have to right click a few times on the button on the taskbar and it'll unlock itself so I don't know what that is all about. As for Pale Moon not supporting XP. That could be part of it, but on their site it says because Microsoft has discontinued XP support that they have too simply because the OS isn't secure anymore and their goal is to be as secure as possible. If Mozilla still supports XP, why not Pale Moon as well? But I guess it's their prerogative.

I've never warmed up to Vista or 7. I'm not saying they're terrible operating systems but they're just not for me. I feel that there's too much crap bloated under the hood that bogs things down, especially on older installations, while at the same time giving out cool but unnecessary eye candy. Windows 8 on the other hand, I think is terrible. You should never have to install or mod an OS to make it do something older versions could easily do. So unofficial mods aside, out of box it's bad. I do kinda like XP, it was never my favorite but it definitely does what it needs to do and at a pretty good rate. My personal belief was that Service Pack 3 made it bog down just a bit as in my opinion, Service Pack 2 seemed snappier. The problem is that software makers are purposely adding more and more junk to their software that really isn't even that necessary and calling it standard, just so people are forced to upgrade to stuff they really don't have to. Even on Windows NT, as long as you had a PDF viewer and even a basic PDF printer driver installed...what else do you really need in the line of PDF? Adobe Reader basically does the same stuff it did way back when, and maybe it has a few new features that I don't know about since I haven't used it in many years, but it's still not really necessary. The new Vista version of Pale Moon works on Windows 2000. I haven't tried it on the vanilla SP4 version, but with the UURollup, it works just fine as long as you trick the installer into thinking you're on Vista. Their thing though is because XP is no longer secure and their whole goal is speed and security. It's just adding more junk to make other things prematurely obsolete. Take Microsoft Office as another example. How much extra does it really do from say Office 97 or 2000? Yes there will always be new features, but does it really have to be so advanced as to keep it from running on older operating systems? Most of it I'm sure is just to make sure you keep the economy going and keep upgrading, but there are a few problems with that. First off, compatibility, especially for businesses. When you have hundreds of client computers working just the way you need them to, sometimes they cannot upgrade to something without having to change their entire setup. That's not an easy feat. That leads me to another big problem, cost. Not only is it the cost of the operating system licenses, but also the software that needs to be updated to run on the new operating system, and possibly even hardware replacement because it is obsolete on the new operating system. In this struggling economy, this isn't even near feasible for most companies. It might not make as much of an impact on the normal consumer as a lot of them just buy new computers every few years anyway. But as we get into Core i7 times, and even from the Core 2 times, computer replacement really isn't always a necessity because most computers truly could last a decade now unless of course the web finds new ways to spam up websites to bring your computer down which is happening to a lot of Pentium 3 and early Pentium 4 computers now. Offline, they can be awesome, but the web slows it right down. But I'm really branching too far out now. All I can really say to sum everything up is that you should use what works for you, not what the computer industry and standards tell you to use. As long as it serves its purpose for you, then stay with it.

Wow, thanks for the information! It's kinda worth it for me because I'm more of the classic junky of computers. I'd rather try forcing something to work on an older PC than something that's almost guaranteed to work on today's fast computers. I like the challenge!