elianda wrote:

If it was about Direct3D you are right with NT4, but consider that in the timeframe where NT4 was quite common as 'NT OS', the early 3D games featured more likely Glide and OpenGL, whereas the 2D games just required DirectDraw 3.

Well, the only OpenGL games that come to mind are the Quakes and licensees. There were lots of D3D games starting with D3D 3. DOS was also still important at this time, but you could of course dual boot. I remember people dual booting NT4 and 95.

Win2K made some major strides in flexibility but the drivers available for the first year or so were pretty poor for most hardware. Besides bugs, performance was also considerably worse than 9x.

keropi wrote:

Yes, this whole ME vs. XP/2K thing is just off topic. What's next comparing Amiga Workbench with DOS? They are just too different to be compared directly.

I disagree. 2K has excellent compatibility for 9x games and it was supported by various game companies. It was rather popular for gaming and it did a lot of things better than the 9x series. You just needed to have enough RAM and hardware that had decent drivers (probably NV or 3dfx).

2K was popular enough to become a major problem for ATI when they released their NT-incompatible Rage Fury Maxx card. And since it had D3D support, along came articles comparing it to 9x for games. Creative's drivers started getting their negative rep too because wow were they unstable for 2K and XP for years.

But I didn't use it a lot myself. 😁 I didn't like how much RAM it needed and how hardware performed slower due to the drivers.

swaaye wrote:

-snip-
You just needed to have enough RAM and hardware that had decent drivers (probably NV or 3dfx).
-snip-

And this is exactly what the problem was/is. Any PC that can run 2k is better of with XP and any PC that is basically too slow for 2k (and XP) is better off running ME or 98SE.
With enough tweaking 2k may have had good compatibility with older games (though I doubt compatibility was better then with 9x) but XP compatibility is simply better.
On top of that many modern programs won't work with 2k but will work with XP. The only programs that will work just as well on 2k and XP are modern viruses, making installing a virus scanner on a 2k system more of a logical thought then on 9x, simply because modern viruses generally don't run on 9x anymore. And we all know a virus scanner will slow down things even more.
Using 9x on a modern system isn't really optimal, but the topic was about the use of ME, and one of the good things about ME is it's ability to run (much) better on lean systems (= not a lot of ram, not a very large harddrive, not a very fast processor etc).
2k and XP simply can't compare to that.

We all know 9x crashes more then NT but that's not really relevant anymore. People won't generally use 9x on a day to day basis anymore and for lighter use it's not worse then NT, at least not in a practical way.
On top of that 9x has some other benefits like a faster boot (particularly ME), more driver support with certain older hardware and less vulnerability to modern infection.
2k is getting more and more behind XP in every way, ruling out choosing 2k over XP on more modern systems, and on older systems you're better off with (an nlited) XP over 2k also. If it won't run fast enough anymore because the hardware is getting too old, ME or 98SE are better.

Frankly, theres no real reason to run 2k anymore, unless you have a personal preference for it.

Personally I'll pick either ME or XP. Theres simply no practical room for 2k anymore.
I'll only pick 98SE if I need an OS for a rig with 64MB ram or less.

nicely said Tetrium, I am along the same thinking lines as you...

Tetrium wrote:

And this is exactly what the problem was/is. Any PC that can run 2k is better of with XP and any PC that is basically too slow for 2k (and XP) is better off running ME or 98SE.

Of course. I was commenting more on "at the time". Before XP existed. I left 2K behind the day XP came out. I see people say that 2K is "lighter" and "faster" but I call bullshit on that because I've personally found XP to be faster/smoother as long as you have at least 192MB.

If you take XP out of the equation and your system has more than 128MB, then 2K is interesting again. At least to me anyway. I'll use XP or 2K over 9x every time unless I'm using hardware that lacks good NT5 support.

Tetrium wrote:

Any PC that can run 2k is better of with XP

My Intergraph TDZ 410 has 2k installed on it and the XP installer doesn't work because it's only 200mhz PPro. 233mhz is the minimum for XP according to Microsoft. What makes it worse is it's a DUAL 200mhz PPro and XP still won't install. I got the machine for free because the laboratory that had it was upgrading to XP and this one COULDN'T be upgraded to XP. So no, not every machine that can run 2k can run XP.

