Tommy

I have no idea how many Mafia fans roam this board, but I'd definitely like to post this for anyone who may be trying to figure out how to get it running on Windows 2000 since there is no documentation out there that I can find. This is definitely possible. First, don't even try the Steam version, it's a lost cause from the very beginning since Steam doesn't even support Windows XP anymore, or Vista for that matter. So your only option is for the Retail version (maybe), or the GOG.com version. For the heck of it, since GOG.com was having a sale on Mafia II: The Director's Cut for only $7.99, I decided to purchase and download it. At first it seemed like it was going to work, but then it didn't. It installed without a hitch, didn't even complain that I was running Windows 2000 since even the retail version states that it requires at least Windows XP Service Pack 3. But then trying to run it, it complained about some "exception", you know, those pesky little things that pop up if there's an issue with a dependency. So I decided to fire up Dependency Walker and see what was going on with that. Turns out it was dealing with PhysX, which is also required in order for the game to run. I thought I had a version of PhysX installed but it didn't seem to work, probably too new to actually work but installed at some point. So I dug a little deeper and found an older version of PhysX. I installed PhysX version 9.12.0807 and installed it. After that I fired up the game and to my surprise, it worked! It is completely playable. No more booting into my Windows 7 install which is slow as heck because of all the updates and the fact it's running on an older (15 year old) HDD, so I avoid it at all costs. But now there's no reason to, it'll work perfectly in Windows 2000. Now as far as the vanilla version of Windows 2000, I can't say it would work since I haven't tested it. But I do have Blackwingcat's KernelEx version 3.0a installed (GameGuard version) and ForceWare version 182.50 and the June 2010 DirectX9 dependencies. I certainly hope that this at least helps someone out that is looking to play this awesome (but very short) version of Mafia on their Windows 2000 computer. Purchasing the Director's Cut means that it'll include all the DLCs as well, so no need to download anything else, everything else is just there. The original Mafia states it wants at least Windows XP, but unless anything at all changed, it originally ran on Windows 98 without a hitch, even stating it in the official system requirements. If I recall, it only required a 500MHz processor for the minimum. We sure came far since then.

I totally agree with this! I actually sort of laugh on the whole "doomsday" that is Windows 7. In fact some users on YouTube go so far to say that Windows 7 is dangerous to use, even as of right now. Um, how exactly? It's still fully receiving updates from Microsoft. It's still fully supported by all browser makers except for the fact that IE11 is outdated by today's real standards. So explain this whole doomsday thing to me as long as you have all Windows Updates installed. Windows 10 can be just as vulnerable to attack as long as someone finds an exploit that nobody knows about and uses it to their advantage. There's a song by Joe Nichols called The Impossible, and I honestly think it can apply to operating system software perfectly. "Unsinkable ships sink, unbreakable walls break Sometimes the things you think'll never happen Happen just like that Unbendable steel bends If the fury of the wind is unstoppable I've learned to never underestimate the impossible" When you think you have a bullet proof product, something will come along just to show you how wrong you really are. Windows 98 proved that, Windows 2000 proved that, Windows XP proved that, and anything else will continue to prove it.

Yep, you're right on that one. It didn't even come with USB support at all, none of the versions did that I know of, but I do think unofficial USB drivers exist somewhere.

I really don't know if there's a 3rd party replacement, but I do know for a fact that Windows NT4 lacked a device manager straight from the factory. You literally have to go into the places you want to install drivers to via control panel i.e. sound and multimedia for sound drivers, display for video drivers, etc.

@blackwingcat Thanks for the update! I was wondering if progress had halted on the project or if there were issues. Hopefully you'll be able to figure out what's going on with it.

@blackwingcat So curiosity is killing the cat here. How come hasn't there been any English releases of KernelEx released in quite some time? I keep checking your blog and you have a few newer versions but they're in Japanese. Are those ones just minor updates and don't really add anything new to the table that we don't already have with version 29b?

It seems to be working on my end? I can see all sorts of goodies using that link.

I've used Q4OS many times and quite honestly, it's a great Linux distro. The control panel seems a bit lacking for my liking but you can really configure it to look like Windows. XPQ4 can be downloaded and you can then choose whatever Windows skin you want it to look like such as 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, or 10. The sky is almost the limit but it's a very light OS and I recommend it to anyone who needs a solution for web browsing. I've used many Linux distros and I always seem to return to Q4OS after a while as the other ones either get messed up by me tweaking them or they're just not for me. I love the idea of going to Linux in general and whatnot but it's not always easy to get answers on certain questions. I always feel that the Linux community acts a bit snarky towards new Linux users. If you want a larger userbase, don't chase the newcomers away but help them out when they ask questions. I think some of it has to do with the fact that there are user guides out there for different distros, but at the same time, some people don't always want to read a big, fat manual just to get the answer to something simple. For me, I fit into that group. I'm not stupid when it comes to computing but Linux is still quite foreign to me and command line isn't always my strong point, especially when it is completely different from Windows. Yes, Linux isn't Windows. That's why if you have users who need a little help understanding something, help them, don't mock them. The Q4OS community seems to be a bit more easy going though which is why I think it's a great choice for anyone looking to come off of Windows after your favorite version is unsupported such as XP or 7.

