Why this Diehard Win2K user finally switched to WinXP

[Syclone0044]

I recently built a Core i5 760 2.8GHz quad-core 4GB system to replace my aging P4 HT 2.6GHz 2GB system and I had every intention of running Windows 2000 on it. I hate to see computer resources squandered with bloated, wasteful, and inefficient code. I also despise DRM like "Mandatory Activation".

I spent weeks working out all the kinks in my new Windows 2000 system and it wasn't easy. But with BlackWingCat's help for the driver files and the Win2K Pro 4 CPU-unlock patch, I got it working.

I have:

MSI P55-CD53 motherboard

4GB Mushkin DDR3 1600mhz RAM.

Gigabyte 512MB GeForce 9800 GT PCI-E card. (using BlackWingCat's nVidia forceware drivers)

The Problems with Win2K that made me finally give up and switch to Windows XP

The primary issue was that Win2K seemed to have some trouble scheduling the multiple CPU cores. When I would play a CPU-intensive fullscreen Flash game like FarmVille in Google Chrome, the mouse would hiccup and stop responding smoothly and the game animations would run wildly. The CPU cores would be loaded unevenly and the game was unplayable. In Windows XP and Windows 7, this worked perfectly and the game was very responsive.

Also, Intel SpeedStep did not work properly under Win2K. The CPU VCore would not drop <1.0v to save energy and cool the CPU, like it does under WinXP and Win7. As a result my CPU temperatures were quite a bit warmer under Win2K. Intel Turbo Boost also did not seem to increase the CPU MHz as high under Win2K as it did under WinXP.

Worse, I had major troubles with Standby and Hibernate. Hibernate wouldnt work most of the time (but sometimes it would). Instead it would act like it was going to Hibernate, and then kick back to the Desktop without explaining why it failed to Hibernate.

Standby was worse - it would standby but upon Resume, the CPU would be loading 100% and the CPU temps would get very hot. It seemed that Win2K had a bug that upon Resume, the SMP CPUs would not be receiving HLT instructions. Manually running RightMark HLT program solved the issue, but then RightMark was always consuming "100% CPU", which made TaskManager and Process Explorer's results appear useless and confusing. Hardly a solution I could live with.

Finally, the most recent Win32k.sys security update from Microsoft doesn't have Debug symbols and calling Microsoft was a dead end. Without those Symbols, I cannot run DHEAPMON, a Microsoft tool I used to monitor my Desktop Heap. This is necessary because I tend to open an extreme amount of windows and tasks simultaneously, and when the Desktop Heap reaches full capacity, apps begin to misbehave and crash as they cannot allocate additional desktop heap resources.

So I bit the bullet and installed my retail Windows XP Pro.

Immediately I was shocked at how much faster it boots that Win2K, and it is a dream to use the Standby mode at night (which fully shuts off the PC fans - silent) and be able to Resume in 2 seconds. Also Hibernate is at least 4 times faster due to XP using HD DMA (Win2K doesn't).

Plus it's really nice to be able to upgrade and install any software without having to spend hours of my time researching unsupported hacks and methods to trick the software into working under Windows 2000.

Windows 2000 served me well but it was time to say goodbye.

[jaclaz]

Windows 2000 served me well but it was time to say goodbye.

Traitor!

(Just kidding )

It is mostly the same reasons that drove me from NT 4.00 to Win2k a few years ago: lack of new hardware support (but I still have a couple of internal servers running NT4 and going allright.

I guess we are doomed.

Obviously within a few hours someone will post that using XP is crazy and that you should immediately update to Vista or 7

jaclaz

[Phenomic]

You don't have to switch, you can use 2K and XP and Vista and Vista Light, though Linux is more fun these days. I've found Win2000 works perfectly on all NVIDIA chipset mobos, including the latest like MSI NF980-G65 and Asus M4N98TD EVO... which is the best performing rig I've ever tried. You can download all drivers in one package from NVIDIA and it works out-of-the-box.

[Browncoat]

You don't have to switch, you can use 2K and XP and Vista and Vista Light, though Linux is more fun these days. I've found Win2000 works perfectly on all NVIDIA chipset mobos, including the latest like MSI NF980-G65 and Asus M4N98TD EVO... which is the best performing rig I've ever tried. You can download all drivers in one package from NVIDIA and it works out-of-the-box.

That's why I'm an nVidia fan too. Linux is more fun but I'm having trouble getting Amarok to play all my .wav files from W2k drives. Even logged in as root,I'm getting 'access denied' when I try to copy some of those files {for customizing the Desktop} from W2k into /shares/sounds or /music but I'll ask other Mandy users for help in that.

[vinifera]

has anoyne tried using ReactOS lately ?

I personaly hate where vista and anything above went

seeing only XP/srv2003 being last good OS-es come from MS

I consider jump to ReactOS when XP's loses its support and by then I hope they will release the "everyday use" version

[Browncoat]

has anoyne tried using ReactOS lately ?

I consider jump to ReactOS when XP's loses its support and by then I hope they will release the "everyday use" version

I never heard of this before your post, maybe my answer to everything, especially if it runs my

MDP-130s and the Sighnup Shield password manager!

From a first look I'd be willing to pay for a copy but only one CD/DVD to run in all my machines.

EDIT Oct14: They have been around awhile but how to use without NTFS? I still don't get it.

