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I'm having a very hard time trying to install windows 2000 on modern hardware, specifically on a sandy bridge system at the moment ( hp probook 6460b with 4 GB memory installed and latest bios ). I have tried so many different approaches / methods, from disabling serial / parallel ports in bios, disabling other devices like fingerprint device, trying in ide mode vs ahci, limiting to 1 core, disabling hyperthreading, etc, but i just cant get any sort of method to work with default acpi install, or even manually choosing any of the acpi related entries from the F5 menu. Because ACPI is needed for many functions like gpu driver ( intel hd 3000, etc ), installing in standard pc is therefore not a choice. All systems have same issue, they get stuck at the "setup is starting windows 2000" part. The specific media i tried was a relatively minimal modifed 2K SP4 iso with ahci / sata drivers preloaded + acpi.sys 6921 integrated as referenced in some guides, though i didn't delete the "usbhub20.sys" file in the installation contents. Other iso i tried is the one from here "https://w2k.skver.space/isos/YSI_Win2kPro_R3.3_DEV-TEST-processr.iso", and "https://archive.org/details/windows2000-hfslip-english-finished" with filename "HFSLIP120825_2K_20241225_13h08m", all end up with same hang.

It complained on a missing export relating to unicode when trying to start, i forgot the name, i think it was called something like "ChangeDisplaySettingsExW". but from what chatgpt is telling me, there are more dependency issues with this particular version of gom player if trying to run on windows 95, so it may be harder to get to work properly than say xnview 2.13.

I have not been able to find any media players that work on windows 95 that support 10 bit h.264 or some of the more modern codecs, with h.265 likely being too far in scope of what can be modded to get working, as even 98SE cannot use such codec unless you install those kernelex stub related updates which is already difficult / confusing to do and introduces other problems, so i was hoping that someone can get at least 10 bit h.264 to work, that would be reasonable, but i also specifically would like gom player 2.1.43.5119 to work on windows 95, as it does support 10 bit h.264 and with some modern skins can look really nice with playlist function. If not that, perhaps modify one of the newer ffdshow's that support the codec and use it alongside haali splitter that is already win95 compatible + a compatible media player of choice. as for alternative media players to use with external codecs / system codecs, there are not a whole lot that support windows 95 and have a more modern playlist ui function, the only one i can think of is zoom player, though exact steps to do set it up with codecs is unclear. im also not sure on last / best version of zoom player to use, as i have had issues getting the program to run on windows 95 at any basic level, ( i've tested as old as 5.x and as new as 10.x ), but the program would either not load properly or would throw all sorts of errors, but there's a chance it could be a combination of the testing environment not being set up right, like improper gpu driver / missing those external codecs, etc. there is also tcpmp mod, but that one unfortunately only supports the older h.264 codecs and so it's really only a fallback option at the moment for limited video playback.

i did not paste screenshot as the forum only allows a certain file size, i dont know how to workaround this, that's why i mentioned it in my earlier post, but i also edited that older post so the link should include the file for a few days at least. as for the other responses, we are getting some good progress here, it shows that even on 98SE, one needs kernelex 4.5.2 for xnview 2.13 to work correctly, at least for webp in testing, for windows 95, shows 2 missing depedencies in your screenshot.

apparently webp can be lossy or lossless in the same file, so that part isn't too important for here, but i did upload a sample webp file, as well as a picture of what i mean by the directory part where you can see the thumbnail. if you can, please use the webp file from the easyupload link that i attached and view it in the xnview directory, as well as opening it / selecting it within the program just to know that both work. if the link doesn't work, let me know. i didnt know how to upload the picture here, that's why i included it in the easyupload part. https://limewire.com/d/GVipQ#9miaxwhRQ6

ok i was just hoping someone can test and prove working via screenshot of a sample webp file with your patched version, since that was one of the main reasons i wanted to get the newer xnview version to work. i do not have a windows 95 system to test currently and probably wont for a little while.

no it's ok, you don't need to make a video, i now understand the instructions, but i should still ask, what is the "xnview.exe" file for? it's a bit large in unzipped form, at around 4.9 MB, with package zipped at 1.6 MB, but im still trying to keep file sizes as small as possible. Also, a few more questions - could you show a screenshot of testing a sample webp file in xnview 2.13's directory thumbnail view and / or the file opened to show it's working in the program? Also, is that xnview.exe file you supplied derivative of the full version of xnview 2.13? Just was wondering if it matters if it is or not, since i will be installing the full version.

