A fun pet project, windows 2000 on a modern rig.

[skipsneeky2]

Got myself a bit of a fun pet project that is nearly complete, a nearly fully functional core i7 3770 based rig with Windows 2000 Pro with the following specs.....

core i7 3770
gigabyte b75 mobo
8gb of ddr3 1600
1gb gtx650
180gb intel ssd

Been filling the urge to revisit some nostalgia as my first own computer had 2000 pro, so here it is lol.

The install was easy and extremely fast as soon as i disabled ahci and went ide, set up a separate partition then i had to find a ps/2 keyboard but what i found was a bit of a amazing thing....a boxed up pair keyboard+ mouse from Dell dated circa 1999-2000,never used in the most pristine shape from my local second hand store which cost me $2.:biggrin: These two pieces are museum quality.

The ps/2 keyboard was all i could run currently by itself,i had to do the switcharoo a few times during installation cause the 2000 Pro installation really rarely works with USB apparently.

What works currently......

#1. USB 3.0 ports=these work as far as putting my keyboard and mouse into, i doubt the speeds would push 3.0 but you just never know and i won't till i get with the times and grab a damn 3.0 thumb drive.:biggrin:

#2. Realtek Audio=piece of cake.Installed with zero fuss.

#3. Realtek Lan=installed without zero issues. I just love Realtek for that.

#2. 2 cores and 3.7 gb or so ram....32bit os limitations.


What doesn't work...

#1. USB 2.0 ports=the drivers install but some force higher then i know just refuses to allow anything to work in them.

#2. gtx650= Obviously nvidia officially goes to 94.24 support up to 7 series but rumor goes some 2000 based drivers went right into the 160 series supporting the 8 series. There is files randomly about on google if you poke about.

#3. HD4000 Intel="The procedure entry point GetSystemWow64DirectoryA could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll." basically 2000 is missing dll files required for a successful install.



What i need for a fully functional rig........

#1. compatible usb 2.0 add in card...this is trivial cause i really don't need the ports but you know for the sake of saying you got them.

#2. Windows 2000 Api Wrapper Pack for the hd4000, couple guys made a makeshift pack to add in those missing dll files so games mostly could run on a os otherwise not supported.

#3. 8 series nvidia card and one of the international nvidia drivers known for compatibility. A 7 series card like a 7900gtx would present no issues with the 94.24 drivers.It is all that is holding me back from trying some Q3A and UT99 and few other games which is the sole point of this project.

________________________________________________________________

Overall impression is of a dated os, extreme fun project that does enable some major nostalgia with a bit of functionality still believe it or not. Firefox 12 and i can even watch youtube videos...without the nvidia or intel drivers i was pretty much stuck in a 16bit world. Extremely stoked when i heard that start up sound for the first time...amazingly fast of course thanks to the ssd.

I got a Amd RS780 motherboard which was in a Gateway which has 4gb of ram and a x4 9150e....its circa 2008 so perhaps i will get a bit more compatibility there getting all the goodies working.

 

[Lorne]

"#2. 2 cores and 3.7 gb or so ram....32bit os limitations."

Must be that version of 2K, The last time I installed 2K on a newer hardware setup I got 4C 8T just fine.
But I do notice 2K thread timing really kinda sucks.

You can play with PAE and allow more ram but it can make some older software picky going over the 4Gig limit.

 

[zir_blazer]

Any reason for not choosing Windows XP, 2003, and specially, their 64 Bit editions? What killed WXP SP3 for me was that it could only view 3.5 GB of RAM, putting a hard cap on how many things I could have open simultaneously (Specially Google Chrome tabs, as they eat RAM like if there is no tomorrow). I switched to WXP x64 a month ago or so, and couldn't be more happy.

Also, some Motherboards should be able to provide full USB Keyboard emulation for legacy OSes, so you don't need a PS/2 one.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

AFAIK XP x64 had a lot of compatibility issues and bugs, but what you're using on it may not run into those problems?

 

[skipsneeky2]

Pretty much did it for fun,just to see what would happen.

You usually get people attempting to get like a pentium 3 and 256mb ram to work with Windows 7,i figured i would get the new computer to work with the old os. It could easily work fully if i had a 7000 series nvidia or x1900 series ati card.:biggrin:

Without zero tinkering, a gigabyte 965g motherboard from 06 is as new as a platform that works with 2000 pro offering all drivers ready to download and install even including the intel onboard vga.

