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Unofficial SP 5.2 for Microsoft Windows 2000 (WIP)


tomasz86

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bluebolt

 

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

I had read the post before and afterwards attempted three repairs based on this info, however on a second reading I saw some comments I may have completely misunderstood.

 

The post began with a graphics card installation which I realized can sometimes cause audio issues. Therefore my first repair was to confirm the onboard video chip had no audio functionality and to make sure, I uninstalled each device and used the preferred reinstall sequence Chipsets - UAA - Audio - and lastly video.

The second repair was to re-register the files by running regsvr32 commands on all the exe's and dll's.

 

After reinstalling the sound drivers, the third repair attempt was to simply reinstall the most recent v11 daily (Jan 2014) which I have used and genuinely enjoyed for months. Unfortunately nothing changed.

 

Now I'm confused.... It looks like part 3 should have been to uninstall Windows2000-UURollup-v11-d20140103-x86-ENU, migrate back to the older  v11 weekly, reinstall and test for functional sound, then install v11 daily (Jan 2014).

 

BTW, I posted this question as a topic in the main Windows 2000 forum: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/172216-help-with-onboard-sound-failures-win2k-uur/ and don't want to be guilty of double posting. No answers as of yet but I did post a crude solution today which temporarily fixed the problem on one of the PC's..

Edited by UberGeek451
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  • 1 month later...

It's been long time since the last posting. I'm really sorry for not being able to spend as much time as I'd like to on this project :( I've finally managed to prepare a new version of my website.
 
You can check the new version under
 
http://windows2000.tk/new

Most important changes:

  • Huge update to the Updates Lists. It's been reorganised - the number of lists have been reduced, additional details for several updates have been added, invalid information has been corrected. I've added a few new updates (including the newest cumulative time zone update from August 2014). I have also decided to remove all unofficial updates from the lists. I'm still interested in unofficial updates for Windows 2000 but there were just too many updates to maintain. I'm going to offer the unofficial files later in a much better package (just in case - you can find the majority of the old unofficial updates in the download Archive in Windows2000/Unofficial/Experimental). You should check the changelog under http://windows2000.tk/new/updates for a full list of changes to the Updates Lists.
  • General visual overhaul. While I'm not a fan of useless bells and whistles, I do think that a website should look decent, and the old layout definitely wasn't the prettiest in the world. I hope the new one is better and more usable. In short - the fonts are now bigger, the colour scheme should provide better readability and everything should be easier to browse in general. The website should also be much more accessible - keyboard and touch navigation has been vastly improved (before a lot of information was available only on mouse hover) and icons used in the Updates Lists are actual images now (not background images inserted through CSS like before).
  • Better performance. The site should actually perform better than before because I got rid of jQuery and cleaned the HTML greatly. At the moment there is only one tiny JavaScript used for smooth scrolling (helps a lot when jumping through the Updates Lists) and nothing more. I could make it load even faster by combining the images into sprites, etc. but this would only hurt semantics and accessibility so I'm not going to do it.

That's it for now. I'm planning to leave the new version this way for 1-2 weeks and then, if everything is all right, replace the current one with it. Please let me know if you think there's something you think I should improve :)

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My initial impression looking over the new site this morning is that I really like the look of it, and it is organized well.  The arrangement's logical, readable, and mercifully free of clutter -- well-suited to its Windows 2000 subject matter.

 

I look forward to checking it out more extensively.  Thanks, tomasz86, looks great.  Nice and clean.

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Thank you for the comments, and I'm glad that you like it!

Some content is still missing (specifically the full changelog for the Updates Lists) but I'm going to add it as soon as possible. There are also some issues in the Android AOSP browser and Internet Explorer. Especially in IE8 there's a nasty bug where the browser goes into the compatibility view when you click on that Arabic text.

I should probably mention it somewhere on the site, but you can view details of each icon used on the Updates Lists such as hotfix, Server only or country flags icons. The details will pop up either on mouse hover, when navigating using the TAB key or when clicking/tapping on each of the icons.

Oh, and please let me know if there are either any language mistakes on the site or if there's anything unclear that could be written better.

Edited by tomasz86
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  • 3 weeks later...