Maybe im misunderstanding from the screenshot, but is that shell32.dll 4.00.1111 the version your windows 95 pc was using at the time, because isn't latest official version 4.72.3612.1700 for windows 95?

ABCDEFG, can you provide clarity on what your attached file is from your post with screenshot of xnview 2.13 running? I downloaded it and inside appears to be a helper file and a xnview application. What do i do with these?

Also may be relevant, "legacy extender" which helps with compatibility problems with certain applications made with newer versions of visual c++. The thing is, i haven't been able to find a full / installable package, as the one from the website broadly titled as "Legacy Extender for Visual Studio 2005/2008" seems to be only a developer package. The initially searching was about running newer versions of dosbox on windows 95, and when i encountered this line "VS2005 compiled DOSBox *Windows 95 works with LegacyExtender. Fixes InterlockedCompareExchange" from a vogons.org thread, it made me want to search what "legacyextender" was, as the interlockedcompareexchange was specifically the missing dependency from xnview 2.13 / 1.99.x on windows 95.

yes, if you can test "XnView_Classic-1.99.6-win-full.exe", that would be nice.

Have you also tried "XnView_Classic-1.99.6-win-full.exe"? that one still had the relatively modern lossless version of webp.

I was wondering if anyone has been able to get xnview classic 2.13 full version to work properly on windows 95? i do not have a system to test for it, and i had mentioned before a long time ago that xnview 1.82.4 was the last to work on windows 95, however, from what i read later on, the author claimed official support of xnview 2.13 on windows 95 and 98 on a thread from xnview site, even in the release notes i think. the issue is that there's hardly any info on people testing specifically past 1.82.4 on windows 95. the ones that did face problems that couldn't be fixed apparently, something to do with maybe unsupported unicode stuff or other reasons. i've also contacted the developer but they didnt really address my questions completely, and the conversation basically ended prematurely. the reason why i want to use the later versions of xnview is largely because of webp support, though the newer ones also have other added stuff / improvements / bug fixes. i know that irfanview 4.44 supports webp and works on windows 95, but i dont like the ui overall and it has one significant limitation ( the main reason why i dont want to use it ), which is that the zoom in / out part cant be done like how you can in xnview, as it requires you to hold ctrl + mouse scroll in order to do the zooming. it was fixed in 4.50 so that you can scroll by simply using the scroll wheel without holding ctrl, but that version no longer works on windows 95.

i was hoping they can release a version of this that already incorporates most of the important stuff that a user may need to do manually, like relating to security protocols, plugins overall, etc, so that it can be made ready to work for most websites with basic functioning, but unfortunately, whatever is current doesn't do this, and basic websites don't even load correctly ( like pages looking like their cut in half ) and most of the time, they dont load at all because of the security protocol stuff being either missing entirely / unsupported or not set up right, severe font issues with no clear way of fixing them, obscure methods for installing plugins and which ones are necessary or not, and other misc. problems.

any information on near future support of supermium for windows 2000? the project has been going on for a while, but the only people who've gotten it work on windows 2000 is unofficially with unrealistic system configurations ( like the later versions of extended kernel that aren't so feasible to set up / get working ) and other custom settings, which even then doesn't allow it work well. i was hoping best case scenario that it can run on "regular" windows 2000 sp4 systems that have only say, update rollup 1 and mostly minimal official updates. it doesn't need perfect web browser functionality but anything noticeably better than retrozilla 2.3 / firefox versions older than 52 / kmeleon 76 browsers, as those ones have almost no decent functionality in this day and age, you know, even the most basic websites are like cut in half like google / fonts all messed up, security protocols that prevent most websites from even loading, and trying to fix these is just not feasible or do-able. i'd be happy if supermium could work decently if requiring only at most "Windows2000-UURollup-v11-d20141130-x86-ENU", which is one of the older extended kernels that sometimes get confused as something else but in fact is still an extended kernel variation, it's just that the newer ones ( apparently mostly done by blackwingcat ) become significantly different and cause more problems than necessary, unless installing in a very specific way, which may not be feasible as i mentioned earlier, and even then, the system may still not function well, so it's a lot of trial and error that may not work out well in the end. i wont be messing with going that route.

