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Building a Pentium 4 Windows 2000 rig for kicks... Need some advice


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If you haven't installed UURollup, in combination with USP 5 and Unofficial Update Rollup 2, I would strongly recommend those. They add a lot more compatibility to Windows 2000. But don't use any other custom kernels in that case. It will crash your system.

I also installed Office 2007 on my Windows 2000, but I was able to uninstall it using the Remove Office 2007 tool (you may have to remove shortcuts to the office EXE files.) For more, you may check out this link: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/how-to-remove-or-uninstall-microsoft-office-2010/(use at your own risk).

A while ago, I experimented installing iTunes on Windows 2000, and I made a tutorial,which I tried to simplify. But that was over a year ago, and I would use the link provided by Blackwingcat. Just incase you want to use this as a reference, here you go: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/171383-how-to-run-latest-itunes-on-windows-2000/

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I'll check that out when I get the chance... Does palemoon support Firefox extensions? Will it support Unity Web Player?

 

Anways, I just ordered parts. As follows;

 

Intel D945GTP Motherboard, Micro ATX

Pentium 4 HT 672 Prescott @ 3.8GHz

4GB (4x1GB) PC5300 DDR2 667MHz

EVGA nvidia GeForce 7950 GT, 512MB GDDR3

SATA Seagate Barracuda 500GB HDD, year of manufacture 2013

Windows 2000 Professional SP4 New/Sealed CD + License

Antec VSK-3000E Mini Tower

Intel Inside Pentium 4 HT case badge

Designed for Windows 2000 professional / Windows 98 case badge

 

I'm sure I have a functional SATA DVD writer lying around, and I might pull a 3.5" floppy drive from one of the older computers to put into this one.

 

 

 

The board I won on eBay comes with 4GB of DDR2 444Mhz (4x1GB) that I'm replacing with 667MHz DDR2, and also comes with a Pentium 4 541 @ 3.20GHz that I'm replacing with the pentium 4 HT I mentioned above, if anyone is interested.

Edited by JesseJH
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I've gone ahead and downloaded all the drivers and BIOS update for my board in advance... That being said, what's the first thing I should install afterwards? I'd like to know what order they should be installed in as well... And links to the specified software would be nice, but I will try to find them on my own if you guys don't have them handy. I'm reading a lot of information.

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For my Windows 2000 installs I:

 

 - Pre-format the hard drive as NTFS (Since Windows 2000 doesn't have quick format)

 

 - Install Windows 2000, then drivers

 

 - Install Unofficial Service Pack 5.1 - : http://www.mediafire.com/download/zb83886fwndbmc1/usp51.zip

 

 - Run Windows Update and install everything (May need the newest Windows Update Agent and root certificates for this to work) [There's a thread here about getting Windows Update to work]

 

 - Install Update Rollup 2 - : http://www.mediafire.com/download/n53jiauxb0kqnig/Windows2000-UpdateRollup2-x86-ENU.exe

 

 - Install Unofficial Update Rollup (For now I'm using the January 3rd, 2014 release, since I've been having issues with the current (?) November 30th, 2014 release)  - : Can be found in Tomasz86's download archive: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0Bw_nt4aAJIoPOUZpTFJHckdPMVE&tid=0Bw_nt4aAJIoPWWNBay13dTlXOWs#list

 

 - [install my custom msgina.dll, explorer.exe, shell32.dll and ntoskrnl.exe from the recovery console]

 

 - Install Unofficial Add-ons (such as the aforementioned WIC)

 

 - Set up a user account

 

 - Install my software and copy my application data for Firefox, Pale Moon and Thunderbird

 

 

Some of those links are for Mediafire. I uploaded those files there, just so I could get to them easily. Plus it's nice to keep a copy available in case time and lack of interest make Tomasz86's copies disappear.

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So... plug my hard drive up to another computer before install W2K on it and format as NTFS?

 

I'm going to look for the thread to get Windows Update to work... is WU necessary?

 

"Install my custom msgina.dll, explorer.exe, and shell32.dll and ntoskrnl.exe from recovery console" I need further explanation on this.

 

What is WIC?

 

is a user account not set up when installing W2K?

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Yeah, you can do that. The whole point is to avoid Windows 2000 taking hours and hours to format the drive, when Windows XP or newer can do it in 10 seconds. Then you just install Windows 2000 on the existing partition without changing it.

 

Is Windows Update necessary. Honestly, I'm not sure. Tomasz86 recommended to somebody on his web site that they should install USP5.1, then run Windows Update. By the time you install USP5.1 and Update Rollup 2, Windows may well be as officially updated as it needs to be.

 

I've modified a few system files to change the way Windows looks and acts. I was just listing off what I do when I install Windows 2000, as an example. You don't need to replace those files, unless you're interested in changing the logon screen, splash screen, logoff dialogue and a few other things like I have.

 

WIC is Windows Imaging Component. I mentioned it previously in this thread.

 

Windows 2000 will give you the option to automatically set up a user account using the registered name given during setup, and will set the system to automatically log onto it. I ignore this and continue with the Administrator account. This is because I like my user account to be set up properly, using a different username and full name. Basically it's just me being pedantic. If you're not as fussy as me, you needn't worry.

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I managed to get a wireless card to function on an older rig in here with a pentium III... specs of the machine are low, though great for the time period I'm sure, but it worked. It was a wireless B card I believe... very outdated. One giant antenna.

 

I'll look for the user you mention's WIC download. What exactly is windows imaging component?

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Part of the functionality that the Windows Imaging Component offers is the ability to show thumbnails in Windows Explorer, and that's what I use it for. Windows 2000's own Windows Imaging Component is apparently a little bit too old to work with K-Lite Codec Pack, and I think Irfanview.

 

This is the thread I was referring to: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/158916-guide-to-installing-and-updating-windows-2000-professional/But the one you found is interesting. There's another thread in the Member Contributed Projects forum about Unofficial Service Pack 5.2 for Windows 2000. Tomasz86 hopes it to be the replacement for all of these smaller update packages.

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