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KernelEx for 2000?


jim2029

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I don't think porting XP's Prefetcher is a very easy task (compared to the already difficult task of tacking on XP API's to 2000). Not to sound like an expert or anything (I'm not. :whistle: ), porting the way an OS handles file writes requires a complete taking over of the kernel's functionality, making it do what you want it to do.

I do know of a program made by the Russian company MDO called eBoostr, it apparently adds Vista SuperFetch and ReadyBoost functionality to XP. Works with 2000 too.

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Thanks for eBoostr!

It looks interesting, as I have quite a good CF card (Adata 266x 8Go) and my Ram is limited to 512MB by the i815ep. However, my HD is excellent (J8160) and installing W2k on this CF didn't improve booting, so the improvement isn't certain.

I fear eBoostr changes W2k in depth, and it also puts some documents on the CF, so I'll be very cautious with it and test it on a new W2k installation on a spare disk.

Edited by pointertovoid
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About these Xp-to-2k converters:

Would it be any wise to run a security software on them?

I know this is a curious idea... But I like my Comodo firewall, whose v2.4 had good test results when it was new. Meanwhile, v2.4 is older and several malwares get through. Comodo's newer v3 is again tested as excellent but requires Xp...

Just for information: I had BitDefender before, but it was destroyed (= made completely transparent) by C-Dilla as I told BitDef to stop C-Dilla. C-Dilla came with the Encyclopaedia Universalis. Don't buy Universalis nor BitDef.

Then I had Jetico, nice piece of software, but a bit complicated, and which requires tuning for each user. Comodo is better in these two aspects and gets better test results. And is as well multilingual and free.

So: completely foolish? Technically impossible? Or just a bit risky, but not more than sticking to v2.4?

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I've just tried eBoostr on W2k and the result is less than perfect. In short: W2k doesn't boot to the end any more, it restarts the machine at the point where services are launched. End of the experiment on my side.

The W2k I used was minimal as I made a new installation on a separate disk and disconnected my useful disk and installation. Software is a bit like explosives: the more you use it, the less confidence you have.

So this W2k was just Hfslip-streamed with patches and improvements available in December 2007 - I used the same Cd that successfully installed and repaired W2k on three machines including this one, and other options were as easy as possible: only the administrator session, one single volume, Windows in C:\Winnt, programs in C:\Program Files and documents in C:\Documents and Settings.

The Flash memory is a quick Adata 266x 8GB, the fastest I've had up to now (measured with Atto), in a high quality CF-Pata adapter. This configuration can launch W2k a little bit faster than my J8160 does. I wish it were fixed.

One more observation: apparently, eBoostr doesn't change much Windows (and probably not at all), it seems to add just a service and a program. This is excellent for stability, but... As W2k has already spent 2/3 of its boot time before launching the services, eBoostr can't cut much boot time - unless you have heavy squatters in your start operations, like Acrobat's and Open Office's so-called "accelerators", but against that MsConfig is more useful than any add-on.

Edited by pointertovoid
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eBoostr's early version 3 betas caused a few hassles using anything but RAM cache.

True, booting up doesn't speed up as much... But then again, I use Hibernate. It keeps my ancient P3 waking up almost as fast as a C2D cold boot. I wonder if theres a way to speed up 2000's Hibernate. I heard XP uses a different compression algorithm...

Anyways, I doubt using a kernel extender to emulate functions on 2000 to support antivirus is very wise. In my view, it tries to protect loopholes that may not exist in 2000 using XP API's and possibly undocumented/highly different system hooks. Therefore it's probably really easy to cause BSOD's. From personal experience, I haven't had any viruses on a 2000 system without any protection. Now I use KIS7 just to be safe. It has a few problems involving eating up random cpu cycles but I fixed it somehow.

If only we could get Windows Live Messenger 8 to properly work with all the bells and whistles... :( I miss offline messages.

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I tried out eBoostr on my Windows 2000 system, and it installed and worked fine.

Whether it produced any worthwhile performance improvements I couldn't say, as I didn't leave it installed long enough to find out!

The problem was that I wanted it to use some of my under-utilised RAM (I have 4GB fitted) so I was setting up a 1GB cache in system RAM.

All well and good, but unfortunately this resulted in eBoostr setting up a 1GB eBoostr.dat file on my D: drive, which is where Windows 2000 is installed (dual boot system.)

This would have been fine, except that D: is only a 4GB partition, and this was filling the drive!

I have e-mailed them to see if there's any way of getting the program to put that file on a different drive, or whether it has to go on the drive where the OS system files are. I haven't had any reply as yet.

I was mainly interested in whether eBoostr would speed up my boot time, which is still too slow for my liking, but it sounds as if eBoostr doesn't actually improve that much anyway on Windows 2000.

:)

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About the firewall for W2k using an Xp Api adapter:

meanwhile I've heard of PC Tools Firewall Plus. Its v5 from end of January 2009 is multilingual, free, pretends to run on W2k and gets very good results at http://www.matousec.com/projects/firewall-...nge/results.php . Available there http://www.pctools.com , I still haven't tried. But if it's easy to tune and rather silent and lightweight, it will be a better follow-up to my Comodo 2.4 than risking a security software on an Xp adapter.

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Has somebody run Google Chrome on W2k using KernelEx or a similar adapter?

I've tried the dirty tricks with the older Google Chrome, but it didn't work very well and may have damaged small parts on W2k.

And is Google Chrome better (faster) that Firefox3 or Opera?

Thanks!

Edited by pointertovoid
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