Seems they cut off 2000 pro support kinda quick, 965g debutes 6 years after 2000 pro comes and the 7000 series nvidia was pretty much replaced by the 8000 series not to long later. My b75 motherboard from 2012 comes out in 2012 and i could get drivers on day one for what was nearly a 11 year old windows xp lol.

 

[WildW]

I have such fond memories of Windows 2000. I still remember vividly the day I upgraded my Pentium III 450MHz desktop from Windows 98 SE to Windows 2000. I went from having to reboot after an hour or so of multitasking to system up-times honestly approaching a month.

It still has the best of all the Windows startup sounds =)

 

[Red Squirrel]

Windows 2000 was my favorite OS. It was nice and lightweight, and reliable. If only MS continued down that path. XP was super bloated for it's time, then Vista was even worse. An OS's job is to run programs, so really there's no reason for them to get bigger and bigger, yet they do.

I did not want to touch XP, I only ended up upgrading to it when stuff started to not work in 2000 due to compatibility issues.

 

[lxskllr]

I run a 2kpro vm in Xubuntu at work for a couple old Windows programs

 

[axlrose87]

I have such fond memories of Windows 2000. I still remember vividly the day I upgraded my Pentium III 450MHz desktop from Windows 98 SE to Windows 2000. I went from having to reboot after an hour or so of multitasking to system up-times honestly approaching a month.

It still has the best of all the Windows startup sounds =)

Me too, it was so stable compared to my first install of Windows ME

 

[Red Squirrel]

Haha Win ME was a disaster. I skipped it, and whenever someone would bring me a machine with ME on it I would just clean install and put 2000.

Though it was almost just as bad when XP came out, machines with like 128MB of ram and a single core would ship with it and be bloody slow right out of the box. I'd put Windows 2000 on those too.

 

[HOSED]

The key question here has not been asked, does CDplayer work ? I am still running an older version of it on win 7

 

[skipsneeky2]

Haha Win ME was a disaster.

Buddy of mine back in 2007 still was using a computer with Windows Me, he had 512mb but when he bought 2gb of rambus he was pretty much disappointed to find out ME only supported up to 2gb. That stupid computer of his crashed literally for no reason all the time. I got him upgraded to Vista shortly after for software reasons.

All the guy had on his computer was basically some old html software for his site, a AOL browser for his AOL dialup and real player i think but still always with the crashing.

 

[Iron Woode]

AFAIK XP x64 had a lot of compatibility issues and bugs, but what you're using on it may not run into those problems?

I used to run WinXp x64 and it worked great. The only issues I discovered were with certain apps: Adobe Dreamweaver and most anti-virus apps wouldn't work.

Still, it was stable and made a nice upgrade from 32bit XP.

 

[Bradtech519]

Windows 2000 Pro for the longest time was my favorite OS to use, and looking back is still my all time favorite OS. It was a while (SP3) before I moved to Windows XP. I remember going back to 2000 Pro because of the all the "bloated effects" in XP that I didn't think were necessary. Windows 2000 Pro SP4 was butter smooth bare minimum no frills. I know there were some initial driver issues when Windows 98 SE was the go to for gaming back then. Some people upgraded & lost performance until drivers matured. As time went on XP became feature wise a better OS & matured with the times as the 00 decade went on. They added native Wireless support etc. I miss that entire era in the PC industry. Back before all this mobility crap & focus on touch centric devices. The desktop seems to be an after thought as everyone races to turn the PC into a cloud dumb terminal with touch. Long live the traditional desktop.

 

[zir_blazer]

If I recall correctly, you could pick Windows XP, do a ton of tweaks like disable unneeded services (Specially Themes), and you could get it nearly as lightweight as W2000. While you spend quite some time doing that, it does challenge the argument that W2000 was simply better, when you could make the newer WXP be almost the same. I have good memories of the nLite era.

 

[ArisVer]

Long live the traditional desktop.

+1

 

[ninaholic37]

Wasn't Windows 2000 the one where Adlib sounds/music stopped working in DOS Games? Bah. Windows 95/98 FTW

 

[Matt1970]

Pretty much did it for fun,just to see what would happen.

You usually get people attempting to get like a pentium 3 and 256mb ram to work with Windows 7,i figured i would get the new computer to work with the old os. It could easily work fully if i had a 7000 series nvidia or x1900 series ati card.:biggrin:

Without zero tinkering, a gigabyte 965g motherboard from 06 is as new as a platform that works with 2000 pro offering all drivers ready to download and install even including the intel onboard vga.