In post #605 blackwingcat mentions that he has generated packages for HFSlip that support:

 

"XP Compatible USB Driver + general USB 3.0 Drivers + iPhone/iPad Driver"

 

This along with other posts from blackwingcat lead me to believe that he has managed to

get USB 3.0 driver support working under W2K. I am trying to move from tape drives to

USB 3.0 hard disks as a backup system and want to take advantage of this support.

 

My problem is that I do not want to install the entire package of updates, only the things

needed to add USB 3.0 support.

 

Can anyone tell me which .CAB files are needed or what method can be used to control

the items that get installed? I have managed to download and assemble his .CAB files.

 

Thanks, morestuff (Steve)

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  • 1 month later...
  • 3 weeks later...

I've added two new official updates to the HFSLIP Updates Lists on my website.

 

I've also prepared a new daily release of UURollup-v11. All files from the newest BWC kernel are included in it, together with some other fixes.

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Would you have any documentation to show what was fixed? I'm just curious.

There exists no written documentation on UURollup (especially the daily releases).

 

You can use software like KDiff3 to compare different releases. Just unpack them and compare the two folders.

 

In case of the newest daily release, I just updated all the BlackWingCat's files to the newest versions and disabled the previously added Cryptographic Service (as he did in his kernel), and also updated the HOSTS file and Process Explorer.

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Would you have any documentation to show what was fixed? I'm just curious.

There exists no written documentation on UURollup (especially the daily releases).

 

You can use software like KDiff3 to compare different releases. Just unpack them and compare the two folders.

 

In case of the newest daily release, I just updated all the BlackWingCat's files to the newest versions and disabled the previously added Cryptographic Service (as he did in his kernel), and also updated the HOSTS file and Process Explorer.

 

There's a bit of a problem with it because both your UURollup and Blackwingcat's latest kernel update causes me to lose my dual monitor configuration. Removing the pack restores the capability. I already posted this problem in his thread though so I'm still waiting for his response.

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There's a bit of a problem with it because both your UURollup and Blackwingcat's latest kernel update causes me to lose my dual monitor configuration. Removing the pack restores the capability. I already posted this problem in his thread though so I'm still waiting for his response.

 

 

A new daily release is ready, with files from the newest BWC kernel included. I hope the issue has been fixed.

 

I've also uploaded an updated version of the .NET Framework combined installer (available in the Download Archive under Windows/Windows2000/Unofficial/USP5/.NETFramework).

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I've been using unofficially updated Windows 2000 for a while now, and I just wanted to report a couple of issues to the right person. First off: Thank you. Not just to tomasz86, but to everyone involved with keeping Windows 2000 as a usable everyday operating system. The unofficial support provided at the cost of nothing just shows how dedicated you all are. Now with that out of the way...

 

The first issue I've been having regards Microsoft Office 2007. I installed it via BlackWingCat's Chrome Tool. It installs fine, and almost everything seems to work. My issue is with Outlook. I use Outlook as my primary email client on Windows. I've noticed that I can be writing an email in outlook and it will just freeze out of nowhere. It doesn't become unresponsive and it doesn't outright crash. It just freezes, and it won't let me copy the written text, which can be quite frustrating. I really haven't looked into whether or not the same issue occurs on Windows XP or newer with Outlook 2007, due to the fact that I use Office 2010 now. As a side note: Office 2010 on Windows 2000 would be awesome!

 

Another issue is with adding a second email account within outlook. I use Hotmail with the Outlook Connector, and I tried adding my GMail account as a MAPI account, but it won't add it. I can't recall the exact error that occurs after entering my account credentials and server information. I'll try and get the details on this problem later.

 

Another problem is with uninstalling Office 2007. The uninstallation process always seems to leave some error messages and such when it is completed. When I uninstall office 2007, I set the compatible registry using the Chrome Tool, just like I would when installing it. I've wanted to downgrade my Windows 2000 computers to Office 2003, but I have no confidence that the uninstallation procedure will leave Windows 2000 in a re-usable state. Usually the error messages produced by the uninstallation procedure involve dynamic link libraries.

 

So those problems involve Office 2007. Office 2007 isn't the most reliable office suite in the world, so I'm not sure if and how these problems can be fixed.