ok so apparently shell32.dll 4.72.3612.1700 is last official version for windows 95 osr 2.x. but what about for explorer.exe? im guessing since ie 4.01 sp2 includes explorer.exe 4.72.3612.1700, then that would also be last official version as well? also can you answer on whether dencorso's manually patched explorer.exe 4.72.3612.1700 ( which i linked in my earlier post that turns explorer.exe version into 4.72.3612.1705 ) also works on windows 95 osr 2.x and / or is necessary for any fixes? it appears to be mainly if only for the 256 color tray icon fix?

Just so i'm trying to get the schezo thumbnail ext. 1.03 application to work on my 98SE system, but to also work on all windows 9x versions / 2k. the program apparently is to support thumbnail viewing while also having web view enabled at the same time, at least according to one of the posts below, there's a picture showing it, but it's unclear if it's 98SE, 2K / me, etc. I installed it, and then adding various .spi susie plugins i found that were compiled in either c++ 6.0 or visual studio 2003, i tested 2 different kinds of jpeg versions from these packages and none of them work. Xnview 1.82.4 still shows as the icon. not associating xnview just brings back the microsoft default icon when you have no associated 3rd party program, so it doesn't appear that it's related to xnview conflict per say. There's hardly any information on this program and the susie plugins, how to properly install them, etc. I copy pasted below how i got to this point before doing more experimenting: find thumbnail shell extension for windows 9x and even 2k ( Thumbnail Extensions 1.03 By Schezo ): initial searching - other post ( dont download the later link in this thread, it contains malware ! ) - we must install plug ins though for any non text file thumbnail previews to be shown: https://www.digitalpad.co.jp/~takechin/download.html#ifjpeg some newer ones from here... - https://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~DS8H-WTNB/software/index.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com note - iftwic.spi is needed for reading .ani files, and may relate to gdi+, which could possibly work on windows 95, provided you download an old enough version of both? lzr.spi - gif related plug in, may or may not be needed on windows 95 or later, since we have the newer ones that supposedly replace the older one?

The thread i linked earlier does not exclusively pertain to windows 95, which is largely why i made this post as im trying to get information from those who may have experimented and / or have more front end knowledge on these things. I should also mention that it's not just shell32.dll that i want to get more information on, but also explorer.exe. According to the microsoft article below, the 4.72 line of shell32.dll would get installed on windows 95 IF using ie 4.01 sp2 and installing via "windows desktop update" route ( shell extension ), which in this case, would specifically install shell32.dll 4.72.3612.1700. it's unclear if newer versions for this line may only be supported on windows 98FE/SE or newer, but not windows 95, at least not officially? As for explorer.exe, it is mainly two questions, what is the latest that can get installed officially on windows 95 and two, whether dencorso's manual patching method of explorer.exe 4.72.3612.1700 ( for 256 color tray icon fix + any other possible bug fixes ) would also work on windows 95 without problems?..., which i suspect if 1st question is yes, then question two would also be yes as well? I do not have a system to test at the moment for windows 95, but i was working with one earlier just recently and installed ie 4.01 sp2, and it was much more responsive than windows 98SE was, and didnt have strange / unusual bugs. The thing is, i didnt check shell32.dll / explorer.exe versions at the time on the 95 system, since it wasn't something i knew about to do. for 98SE, it's a long story, but i did a lot of modification to it, specifically with the unofficial service pack 2.1a that apparently was giving me a lot of problems, at least i suspect it was related to explorer.exe and / or shell32.dll, which i still couldn't get perfectly working after using different versions. Ideally, if i can get clarification for both win95 and 98 in relation to the shell32.dll / explorer.exe questions, that would be best. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/shell/versions

