godel.chen

I recommend the CrystalDiskInfo for diagnostic purpose. Manufacturer-specific disk tools can be more closely deciding your hard disk problem, you can find them in Hiren's CD, too. Good luck. MOD EDIT: Please do NOT mention warez on here anymore. One and only warning. Please read our rules.

Second your idea on the start menu. However, i would like to say it's above how some people like their start menus. Software industrial would never be mature if it can't find the "solid kernel", the absolutely necessary components to build-in for long lasting use. How about having two more alphabets for the "improvement" of English language? There are infinite directions in improvement, on almost everything. What's the solid foundation that lasts, needs not to be changed, can be "reliably" built on by other applications, without frequent change? Like the collection of Axioms in mathematics, all other theorems, formulas can be derived from, without changing the whole structure all the time. Microsoft should focus more on the OS itself, and leave GUI to be customizable like X-Window Manager, not monopolize everything. Simplicity is beauty, many IT workers like their desktop simple. Personally i feel rather disappointed on no classic start menu, no matter how many features Windows 7 included. Many of those features i can obtain from third party software developer, so i don't really need them. Microsoft still doesn't understand why many guys won't upgrade. It's more room and liberty to expand your own system through older, less bloated OS, than cut back unnecessary functionaries.

Instead of using Group Policy Editor, you should lower your User account with no password to a lower privilege (i.e. another user group), so it won't have the permission (of administrator) to access some utilities like control panel to change the system settings. Check Control Panel->Users and Passwords->Advanced->Users->"Your User Name"->Member of In a more broad way to view the issue, either you change the user privilege or alter the permission to access a object, both will limit the user to a certain access of that object, which can be a file or folder. You can control the access of reading, writing, ownership...etc, see the security tab of the file.

Screensaver->Power->Advanced Tab, Check "Prompt for password when computer goes off standby"

Endorse this. My mobile phone, Dopod818pro, aka, Qtek S200, HTC prophet...running WM5. Probably can use a lot of help if we got a board for WM OS.

Bloatware is the inevitable evil of software industry. Think about ten years from now, OS may already have been in DirectX 15 or 20, Vista can run like flying at year 2017's computer... Some of those bloatware will become necessary built-in, some simply been dumped. Broader spectrum of accessories together you can bring to your customers, higher chance you will take the market before other vendors. Anyway, Some choices are still at customer's hands. Want to borrow tomorrow's hardware technologies today? Run Win2K on your newly purchased PC. You are using hardware tech 7 years ahead of your software...

Though i am a strong Win2K supporter, since most of those TV or media software uses some XP built-in DLL (Dynamic Link Library) calls, make them OS dependent, so it may not possibly work for win2k. Those DLL make software developer easier to do their job (Instead of writing all the codes, only one system call would do the job), but at the same time make their software tied up to the specific OS, you can consider it's Microsoft's trick to make her customer loyal. Try bypass the version check, if it won't work, maybe some experts on both XP/2K figure out where are those system calls go, and copy those DLL or any stuff to Win2K, is a better and more systematic way to do the job.

Put aside the tweaked XP, along the version back, the remaining options would be Win2K(NT5.0), NT4.0. If you don't need FAT32, Plug&play, DirectX, and some GUI improvements. (Sorry can't recall the exact name of those stuff.) NT 4.0 would be also a great choice. In fact, NT3.0 is the first version of microsoft window NT series. It matured at NT4.0, and at the same time received great acceptance, beat down IBM OS/2 at the business market gradually. As for Win2K, from NT4.0 to NT5.0 (Win2K), it took Micrsoft 5 years to develop and test, and already served on the market for almost 7 years. In my mind, it's still the most reliable and proved OS. Thanks to the hardware development these years, Win2K can fly like an eagle in any recent PC. Unless your PC is really old, like 486 or early P4 with rather limited RAM (NT4.0 runs fast on those models), Win2K is the best choice. With tweak like disable unnecessary services and registry hack, both perfromance and security can be further enhanced. ^___^

Hey, Atomosphere, Newbie's explanation is rather detailed, simple and clear. So probably you would like to use task manager instead. Performance is more often used on server system, that is, it logs your system stress over all computer up time to catch some particular moments that heavy demanding happened, in order to do improvment according to those demands. Open it on the System Monitor tree, right click on the right panel, you will see a pull-down menu, select Add Counters, at Performance Object, choose Page File, you will got two counters, Usage and Usage Peak, apply them, and you will see a time bar sweep across the plot area. Keep it open to see how your swapfile demand over time. This is the traditional way to monitor system performance (Those mature Operating Systems usually got their own built in system monitor like Performance), that's why i mentioned it at first, however, after second thought, task manager can also give a rough number of how your pagefile being used. Like to play safe, so the better suggestion would be to put your pagefile at 1.5 times of your total physical RAM.

