Woohoo! Just installed Windows2000 Professional, now what?

[AlphaIVT]

I'm loving it already, maybe its because of this crazy blue background color What else should I know about Win2k, what programs should I get, what updates to avoid, etc.

 

[owensdj]

I guess you could get an automatic defragger for Windows 2000, like Diskeeper from Executive Software. Win2K comes with a manual defragger, so I don't know if you really need it or not.

You'll probably want to get Service Pack 1 for Win2K. If you do, be careful if you have firewall software installed like Zone Alarm.

 

[DerProfi]

Be sure to get Service Pack 1, and all the other hotfixes available on windowsupdate.microsoft.com. You might also want to see if there are updated Win2K drivers for any of your hardware.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

TweakUI is nice to have

 

[Ulfwald]

DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSATNCES, INSTALL DIRECTX8. It hosed my work computer lastnight, and i was down for 1 hour trying to uninstall it. I just formatted my drive, and then had to reinstall everything.

 

[AlphaIVT]

ulfwald, too late I just installed it. But so far, everything is working perfectly, no errors yet. No frezzes. I've had only a problem with compatiblilty with an emulator, but thats nothign big. Now I just got to install the rest of my progs and HL.

 

[kmmatney]

Now see if all your accessories work (scanners, cd burners, etc...) These didn't work when I first installed Win2K, but after driver updates everything is now running beautifully. Also, try to run your favorite games. I've had NO trouble running any game in Win2K so far, even DOS games - can't understand why everyone says Win98 is better for games. Win2K loves lots of RAM so stock up!

The only thing I hate is how slow the Add/remove programs window loads up. I've also had a few bogus entries of programs that I couldn't uninstall but remained in my add/remove program list. Took a lot of searching through the registry to get rid of those...

 

[The Wildcard]

haahah yes, that blue background does looks pretty cool and it's so mindboggling that it does.

 

[kmmatney]

Red = 58
Green = 110
Blue = 165

I set my wife's Win98 computer to the same background color - looks like Win 2K now

 

[Daniel]

Hah I changed my work win98 pc backround color to that too, and I thought I was the only whacky one.

 

[Zeeliv]

Tweak your services. There's probably quite a few running by defualt that you don't need depending on what your rig is used for.

EDIT: Oh, and before you freak out because all your menus are hiding things from you (unless of course you've used 2K or ME before), go to Start -> Settings -> Taskbar & Startmenu and uncheck 'Use Personalized Menus'. Never heard of anyone actually liking that "feature".

 

[themadmonk]

I tried that Services Tweak and let me tell you, fear it. It may work for some, but nothers, especially those who don't know the lower level services needed. After applying the tweak, I had no access to my networks anymore. He should leave those Services Tweaks for later when he knows intimately his OS.

 

[Zeeliv]

If you read through the entire thing maybe you wouldn't have screwed up your system. It's not like it's some patch that you just apply and hope it works for you. That page has descriptions of what each service does, and tells you what it should be set to depending on what your system is. If you know the OS intimately, you shouldn't need that page at all...that's the whole point of it.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

Zeeliv, he's right. After going through that and reading everything carefully, IIS services wouldn't work anymore. I figured it out but it was a pain. It was nice to get the unnecessary things out of there though.

Also, I actually do use the personalized menus, a little weird at first but it does actually come in handy.

 

[Zeeliv]

Did you two disable things rather than set them on manual or something? And that guide doesn't really cover things for people running stuff like IIS, most people running that sort of thing should know enough to know what can and can't be shut off I would think.

I'll put it this way; That guide is meant for your average Joe who upgrades to 2K and uses it for normal home use. Like gaming, web browsing, Emailing, small networks, and apps.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

Well, there's no mention anywhere that IIS requires event logging to be turned on, and even setting it to manual caused it not to work, has to start up automatically.

 

[Zeeliv]

If your problem was the event logging service, how can you blame that guide? It says to leave it to automatic. It's a very basic service that(as far as I know) there's never a reason for it to not be set to automatic...when something goes wrong it's nice to have a little more info.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

Well, it was a while ago when I did this, but I thought it was the event logger, perhaps it was something else. I do know it was something they suggested setting to manual which I later had to go back and put to automatic to get IIS working again. I'm certainly not going to go back and experiment to see what it was