I guess the only thing to do is to join their forum board and read up on it.

EDIT Oct 16: Having looked at it, that OS is not quite ready for prime time, so I'll stick to

Linux for extended on-line activities and boot back to W2k for the TV tuners and other legacy stuff!

I dropped Yahoo Launchcast in favour of GotRadio? As of February,I needed to go through a proxy to get

Yahoo as CBS cut it off for out-of-USA but GotRadio? comes in fine on both Linux and W2k, as long as those Mozilla

plug-ins keep coming!

Edited October 16, 2010 by Browncoat

[cluberti]

They've been around for a long time, with varying degrees of success with their versions. It's an interesting project though.

[erpdude8]

It is mostly the same reasons that drove me from NT 4.00 to Win2k a few years ago: lack of new hardware support (but I still have a couple of internal servers running NT4 and going allright.

and NT4 had lack of TRUE plug & play support (don't tell me about the plug & play service in NT; I already know about that and it's lame compared to the plug & play features of Win2k & higher), which means more difficult times to resolve resource conflicts and setting/configuring devices in NT4. Also, NT4 lacked a built-in defrag tool; Microsoft corrected that big mistake with Win2000 and higher by including a defrag program.

I had been forced to convert my aunt's Win2k computer to WinXP earlier this year in order to use IE7. The company she works for requires minimum of IE7 to access its web site.

But the computer my next door neighbor has will remain having Win2000.

Edited October 14, 2010 by erpdude8

[Browncoat]

I had been forced to convert my aunt's Win2k computer to WinXP earlier this year in order to use IE7. The company she works for requires minimum of IE7 to access its web site.

It would have been easier to simply go Mozilla[eg. Firefox/Seamonkey] and use the "Default User Agent" utility/add-on.

Konqueror and the Gnome version have it built-in.

As for the O.P.,I wouldn't try to build anything more than a dual core for W2k because I was warned about the P4 and didn't

listen{performance wise-despite the higher clock speeds} day to day handling wasn't much better than a P3! There is so much crap now that drives the CPU to 100% but I wanted[at the time] to use the MDP-130 in this workstation to play DVDs with.

You'll have to go to the AV Science forum to see what I'm talking about.

Query: What is different about BWC's nVidia drivers, as opposed to the ones from nVidia?

It is my understanding that they're all backward compatible. Of my two currently running machines the AMD based HTPC has a 7300GT in it,so I wasn't worried about it but the 8600GTS in this I was worried [the certification for DX10] yet the driver I loaded works fine for W2k.

Edited October 16, 2010 by Browncoat

[cluberti]

It would have been easier to simply go Mozilla[eg. Firefox/Seamonkey] and use the "Default User Agent" utility/add-on.

Generally, if apps require a specific version of IE, they probably are using ActiveX controls. I know of quite a few Citrix and SAP applications that have started requiring IE7 due to their design as well, and you need at least that version of IE to even visit the site and load the control - this can be done in IETab in another browser, of course, but you still need at least IE7 installed for the site to work properly in that IE hosted tab. Thus making XP a requirement anyway.

[Lambda]

... the Win2K Pro 4 CPU-unlock patch ...

Dear Cracks, can anybody help me, to find Blackwingcats Win2K Pro CPU-unlock patch? I've searched http://blog.livedoor.jp/blackwingcat/ and http://w2k.flxsrv.org/ since two hours, without success.

Regards,

Markus

[tomasz86]

Here you go:

http://blog.livedoor.jp/blackwingcat/archives/1163868.html

You set the number of cores in the registry.

You might need to replace these files manually if you have unofficial KB981852 installed...

Edited September 11, 2011 by tomasz86

[neo2k]

It's really a shame the time has come that Windows 2000 is getting useless. I got rid of my older hardware

and since I now have a Quadcore only, Windows 2000 is not an option any more.

When I got my first TFT in 2006 I had to switch to XP because the lack of Cleartype in 2k was really raping

my eyes. But I never got used to XP's look, and although you could switch to Classic Look you still had those

Teletubby icons..

Well, long story short, 2000 is the most awesome OS ever built and I will never forget those days when I

was using it. Gosh, this sounds nerdy.. Anyway, it was those days in 2001 when the internet was not something

god **** everybody used. Not yet.

NOSTALGIA ATTACK OVER

[Syclone0044]

Neo2k, I'm with you 100%. XP has been serving me well the past year for sure, but I still miss the efficiency and compact code of windows 2000.

I absolutely despise Microsoft .Net Framework and any other bloated, recklessly coded trash that MS has produced in the last 10 years. I fear that computers have become so powerful that optimization and efficiency is becoming somewhat of a lost art. For shame.

[neo2k]

Yeah, Windows is bloated as hell. I mean common, you need like 20GB for a clean Win7 installation.

Hard drives getting bigger / cheaper doesn't mean Windows should come with as many useless stuff as possible.

What really bugs me is that Microsoft rigorously forces people into switching to Vista / 7 by making things

like DirectX 10 / 11 only available on those platforms.

I know update support can't be maintained forever, but at least they could maintain compatibility throughout

their own products.

P.S.:

You know what I REALLY miss since 2000? Explorer Web View: http://www.compu-seite.de/bilder/win2000pro/windowsexplorer.gif

I think I like that blue cloudish one from 98 better, but you get the idea.

Edited October 13, 2011 by neo2k