I'm having some trouble confirming what is the last official shell32.dll version for windows 95 osr 2.x systems. The reason why i ask is because i want to ensure most stable operation, although i will be using a patched explorer.exe mentioned via below thread ( dencorso's method ), but for shell32.dll, i want to be sure im first finding the latest official before any discussion is made on using an unofficial one. I have downloaded a package referenced via mdgx, with windows 95 in the title, but windows 95 is not mentioned anywhere in the microsoft article, which is for q313829. downloading the file and extracting shows shel95.dll 4.72.3812.600, however, this is not the same as shell32.dll, and although the updated shel95.dll may be needed, i want to be sure im also getting the most up to date shell32.dll file. interestingly, the inf specifies shell32.dll under "[SedGen.Sys95]" which i presume to be for windows 95, but no such shell32.dll file exists in the package. indirect / vague source of a user who says one can update to shell32.dll 4.72.3812.600 on windows 95: https://fivetechsupport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2668 dencorso's method for explorer.exe patched with 256 color tray icon fix ( original ie 4.01 sp2's version of explorer.exe version 4.72.3612.1700 apparently is buggy ):

Update: So i was able to get rid of the outdated driver related error that would happen when a usb drive was plugged in by doing the following - rename "wmdmps.dll" and "wmpnssci.dll" to "wmdmps.dll.bak" and "wmpnssci.dll.bak", and the driver error went away. the suggestion was given by chatgpt. for the two files, one of them resides in the program folder and the other one is in system32. Additionally i was able to get "0.65.0.47-git" version of lavfilters to work in replacement of the lavfilters.ax file that is used in combined community codec package 2015-10-18, which uses 0.65.0.05. Simply copy the newer "lavsplitter.ax" from the "0.65.0.47-git" package (which you can get online) into the "Filters" folder of the installed cccP program files folder, as well as into the "LAVFilters" folder, but the "lavsplitter.ax" file that resides in this folder is case sensitive and must read exactly "LAVSplitter.ax", otherwise, it will not work. 0.66 version of lavfilters were not able to work on my system that has "Windows2000-UURollup-v11-d20141130-x86-ENU" installed.

does limitmem.sys limit memory inside windows as well, or is it only for dos mode / dos applications? like i said before, i want the best of both worlds, also for maxphypsage, why is it a problem to use with rloew's patch? i ask because even when installing rloew's patchmem, i still have to use "maxphyspage=48000" or else the system doesn't operate correctly and / or may have boot problems, etc. It has been a long time since i've tested this, so it's not clear why this is the case, considering i've seen people use more than 1.128 GB of ram without issue with rloew's patchmem, but in my case, even with minfilecache/maxfilecache set to at least 1/24 of system ram made available / installed, it doesn't change the problems. and it appears that i only gotten a relatively modest improvement with rloew's patchmem, in terms of being able to use up to 1.128 GB of available system memory, as opposed to only 1 GB on unpatched systems, specifically with using "maxphyspage=40000". for more than 1.128 GB, i still had to use "maxphyspage=48000", as the ram installed was higher than that, and thus caused problems. The only thing i can see here is that limitmem.sys appears to do some kind of dos related functions that "maxphyspage" does not do, but still limits max available ram once booting into windows, so this appears to be why you are saying to use it instead of "maxphyspage" settings? however, would this then allow me to set a limit past 1.128 GB or is the 1.128 GB limit not fixed by the limitmem.sys being loaded in config.sys? i couldn't find "burmem" from my searching, and "xmsres" was too broad, so we are left with the other stuff.

So i've been researching this for a quite a bit and its difficult to determine what settings are most optimal, correct or compatible for being able to maximize the best of both worlds for dos functioning and windows 9x functioning overall, particularly as it relates to available windows system memory, etc. without getting too detailed, i have came up with a particular config.sys to use that assumes correct vcache settings, rloew's patchmem /m from beforehand. i want to know if these settings are acceptable for being able to limit memory for dos apps either in dos mode / inside windows but also maximum available system ram inside windows, so that i can use up to 1.5 GB in this example ( maxphyspage=60000 ), and use the following below as well in config.sys at the very top of the file, assuming no other himem.sys entries are present ( i would be using XMGR.sys renamed to himem.sys to allow better functions and be able to access safe mode with more than 512 MB of ram ). i want to know if himem.sys will conflict with himemx2.exe, since himemx2.exe is already being loaded, and so what happens if a dos app calls for himem.sys, wouldn't that conflict with himemx2.exe? the only other option is to simply use the updated himem.sys instead, but for whatever reason im latching on with himemx2.exe to be used in config.sys ). i tried to research on what exactly are the differences between them but couldn't really get a sufficient explanation, but apparently both are supposed to improve areas relating to EMS / XMS, ram management overall ( to use more than 1.128 GB available windows system ram ) which is one of my primary goals, as it doesn't work with just rloew's ram patch alone. i am using "max=62" to ensure more compatibility for dos apps, but i still want to use maxphyspage=60000, and so i was wondering if they conflict? DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEMX2.EXE /MAX=62 /NUMHANDLES=64 /TESTMEM:OFF DOS=HIGH,UMB DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE RAM 15253 FRAME=E000