In a word, Win2k doesn't use swap file after booting up if you don't start programs at the booting time that exceed your physical RAM capacity. The Microsoft suggestion of swapfile configuration (or default settings) would be 1.5 of the physical RAM you installed. Under your description, unless you got 2GB of RAM, yes, your swapfile is a little bit larger than average setting. Swapfile mainly serves as the backup RAM once your physical RAM runs out, another purpose would be used as a debugging tools to dump the memory (DRAM) into swapfile for engineer to analyze what process caused your computer crash. However, if you are running some video or photo editor and doing big file, then possibly you would like to keep a big swapfile. Go administrative tools -> performance, to see if your computer constantly runs out of memory. Since DRAM module is cheap nowaday, basically i keep the swapfile for further stability. I got 1GB ram, before them used up, normally i simply close the process i don't need. Only in one situation, that is buggy program which has a serious memory leak, quickly consumming my memory, at that situation, swapfile can buy time for me to kill that process before the memory running out and bringing down the whole system. (Memory leak will page to swapfile.) That rarely happens, so why some people simply reduced it to the minimum, 2MB. One more thing, trim your swapfile to 2MB won't speed up your computer, because Win2k rarely use swapfile if you got sufficient DRAM. Good luck, i run Win2K on all of my major jobs, and intend to do so for next several years. ^___^

No feature at all would be no breach to compromise...8) No such thing as "the most secured windows", unless no internet connections, no floppy, remove HD, use only Solid State Disk... How to find a balance is up to the user. Too much focus on security overtaxes the performance. Win2K to me is the best choice of balance between performance and security. Rather light without those redundancy of firewall, GUI of winXP. i use ADSL modem's built-in firewall, plain desktop image. i also built a self-run DVD to disable unnecessary services during installation, replaced IE6 with Firefox, MSN messenger with miranda messenger, so securer than normal win2k. It's still a lot of room for users to fill the security issues, so the answer may not be which windows is safer to run, but how's your over-all hardware setup, software configuration, and how familiar with your OS?

Glad to see people still use OS/2, i was OS/2 user, from OS/2 2.0, 3.0, to 4.0, however, never use OS/2 1.X before. you must be rather senior in computer area...8) Now i am running absolutly in Windows 2000sp4, this is going to be the last version i stay at Microsoft camp. i will find as many open-source replacement software as possible to extend the windows 2000's service life. Firefox to IE7, miranda messenger to msn messenger...

No IE7 for Windows 2000, (Officially announced by MS) however, Firefox seems work fine at my win2k system. The photo loading of Firefox clearly slower than IE6, get you a big X before the photo shows. Not like IE6, freezing up during the launch, and show photos all at once later. Since i intend to stay put at Win2K for next several years, now i am actively seeking replacement. Miranda messenger may be a good replacement to MSN messenger. ^__^

My OS is Windows 2000 sp4, the one i favored with some degree of professional judge (i was MVP), thus no IE7 upgrade available, only IE6. 1. Firefox load slower (than IE6) and not render some pages correctly, but it's alive, and the future if i keep running Win2K. 2. Firefox has more features which i need urgently. Like tab, larger default font size (adjustable). On IE6, MSFN's font size is just too small for me to read...and the slower loading speed is not that much noticeable. 3. My Win2K is kind of a big self-deploy project, with lot of stuff integrated into one DVD, Firefox is easier to integrate into my DVD, along with other open source software, like miranda messenger, no installation needed, just put them in directory. 4. Only at a clean, newly installed Windows system, you can accuse the problem comes from the software. Basically, FF never crashes on my system, however, not exclude some configurations may cause problems. 5. Though every software got it's own weakness, Firefox is external to windows system, intrinsically, safer than IE6/7, which is highly integrated into windows.