I helped out the cause and installed Windows XP on my laptop. I was using CentOS on it and I ended up messing up Samba so...here I am now on Windows XP. ;)

Oh I know, right! In fact I was saying that myself, Spectrum is way overused in a lot of things and the real question is, why? What is so special about the word Spectrum?

Yep, just be careful because if it sounds too good to be true, most likely it is. There's no way a reputable company would sell Windows 7 keys for $5-$10, not even this late in its life. Heck, even Windows Server products that are out of date run a pretty penny on eBay. I'd say even for Windows 7 Home Premium, a fair price would be about $39.99 for a key only.

I'm much more open to trying out Edge than I am switching to Windows 10. At work we use Windows 7 and because of our outdated web platform, we're FORCED to use IE11 and I hate it. I'd much rather use Firefox myself but compatibility issues prevent this from happening. I've given Windows 10 a few chances and I will not use it on any of my machines and when "doomsday" arrives, I'll just continue using my Windows 2000 and if need be, I'll switch over to Linux as a secondary operating system. I'm still trying to learn it but it's still a big curve for a power user like me. If I'm forced to use Windows 10 at work, then obviously I have no choice, but it has no place in my home. But more on the topic note, I am more open to trying out Edge a bit more. Chromium isn't a bad platform in my opinion although again, I'd rather use Firefox except I'm not that fond of the Quantum platform (isn't Quantum another one of those overused words, like Spectrum?) So on this I'm keeping an open mind, not saying I'd ever switch over to it but I'll at least give Edge a test run.

That's not 100% true. There are many legitimate reasons why someone may need an actual ISO image. It could be a reinstallation or that you lost the original product media. The real problem falls into either: 1. Asking for a cracked version that defeats the need for a product key and/or activation. 2. Providing a product key on the board with the ISO installation media that belongs to you and only you, or another organization that has a special license. Windows 7 works a bit differently than Windows XP VLKs where Windows XP didn't require activation if you had a special VL edition with an approperiate key. Windows 7 on the other hand requires activation even with a VLK and requires activation generally through a KMS server, on or off site. 3. The ISO comes from any other source other than Microsoft's official website/download source. Any other source can cause issues of integrity of the ISO file, or can have the issue of #1 where it could be a cracked version and when we advertise that, we get into trouble. We're not the pirate bay and never will be. If it happens to be a product key issue, then you'd have to contact Microsoft themselves for a solution because we're not allowed to provide any license keys on the forum whatsoever. That's what seriously violates rule 1a-d.

Old version is also a bit friendly with older IE versions so if you have a vanilla version of say Windows 98 or Me, it's more likely to download stuff from it as it is. That is unless they changed it in the past half year.

Makes you miss the days of Windows 2000, before all this activation nonsense. Perhaps product activation is a bit irrelevant these days. It doesn't really stop piracy but instead just causes more headaches for users with valid licenses. The fact that it sounds as though it continuously phones home regardless of activation status is another issue in itself. Once a product is activated, it should no longer have to communicate with the activation server unless hardware drastically changes or you reinstall Windows in which you should be able to backup your activation status by a generated hash from Windows itself by hardware status, BIOS strings, etc. That way you can't port it to other computers but still easily be able to reinstall and reinstate your activation without having to reconnect to the server and possibly having issues doing so. Eh, pipe dreams. Then again, I'm sure someone would devise some sort of activation crack to bypass activation via a saved file for restoration so Microsoft still wouldn't be ahead of the piracy game. Maybe there isn't an easier answer for Microsoft to cut down on piracy but also make it easier for users not to run into future issues like this. Then again, I wonder how much the company is losing via paying overtime having employees fix the activation issue.

Yep, it's all taken care of. cc333 offered their apology and took the situation in stride. It's not easy reprimanding someone but it's that nasty thing that needs to be done sometimes. Even I was reprimanded on other forums when I was a youngster to the point I was almost temporarily banned. So I appreciate the understanding and if anyone else has anything to add to this thread's actual purpose, have at it!