Can anyone test / confirm last version of Combined Community Codec Pack that works on windows 95? according to the archive below, a late 2005 version ( 2005-11-07 ) mentions windows 95, however, i have not been able to find this anywhere on the internet, so i was hoping maybe someone can upload that if possible. I was going to use this alongside wmp 7.0 or 7.1 ( unofficially ) + L3C.exe ( mp3 plug in for wmp ), all of which have been untested so far. version 2006-07-28 mentions the pack will only install if directx 9.0 or later is present on the system, but still mentions windows 95 lower in the page: https://web.archive.org/web/20061013144045/http://www.cccp-project.net/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page windows 95 mentioned for version 2005-11-07: https://web.archive.org/web/20060523013259/http://www.cccp-project.net/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

I wanted to create a separate thread for this, but i thought i could just bump it here. There is some discussions on the issues of getting usb to work on more modern motherboards, but a lot of them are either too scattered / do not give enough info, etc. the real issue is that BWC's chipset inf packages, at least the one downloaded from his site "infinst_autol6" do not properly install usb drivers and controllers, even on officially supported chipsets like ich9-m for windows 2000, so this gives forth to some questions. If windows 2000 SP4 already supports usb 2.0/1.1/1.0 ( as long as the controllers have them ), then why does bwc's packages include such usb drivers, if either one, the basic ones are all that are needed for basic function and two, there has been reports of the drivers not installing correctly? I am not sure where i read, someone can correct me if im wrong, but i think it has to do with some type of issue with the driver files originally not providing the right entries for usb completely, which then causes it to not install right, which the solution is to install using the "Standard pci to usb controller" or whatever its called. Ok, thats understandable and i have done the fix on a laptop since touchpad still worked, other method could be fixed by going into safe mode in worst case scenario (although i never tested this myself), but why hasn't there been any updated inf package that corrects all of this, so that if installing on any system up to even usb 3.0, for this problem to not occur and not have to manually fix again? to make it more complicated, bwc has many different versions on his WLU site for inf packages, with some vague instructions to use for either vanilla windows 2000 or extended kernel ones, but this leaves out various important questions, like for example, is it ok to install the vanilla windows 2000 method but later on install extended kernel, and which exact extended kernel is he mentioning, an older one, a certain newer version, etc? I would really like to keep using BWC's unofficial inf package "infinst_autol6" as it comes with a setup installer method and it ensures sata and ahci driver do not get overridden by an older version that may break the system ( the system already gets installed via his slipstreamed sata ahci driver 7.6.0.1011 + windows 2000 sp4 iso ), but his inf package appears to have one major i've encountered so far, the usb problem, so i guess i was requesting to see if someone maybe can modify the package so that it correctly installs usb on all systems that use it. additionally, i have utilized a method in my iso setup files mentioned by another member in the post below, basically it is modifying a certain file to ensure usb identifies correctly, however, im not sure if it actually is fixing anything or doing anything important:

ok, so i was able to get mp3 files to play now in wmp11 using an unofficial codec package "L3C MP3 Codec" with filename of "L3C.exe" that i downloaded via wayback machine from MDGx site, while still keeping the unofficial latest release of combined community codec package, however, i still have the outdated driver related error. any way to fix this easily? im told disabling hardware acceleration in wmp settings may sometimes get rid of this error, but that of course will result in significantly reduced performance. Also the driver error only happens when playing audio or video files from any given location when a usb drive is attached. when no usb drives are attached, there is no error. is there perhaps a registry tweak or something to disable these errors?