 

__________________

 

Now for the Windows related problems. For a while I used the January 2014 daily release of Unofficial Update Rollup and had very little issue. The only issue I had was with the installer. It produced an error stating that: "c:\winnt\system32\shell32.dll is open or in use by another application", and then prompted me to close running applications and retry or cancel.

 

UUR_Shell32dll_Error.png

 

Of course, that error message was from the Nov. 8th release (of which I'll elaborate on shortly). With the January 2014 release, the work-around was to kill the explorer process in task manager and then choose "Retry". It has also been reported by another unofficial update user that closing iTunes will free up shell32.dll.

 

This error message is also present in both the Nov. 8th and Nov. 14th release of Unofficial Update Rollup. With those releases, there is no need to kill the explorer process. All that is needed (in my case at least) is to close the folder window that the updater is present in. Because I keep the updates on my file server, I navigate to the installer and run it from the GUI.

 

__________________

 

The next issue involves VMware player and its VMware Tools. Ever since installing the Nov. 8th release of Unofficial Update Rollup in multiple test virtual machines, they have all produced an error at startup stating that VMware Tools has crashed. That's the error you see below.

 

VMware_Tools_Error_Windows_2000_UUR.png

 

Followed by:

 

VMware_Tools_Error_Windows_2000_UUR_2.pn

 

Installing the Nov. 14th release has not served to rectify this crashing problem. I've also tried re-installing VMware Tools. It seems to make no difference. Could this be another problem with the latest incarnation of the extended kernel? Or maybe even some bug with my own installs. These errors do occur on multiple test virtual machines, as mentioned previously.

 

By the way. How should a newer release of the Unofficial Update Rollup be installed? Should the old one be removed first, or should the new one just be installed over top of the old on? I've been doing the latter.

 

__________________

 

I just wanted to put this post together to report some of my issues out of using unofficially updated Windows 2000 for well over 6 months now. This post isn't intended to be bitchy or whiny or a shot at anyone.

Edited by MrMaguire
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@MrMaguire

1. I can't really say anything about Office 2007 since I haven't really used it in Windows 2000. You would have to ask blackwingcat directly about those issues. As far as I remember though, there have always been problems with Outlook 2007. If you want to use a stable Office suite I suggest sticking to Office 2003. LibreOffice also seems to work fine (use the portable version if the standard one's installer doesn't work properly).

2. In case of the shell32.dll thing, normally it should be enough to just close all Windows Explorer windows (check this YT video). It's impossible to make the installer close explorer.exe automatically since the error window pops up before the installation has even started. I'm working on a permanent fix to this problem.

3. I really have no idea about the VMware tools problem :( You'd have to do some testing to find out if it's really UURollup to break it. If yes, then test different versions of it to determine whether it's the newest one to cause the issue.

At the moment I'm updating my website, i.e. adding new updates to and fixing some bugs in the HFSLIP Updates Lists, and also working on the UURollup related content. I'm also testing a new HFSLIP package with all official updates included. A new daily of UURollup-v11 is also ready but it's very experimental.

I don't want to upload anything half-baked though, so I'm going to give myself some time to finish everything. All of these should be ready around next weekend.

Edited by tomasz86
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The first issue I've been having regards Microsoft Office 2007. I installed it via BlackWingCat's Chrome Tool. It installs fine, and almost everything seems to work. My issue is with Outlook. I use Outlook as my primary email client on Windows. I've noticed that I can be writing an email in outlook and it will just freeze out of nowhere. It doesn't become unresponsive and it doesn't outright crash. It just freezes, and it won't let me copy the written text, which can be quite frustrating. I really haven't looked into whether or not the same issue occurs on Windows XP or newer with Outlook 2007, due to the fact that I use Office 2010 now. As a side note: Office 2010 on Windows 2000 would be awesome!

I think Blackwingcat has this listed on his blog at http://blog.livedoor.jp/blackwingcat, I remember Outlook 2007 having issues as well but since I only had the standard edition, I never got to try it out. I did like how Office 2007 has the blue toolbars in it like Office 2003 is suppose to have but doesn't on Windows 2000 due to the classic theme not being the luna theme.

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