Take drivers from XP and transplant them into 2000 installer

[xeons]

Alright this is a crazy idea, but I want to take all the drivers XP supports and transplant them into a Windows 2000 install, because for some reason Windows 2000 can't correctly detect my keyboard on my laptop. It keeps asking for a keyboard type or something and I've tried several times to slipstream all the drivers from xp into 2000 but it's still having issues.

[GrofLuigi]

What is the exact message? I ask this because I suspect it's not related to hardware at all, but to languages (something wrong with the Windows installation). Does it happen on clean Win2000 install?

And welcome to the forum.

GL

[xeons]

Thanks for the welcome, if there is an introduction forum I was too impatient to introduce myself.

I am not getting any errors, when the Win2000 SP4 setup first loads, it says please make sure all the information is correct. For keyboard it says "Unknown" but will not let me change it, simply skips over it if i try to highlight it. Then if I try to continue the setup it says I need to choose a correct keyboard, but I can't... So I'm stuck and cannot continue.

[GrofLuigi]

I'm sorry, I still can't visualise it. Is it the wizard later know as OOBE?

I have never seen anything similar, but it still seems to me it's a language (and keyboard type) problem. Did you integrate SP4 into the original disk? Maybe you used unattended and/or nLite?

GL

[xeons]

No this is one of the blue screens before the UI for the Windows 2000 setup even gets off the ground...

[GrofLuigi]

Hmmmm...

I am not getting any errors, when the Win2000 SP4 setup first loads, it says please make sure all the information is correct. For keyboard it says "Unknown" but will not let me change it, simply skips over it if i try to highlight it. Then if I try to continue the setup it says I need to choose a correct keyboard, but I can't... So I'm stuck and cannot continue.

and

No this is one of the blue screens before the UI for the Windows 2000 setup even gets off the ground...

are unfamiliar to me. I guess it's the same type of screen where you choose partitions, HAL... I have never encountered such an error.

What can I say... double and triple check your source CD isn't modified or corrupted or SP4 inproperly slipstreamed. Again I'll say it looks like there are some mismatched unattended settings, but I'm far from expert on that and I'll leave for others to comment.

Please provide more info for us: post the exact error message, screenshots if you can, inform us whether it's a modified source in any way, hardware info and everything else that can be useful.

GL

[Kelsenellenelvian]

Google "Smart Driver Backup" use it in XP and grab the drivers you wish to use.

Add those drivers in using nLite and pray that they aren't XP and above only (They shouldn't be though).

[xeons]

Here is what I'm seeing...

I'll try to get a clean Windows 2000 Pro ISO and re-slipstreaming the SP4 and not have any unattended settings. Anyone know the MD5 hash for a clean Windows 2000 Pro CD?

[Colonel O'Neill]

I think it just wants to know how many keys your keyboard has. I am relatively sure it lets you choose a 101-102 key keyboard. Mine never asks me that, but there should be a default or generic option.

Laptop will probably be a PS/2 style.

Edited April 25, 2009 by Colonel O'Neill

[GrofLuigi]

Wow, that's pretty lame of them. Maybe you can try with USB keyboard?

GL

[xeons]

Well I'm almost wondering if this is even worth it...... But I wanted to challenge myself and see if I could get 2000 to run on this laptop.

I already got XP64 to run on it and they said it wasn't possible, I did it.... So I thought.....I wonder how fast 2000 would run on this! Let's do this!

[Colonel O'Neill]

Try a VM install of the same disc. See if it asks that question. What choices does it give you instead of Unknown?

[fdv]

I have a little bit of experience running Windows 2000 and forcing it to bend to my will.

What's the laptop? I want technical specs.

There are indeed XP drivers that make kernel calls to API's that 2k don't got. But that's not very many.

Forcing keyboard settings: this requires you to edit TXTSETUP.INF*. I should keep some "how to edit TXTSETUP" text ready to paste because it's long... bleh.

Anyway before I go into how to do this, let me know the laptop model and URL for tech specs, and if possible the driver file that XP used (if you know).

*Or some other INF that is called from inside TXTSETUP. You'll have to mod some hardware detection strings. It CAN be done elegantly, but will take some time.

You might want to click on the link in my sig, if it's still linked, because other than IE I also go into details on several system files that will probably help you out.