Seems they cut off 2000 pro support kinda quick, 965g debutes 6 years after 2000 pro comes and the 7000 series nvidia was pretty much replaced by the 8000 series not to long later. My b75 motherboard from 2012 comes out in 2012 and i could get drivers on day one for what was nearly a 11 year old windows xp lol.

We put 3.11 on a Pentium 4 2.4GHz. That was fun. It took like 4 seconds too boot up. We didn't do much with the drivers but it sure was fun to see on operating system boot up that fast.

 

[PingSpike]

Windows 2000 was my favorite OS. It was nice and lightweight, and reliable. If only MS continued down that path. XP was super bloated for it's time, then Vista was even worse. An OS's job is to run programs, so really there's no reason for them to get bigger and bigger, yet they do.

I did not want to touch XP, I only ended up upgrading to it when stuff started to not work in 2000 due to compatibility issues.

I went to XP x64 as my main rig for awhile so I could use all my memory...I think I would have stayed on 2000 otherwise. I was running it until Windows 7, probably for 4-5 years I guess?

 

[SunburstLP]

Buddy of mine back in 2007 still was using a computer with Windows Me, he had 512mb but when he bought 2gb of rambus he was pretty much disappointed to find out ME only supported up to 2gb. That stupid computer of his crashed literally for no reason all the time. I got him upgraded to Vista shortly after for software reasons.

All the guy had on his computer was basically some old html software for his site, a AOL browser for his AOL dialup and real player i think but still always with the crashing.

While ME was a pile in and of itself, real player is probably the worst piece of software to ever exist. I hated it so much.

W2K was amazing, I still have some copies in my CD binder of nostalgia. 2K3 server was nice after a bit of work as well, but it really depended on what you needed to do.

I'm still not certain about all the Vista hate. In fairness, it was released in a pretty shoddy state. After the first couple of SPs, I think it ended up being pretty decent.

 

[nemesismk2]

I was a major windows xp fan so gave windows vista a total miss and then i bought windows 7 in 2009.

 

[inachu]

The most operating system I had on a pc at once including partitioning the hard drives as well as VM's was: 16 real mode OS's not inside a VM. then with a vm it went up to 32.

Just to do it to see if I could do it. Not to make it usable in any real world sense.
OS's used. DOS,2.0 , 3.x, 5.x, 6, 6.22 ,windows 1, windows 2.x, 3.0,3.1,3.11, WFW,Windows 95a,b,c,gold,j,NT 3.5,NT 4.0 sp6 ,2000,ME,XP, XP media edition, linux 6,7, suse 9,linux for white hat,linux hackers edition(from some magazine i got from borders back in the day),linux mint, UBUNTU various version, Linux for SIP phones. linux for wifi...iso had preinstalled best tools for wifi users.


Windows 2000 launch retail price was $700

 

[Towermax]

Windows 2000 launch retail price was $700

Are you talking about Windows 2000 Server? Here's Windows 2000 pricing at launch:

http://www.activewin.com/win2000/syspric.shtml

 

[skipsneeky2]

I was a major windows xp fan so gave windows vista a total miss and then i bought windows 7 in 2009.

Found myself dual booting Xp with Vista,i had to have DX10 for my DX10 games but Xp felt so much quicker on a 150gb WD raptor+e6750+8800gts 512mb so i more times then not ran Xp over Vista.

Vista did look awesome,the theme,aero and the movies that ran in the background on the desktop made for a os i think that still looks better then 7.

 

[ninaholic37]

The most operating system I had on a pc at once including partitioning the hard drives as well as VM's was: 16 real mode OS's not inside a VM. then with a vm it went up to 32.

Just to do it to see if I could do it. Not to make it usable in any real world sense.
OS's used. DOS,2.0 , 3.x, 5.x, 6, 6.22 ,windows 1, windows 2.x, 3.0,3.1,3.11, WFW,Windows 95a,b,c,gold,j,NT 3.5,NT 4.0 sp6 ,2000,ME,XP, XP media edition, linux 6,7, suse 9,linux for white hat,linux hackers edition(from some magazine i got from borders back in the day),linux mint, UBUNTU various version, Linux for SIP phones. linux for wifi...iso had preinstalled best tools for wifi users.

Impressive. Were these all on the same hard drive? Did you run into any hiccups along the way, like certain Microsoft OSs needing the first partition, to be under certain sizes, or to be in a certain area on the HD?