Windows 2000 Datacenter service pack installation - fails on some vendor weird HW check.

[ruthan]

I got some old company Dell 1950 server for  experiments, it came with Windows 2000 Datacenter SP1 installed.

As far as i understand Datacenter is some uber special version of Win 2000, it was released with SP1. I have tried to install SP2  / SP3 / SP4, but it always fails, if get message its some about unsupported version.
  When i run Datacenter cd with newer service pack im getting message: that this vendor HW is not supported.

   Is there way how to bypass it this check? I tried to google it, but not found anything usable.

   I never was big friend of server vendor zillion cds images joggling and their OS install assists, but maybe you have to use some utility like it for this. I would understand if i would have same problem with random virtual machine or generic PC, there should be some Dell service tag in the bios and SP1 reinstall run fine from bundled cd, i tried generic version from archive org and its the same, so its not key etc problem. 

 BTW its possible downgrade Windows 2000 server version without reinstall?

Edited May 4 by ruthan

[Tripredacus]

It would be helpful if you could post the exact errors you get. And also get any error messages from log files.

[ruthan]

Yeah i should give it a bit more of effort and make screenshot, i hoped that is known problem

I meanwhile i have tried to install clean with custom CD image of Datacenter SP4 from Archive.org it worked fine with original system key..

 Luckily when i run SP4 again message is still there, this is exact text:
The Service pack 4 (2,3 etc..) not been qualified by your hardware vendor for installation on this copy of Windows 2000 Datacenter Server.
 Please contact your hardware vendor for additional information on obtaining a Service pack 4 that has been qualified for your system configuration.

  But i would still like to know there was a problem and if its possible install SP4 somehow, or upgrade / downgrade Windows 2000 version or install SP from live system. Its possible for XP+ 

 I researched a bit more research and it seems that datacenter really was somehow special, because Windows legacy update and update restored both report Datacenter as unsupported.. with note with a link to manually download updates, there is internet wayback machine link to Microsoft page, where i can download sometime, problem is that exact download files aren't archived

   I also do not understand how PAE is working with Windows 2000, Advanced server and Datacenter are supposed to support PAE. more than 3-4 GB of ram, im stuck at 3.5 GB.. its probably needed to fiddle with HAL files somehow. Because more CPUS and RAM support should be a main Datacenter advantage.

  Update: It seems that PAE needs to be still enabled manually by boot.ini edit:

https://webhostinggeeks.com/howto/how-to-enable-pae-in-x86-32-bit-windows-server-2003-and-2000-to-use-more-than-4gb-ram/#:~:text=To enable PAE in Windows,The Boot.

  I checked Dell CDs too, there is indeed OS install assist, problem is that it support only raid drives during OS install process are all data on raid deleted.. so i dont not tried it now, maybe later i will try with another empty disk.
  There are also some Windows 2000 SP4 Dell flavor OEM cds on archive.org, so maybe you needed one of these.. still would be nice to be able to bypass vendor check, i have tried Regmon and Filemon to detect what is checked, but i never get enough skill to be able to filter their output to debug these things..
 

Edited May 6 by ruthan

[Tripredacus]

It seems that you need to get a matching SP4 from the OEM who originally sold the installation of Datacenter and install that version. Maybe it wasn't always different bits, perhaps there were just instructions you needed to follow before running the update. I found information here, there is a table in the 2.1 section:

https://web.archive.org/web/20041130034246/http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/downloads/servicepacks/SP4/ReadMeSP.htm

I have not tried to install Datacenter myself because I tend to try using old software in their optimal setup... which means running on a cluster of which i don't have the hardware for.,

This document seems to indicate that IBM's implementation of Datacenter is locked down in some way. It mentions not being able to install software that has kernel access:
http://ps-2.kev009.com/basil.holloway/ALL PDF/sg245845.pdf

What you could try, potentially, is to attach procmon to the processes that are involved with running that update file to see if you can see what it might be looking at when it decides that the system isn't qualified and stops the installation to show the message. It might be that there is some old version of Procmon that works in Windows 2000, but maybe not. Here is a thread on superuser talking about other tools that you could try.
https://serverfault.com/questions/129044/where-to-get-working-sysinternals-tools-for-windows-2000

[ruthan]

Thanks.