Please do not discuss politics here, it's strictly against forum rules and has nothing to do with the topic at hand. 2.b Topics devoted to political or religious debate, unless technology related, are prohibited. MSFN is a technology forum and both political and religious debates have caused many problems and distractions in the past. Political or religious links in signatures or polite, courteous comments in non-political or non-religious topics are allowed, but we cannot allow any topics in which the sole purpose is to debate political or religious issues. Next comment out of line and I'm locking this thread so please keep it clean. Thanks.

Welcome to MSFN! We're happy to have you here! :)

Well, I guess I could be considered one of the green men. Although we also have red men that can come out and do even more than us green men can do.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-Black-15-6-15-f233wm-Laptop-PC-with-Intel-Celeron-N3050-Processor-4GB-Memory-500GB-Hard-Drive-and-Windows-10-Home/46429969 That's what it is! Did someone change the title of this or did I say 1233 because all along I have been searching f233 and not 1233. Been quite a long week...

I saw that a few said a BIOS update and of course I'm generally not too concerned with doing that but since it's not my machine, I'd like to make sure that I exhaust other possibilities before I explore actually updating the BIOS. Then again, it's a lot less dangerous to do it these days than it was 20 years ago. As for some of the other chat up above, I haven't tried anything special as far as installation goes except for enabling legacy mode. I know that there's a non-changable entry that says something to the effect of "loaded OS" and it says Win10 which is how it came from the factory obviously. (Heh, I remember when I wanted to downgrade a Windows XP machine from HP to Windows 98, which I did and it was much easier than doing this!) I had a look at a few videos but some of them I didn't bother listening too much into only because they had a decent amount of downvotes and sometimes I don't always have the time to sit there and listen carefully before I have company so to speak. But when I get the chance, I'm going to check out all these links and see what I can dig up. I've never been one to just give up so I'd like to explore other options to make this work.

So I'm working on my girlfriend's laptop. I installed an SSD in it because it came with a wimpy 5400rpm hard drive. It came preinstalled with Windows 10 and we'd like to install Windows 7 on it. We're not even concerned with the drivers at the moment as it seems some people have had success in getting stuff to work but when I go to load setup, I get an error saying the BIOS isn't fully ACPI compatible. We did install Kubuntu on it for the time being and it works quite well but I'm really wondering what is going on with this. I'm not very familiar with UEFI setup programs but I did set it to legacy support which it says for Windows XP, Vista, and 7. I tried Windows XP and it gave me the same results. The setup program is so stripped down though that there isn't a whole lot to change. Anyone else try doing this on anything similar and at least got Windows to install?

I'd recommend just grabbing one of the recent HF_SLIP packages from tomasz86's website and making an ISO of it and then just installing blackwingcat's patches over it after reinstallation, that's how I do it when I reinstall Windows 2000. It's not that much of a process afterwards. But there seems to be a bug unless it was fixed in some of the recent Extended Core releases so if you use dual monitors, it will not function and you'll only be able to utilize one monitor, I think the problem starts with v16a?

Is this the original mspaint that came with 98 or modified like from XP or something? Also, be sure that you're really not running out of memory for things. What do you have running in the background if anything?

That's why you have something called off-site backups. You back up your information and then you store it off-site so in case something does happen to your house or facility, then you can retrieve your backups elsewhere and do a restore. The only time I embrace new technology is when I see a real and practical use for it. Telephones are obviously very practical and as far as I'm concerned, much more useful than this texting nonsense which has in my opinion, degraded the English language to the point where people can't spell words correctly or know the differences between lose or loose, yeah, double O is not "losing weight" but rather "my doorknob is loose and I better tighten it up". Jaclaz is also correct, you don't have complete full control over your data. You might be able to read/write and delete at your own will but so does the hosting provider and the host has even more rights than you do. I don't trust my stuff to the so called cloud either. It's the same as people who use these programs on the cell phones because if you send in a picture of your receipt, then you'll get money back from them and hey, who doesn't want free money just for shopping? But rather it's a very clever and also practical marketing ploy so that data companies don't have to physically collect data from you but rather you're willingly providing it to them and they pay a fraction of the cost as traditional methods. You're doing the hard work for them and then you're served with advertisements because of your purchases. People are so gullible. :) Then again, companies like that take advantage of people who click next, next, next, next, agree? YES!, install. People don't take time to read that stuff and instead just go ahead and go for it. It's really even the same with credit cards. You have protection to an extent but if you get your number stolen, you're taken for a ride and someone, somewhere, has to eat the cost of whatever happens because of it. Traditional currency is completely safe until you lose it (or is it loose? ) or is stolen off you or your home physically. Just because some id*** says it's newer and better doesn't always make it so, it's just marketing to gullible people who believe everything is all in their best interest. Yeah MS, kinda like those beta tests you do and somehow you still managed to code in that awful start screen that nobody liked or wanted.