Windows 2000

[Schola]

I am thinking of upgrading my laptop to windows 2000. It has 96meg of ram. Schould I do this. I have w2k on my other desktops, but have been reluctant to do it with my laptop. Schould I go with w2k or schould I consider ME perhaps. It already has 98se on there.

Schola

 

[Yoshi]

Win2k Pro will work fine on a laptop. I would go for it. I have heard nothing but bitching about WinME.

 

[Chatterjee]

Windows 2000 is great about finding drivers for laptops (which are usually harder to find drivers for). I know my compaq laptop had some hardware that wasn't compatible with windows 2000 (which pissed me off but anyway)

I have ME loading on my machine and it's running pretty well. I haven't had any real problems with it yet despite all the bitchin' they do over here about it.

-s

 

[Schola]

Well I got a Quantex, and as far as hardware that maybe be hard to find drivers for, the only thing I can think of is the ESS Maestro Sound. Its a PII 366 with the performance enchanced cache read the same thing as a PIII.

Schould I do an upgrade of format and fresh install.

Schola

 

[cirrus1]

I've tried not to long ago to install W2K on my friends Compaq Laptop. Never got it to work....
BSOD just before starting GUI

 

[BCYL]

But with 96MB RAM you might wanna think it over again... IMHO win2k requires at least 128MB to get acceptable performance...

 

[Schola]

Ya BCYL, that is the same thing that I was thinking, that only 96meg of ram would slow it down to much to make it seem worth it. Has anyone else run it with only 96meg of ram, how does it perform?

Schola

 

[FOBSIDE]

yeah, 128 is minimum and thats on a desktop in my opinion. laptops tend to run a little slower.

 

[abracadabra1]

i personally believe 192 is the bare minimum in win2k. 256 is what i recommend.
w/ a laptop like that...i'd stikc w/ windows98se or winme (if it works for you).
you may just want to upgrade and get more ram (which will be really expensive since you have a laptop) if you're really eager to get 2k. but before doing that...make sure that you won't run into hardware problems.

 

[Panther505]

Right now I am running W2K on an IBM 760E with a P150 and 80 Meg of Ram. Not the speediest booting system and I don't try to bog it down with multiple apps open at the same time but It runs. The suggestion that I have it to see what the Laptop maker says about w2k on the system and ensure that prior to starting you have the most recent BIOS and drivers... Also DO NOT Upgrade as it will cause you more problems then a clean install..

 

[Schola]

Hey Panther505 You run it on a P150, wow. I could try and ask the manufacture what they think, but they went out of business. And as for Bios updates, I would not even know where to get them for this system.

Schola

 

[shiner]

While I prefer Win2k and think it is by far the best version ever of the Windows OS I have had positive experiences with Win ME as well. As long as you do a fresh install of ME it works just fine. It's when you upgrade to it that the problems start to crop up.

Win2K would probably work well on your laptop but might be a tad slow because of the 96MB of RAM.

 

[Schola]

Well after I get my main system back up and running note to people, don't drop your processor. I will first try W2k and if that seems too slow then, maybe I will try Win Me.

Schola

 

[Eug]

128 MB or more is recommended, but Windows 2000 Pro by far is the best Windows OS for a laptop, or any recent Windows PC for that matter. 64 is completely unacceptable. Never tried 96, but I'd imagine that's really pushing it. Networking is a snap by the way under Windows 2000, and seems much more secure. This is assuming you have the right drivers, of course, which is more than likely if you have a fairly common machine.

I dual boot 98 and 2000 on my PC (256 MB), both using FAT32, and I run 2000 on my laptop (128 MB for now) exclusively, using NTFS.

Memory is cheap nowadays, at www.crucial.com, assuming you can still upgrade.

 

[Schola]

It probably can still be upgraded seeing that the machine is just barely 1 year old. Everthing schould be easy to find the drivers for except maybe the sound, which is an ess meastro(sp). The network is a 3com 10/100 cardbus one. Forget the exact model number.

Schola

 

[Panther505]

Schola,

Send me the EXACT model that the sound card is showing. Is it a SC and modem or just a sound card. I have been looking on the MS HCL page and you may be able to use the NT4 driver or dwnld a driver from MS. Send me then info and after the holidays I can take some time see what I can find for you.....


Later and have a Happy Holiday

 

[pdo]

Schola most laptop uses ESS soundcards anyway. I have an HP XE2 Omnibook that uses ESS soundcard(don't know exact model but have built in modem). Maybe you can download the driver from HP and see if it works on your sys.

 

[Schola]

Hey Panther505 I am posting it here and CYPM.

I believe it to be just the Sound Card as the modem is onboard also but made by someone else. They modem is a
...LT Win Modem

Sound is
...ESS Maestro MPU401 Device
...Maestro DOS Games/FM Device
...ESS Maestro Waqve/WaveTable Synthesis Devices
...LuxSonor DVD Decorder card(LS242)

Video is
...ATI Rage LT Pro

Network is
...3com Metgahertz 10/100 Lan Cardbus PC Card

Any forseeable problems, The only thing I need to wait for is for my new Tbird to come in so that I will have a system up besides this POS system my mom has.

Panther505 and everyone have a happy holidays

Schola

 

[AKA]

There are alot of laptops that wont upgrade properly without getting patches, updates etc.
Do you have the original patches or a recovery disk for your existing OS? If you dont, then dont go with install unless its a dual boot. 96mb is plenty for a stand alone computer, you can disable some of the services from starting up to free up memory.

 

[Schola]

Yes I have the Notebook Drivers CD. So going back to 98se would not be to hard of a problem schould this not work out.



Schola