D865GLC

[earlytv]

I took out of my basement 5 older systems to get running. First 3 it was easy to get win 98se on them and have them in the 98se section of this board. The fastest runs at 3.8ghz with a early 775 type micro.The 4th has 10 bad caps and if I do not replace them the board is junk. The 5th is this D865GLC board which I think is a gateway E4100 board. Gateway has no 98se drivers for it so I made a dvd with the win 2000 drivers on it. The intel site does have 98se drivers so I tried those and all of them did not work or caused a problem if they did install.

I looked at what I have for win2k.

1) win2k upgrade from nt to 2k. It has sp0 so I would have to take that to sp4 + rollover?

2) A gateway reinstall that has .img files so not a orig install but a img of an orig gateway sys?

3) This one strange, also a img but this img once on the hard drive starts with a normal install and asks all the questions a normal install does but 2, no format, and no COA number. The install has a COA number in it already. ( I saw this somewhere on the net where the coa could be part of the install files

so it never ask for one, and I have many xp systems with oem img cds that have the oem coa number.)

I used # 3 and the sys is up and running. What are the best browsers, flash players, ect to use. I have tried some items from the net like a firefox that worked untill a downlod and then crashed, on the flash player side the net has some in the 11. range that can be made to work with a hex edit?

[pointertovoid]

Sp4 and Rollup1 v2 can be considered the minimum to do on a W2k.

It is better to slipstream them into the installation Cd, because

- The install is cleaner from the beginning

- Less worries if reparing the install

- Faster

- You can have EnableBigLba right from the beginning, hence access the whole disk >128GiB

Microsoft has officially made the install Cd and the patches to be slipstreamed. HfSlip is an other option (which eases the inclusion of EnableBigLba), nLight is an other, and more non-Microsoft methods exist.

No COA required: this can happen with Oem. There are also means to provide a serial with a file. Etc.

The best Flash player is none, as far as you can. Some browsers come with their own player, less bad. Better: Firefox contains a flash blocker, very useful. And for instance Foxit can replace Adobe's Acrobat Reader, thank you.

Browsers: many work, including Firefox (almost the latest is officially for W2k), Opera. I had big (big) worries with a Chrome intent on W2k, using a non-official patch that botched the system, so avoid it until you know W2k very well and are willing to experiment. Safari is not for W2k.

Security: Avast and Comodo are officially for W2k and up to date, plus few more.

Security: install your W2k on an Ntfs volume, define and use a session which has not administrator rights but "power user". This is much more important than updates and even antivirus.

Do not begin to tinker software portability with a hex edit:

- It's extremely time-consuming.

- Internet hint to compatibility is most often false. Msfn is nearly the sole reliable info source for W2k. Have a look at the pinned thread "latest version...for W2k"

- Xp and W2k are NOT the same. Xp has many more dll entry points. Any Xp driver, soft... forced on W2k will likely fail.

- It may destabilize W2k; and then you won't remember the cause.