It seems that is locked behind some classic big companies machine support / maintenance fee Paywall not just some MSDN MS partnership or OS licence.  IBM / DELL / HP were big enough to sell it, maybe others.

  Yeah this text is clear:
Windows 2000 Datacenter Server  — update to SP4 only in conjunction with your OEM
  Some per vendor mumbo jumbo is needed probably like 1 more key in registry as is typical in these situations.

There is dedicated MS Windows 2000 data center page:
http://microsoft.com/windows2000/datacenter/default.asp 

  I have tried procmon, first time i got bluescreen, but later i have find its old versions  (1.0.0. to 3.0.3 worked) here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20071011001855/http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/processmonitor.mspx
 a they worked, but maybe bluescreen was not related to its version.

  I at least learned how to better work with its output. filter it.. i expected that it would more clear and it would collect only data per selected per process, but it seems that by default its collecting everything like Filemon and Regmon and its merged together.  
   Here is filter report, i did not find exact call.. by my money are not something in these 2 keys, where are details about OS type:
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ProductOptions
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

  Here is filtered procmon log, its from install execution start to click to confirmation error message, i filtered it down to like 150 lines:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ug6frpi7lqcqpfhbh2ll2/SP4-InstallProcMonLog.PML?rlkey=i18n1xdbb0troxqgdooxf2l2t&dl=0

 Its interesting that i can install other OS updates fine, just not service packs.

   It seems that only main advantage of Data Center is more RAM and cpus (i dunno how cores and SMP count for Win 2000..), with PAE (just through adding /pae to boot.ini was needed no hal fiddling) i have 10 GB of RAM..  2nd highest edition Advanced server should be limited to 8 GB, Datacenter to 32GB or 64 GB, 32GB is mentioned online, 64 GB in IBM manual linked above.. maybe its 64 GB for the whole cluster, im not sure, how it works. 

   In these days, would only make sense to solve this, because some retro computing preservation, to preserve highest possible version. As i wrote install SP4 right away is working, but someone could be interested to check original SP1 version and test and check newer SP, one by one.. and that is not possible.. doubt that someone will still pay some maintenance fee for 20-15 years old machines.. its not just support per platinum Dell account globally..

  Other use case when someone could hit this problem is very old server migration to virtual machine. In case of Windows 2000 i found out that there is a lot programs requiring SP4 to work, i mean much more than SP2 / SP3 for Windows XP or SP1 for WIndows 7. Workaround is upgrade server before migration, i guess that nobody would run updated server anyway.. Its sort of like TPM check for Win11..

Edited May 6 by ruthan

[Tripredacus]

It is not always just registry keys to look at in these PMLs. First thing to remember is that the process you attach to may not actually be the process that is doing all of the work. A child process may be spawned by w2ksp4-2_en.exe that is doing more things that are not captured here. Also, this seems to be extremely filtered. 

Two things for next step:

1. your PML shows that this file was written to, see what is in it for the same timestamp: C:\WINNT\system32\config\software.LOG. You could also check the system for *.log around the time you executed the EXE (you do this check right after running it) to see if any other files get updated with anything useful.

2. Check for a child/spawned process doing anything. I do not know the completeness of this PML but if there is nothing more than this then it doesn't appear that this process launched anything. What you may or may not be able to do is the next step to use Process Explorer to pause the w2ksp4-2_en.exe process. You can do this before the error message appears, but you can also do the following (without pausing/halting the process) once the message box is on the screen. In ProcExp (at least XP era versions) you can look at the properties of a process and it will show you all of the files and regkeys that it has open, as well as view the Strings tab for both image (not usually useful) and Memory option which may show paths not visible in lower pane.

[ruthan]

Unfiltered log has like 50k of lines, if you are willing to check it, i will upload it.

I have tried to check output of these processes, but it seemed like generic installer checks, i did not see anything suspicious in the log.