Win2K compatible motherboard?

[aqueen]

I don't know much about the hardware so please bear with me. A friend of mine bought a PC a while ago and when she was about to upgrade the OS to Win2k, she realized the motherboard doesn't support Win2k (this was stated in the HP site).

Now I am going to buy a PC and would like to have Win2K installed, how do I find out whether the motherboard supports the OS)

Any feedback is appreciated.

 

[MichaelD]

I've never heard of such a thing. Possibly an older (much older) system might not be compatible because of processor or memory issues, but I know for a fact there's plenty of folks right here on this forum that are runnin W2K on PII systems just fine.

You say you're going to buy a PC. I assume you mean as an out-of-the-box solution. May I recommed Dell to you? They are the best choice for a turn-key system. They let 'ya make monthly payments too.

Any system you buy from them will support W2K. You can prolly pay a little more and have it installed instead of the Windows Me crap it comes with.

Hope this helps.

 

[jaywallen]

I suspect that any motherboard that has non-existent or shoddy support for the ACPI spec might be listed as being not W2K compatible. And with good reason. Anyone lucky enough to have a good MB with solid ACPI support and devices with solid driver support for the OS is going to have a much better time running W2K than someone who's missing out on some of those items.

 

[aqueen]

Thanks a lot both of you. I am actually thinking of buying a barebone...and am looking at Asus-A7A266...saw some good reviews on this one but nobody ever mentioned Win2K. So I assume win2k will run well on it.

 

[aUt0eXebat]

i think what they ment was the BIOS is outdate or the ACPI....
if win2k server can run on a COMPAQ Pentiumm 166, then i think it can run on yours... dont worry

 

[jaywallen]

Well, I guess a board can be non-ACPI-compliant (and thus non-W2K-compliant) for several reasons. The BIOS itself is too old to be upgradeable to support the features, the BIOS revision is too old (but can be flashed to a later compliant version), the hardware features (mostly chipset) of the MB itself can't handle ACPI functions regardless of what BIOS is fitted. You can still make W2K run on a non-ACPI MB. But you will be limited in the way the OS functions, especially with respect to the way it deals with large numbers of peripherals or the addition of new hardware or power management functions. But, yes, it'll run on older motherboards, and quite well. If I were building a new system, though, I'd go for the whole enchilada -- especially with XP just down the road a few months.

Regards,
Jim

 

[AthlonMan]

I win2k server running fine on a old p 200 pro should be fine.

 

[Zach]

If you're using a questionable board, there's a key you hit during the Win2K install to make sure ACPI support isn't installed. F6, F7?

 

[jaywallen]

Good point, Zach. It's F5. You hit it at the point where the text says to hit F6 if you need to install special disk drivers. Then you choose the Standard PC HAL. It's a good idea to do this if you're sure that you don't want the ACPI features. I've seen W2K ignore BIOS settings in which ACPI features were all turned off. If it thinks the MB is compliant, it wants to install the ACPI HAL.

Regards,
Jim