I still have 2K-SP4 on the two Athlon XP desktop systems, which are used daily. I installed it after XP was already available. But at that moment I did not like XP because it was aimed partly at noobs, with that inflexible green blue GUI, much disk usage due to recovery states that never worked as I wanted. 2K seemed like XP without the crap, and for years it seemed to work like that.

However in the last two years support dropped considerably. (Funny enough most things can be run anyways after tweaking) also I learned how to customize or nlite XP to be more to my liking. So I agree, it would be better to have XP on there now, but I am to lazy/busy to install everything again.

sliderider wrote:

My Intergraph TDZ 410 has 2k installed on it and the XP installer doesn't work because it's only 200mhz PPro.

I've seen crazy folks install XP on underclocked Pentiums so there must be a way to get XP on there. 😀

I ran 2K on a dual CPU PPro before though and it wasn't exactly very enjoyable. It was rather laggy. I think NT4 is probably the better choice.

swaaye wrote:

I've seen crazy folks install XP on underclocked Pentiums so there must be a way to get XP on there. 😀 .

nlite 😉

With nlite you can remove the hardware restriction 😉

swaaye wrote:

sliderider wrote:

My Intergraph TDZ 410 has 2k installed on it and the XP installer doesn't work because it's only 200mhz PPro.

I've seen crazy folks install XP on underclocked Pentiums so there must be a way to get XP on there. 😀

I ran 2K on a dual CPU PPro before though and it wasn't exactly very enjoyable. It was rather laggy. I think NT4 is probably the better choice.

What those guys did was to install using a CPU capable of the minimum speed allowed by the installer then changed the processor speed using the bus speed and multiplier jumpers to a slower speed after the install was complete.

I don't know if there's any jumpers on the motherboard of the Intergraph but I guess I might try to see if it's possible to overclock the system temporarily to 233, do the install, then put it back.

I had Win2000, Win3.1 (DOS 6) and 98SE2ME (see 1st page of this thread) on my 200Mhz MMX. It worked flawlessly with this computer, and the performance of 98 is comparable to Win2000. I had 64MB RAM.

One day I tried to install Nlited Windows XP with only the drivers I need. The ISO was only 200MB, but it consumes +- 400MB harddisk drive. It consumes 50MB of RAM and only left me with 10MB. Yes, I know my RAM amount is too little, but 2000 is much lighter than Nlited XP.

Windows 2000 sails really smoothly on 64MB.

sliderider wrote:

swaaye wrote:

sliderider wrote:

My Intergraph TDZ 410 has 2k installed on it and the XP installer doesn't work because it's only 200mhz PPro.

I've seen crazy folks install XP on underclocked Pentiums so there must be a way to get XP on there. 😀

I ran 2K on a dual CPU PPro before though and it wasn't exactly very enjoyable. It was rather laggy. I think NT4 is probably the better choice.

What those guys did was to install using a CPU capable of the minimum speed allowed by the installer then changed the processor speed using the bus speed and multiplier jumpers to a slower speed after the install was complete.

I don't know if there's any jumpers on the motherboard of the Intergraph but I guess I might try to see if it's possible to overclock the system temporarily to 233, do the install, then put it back.

No, they installed it with a board running a cpu much lower then 233Mhz. They used an nlited XP with the hardware restriction removed.

Edit: I think it's time to start an nLite topic 😁

Edit2: topic created. link: nLite, slimming down 2000 and XP.

MatthewBrian wrote:

Windows 2000 sails really smoothly on 64MB.

I wouldn't be happy with less than 192MB, myself. Maybe 64MB is ok if all you do is look at the desktop. I think it would still be swapping things to disk even if that's all you're doing.

I wouldn't even want to web browse on 98SE with only 64MB. 😀

ASUS p4p800 se, P4 3.00E, Ati X850PE, 512 Mb RAM (2Gb, but checkboxed in msconfig). WinME as second OS. This is my test PC for the pre-2001 win32 games, which are often XP unfriendly.
Results - 0 BSODs, 99% compatibility with Win95/98/98SE (for PC games).
Sadly, no X1xxx+ support for ME. *censored* from ATi *censored**peep*.

You guys made me try them out on an old Pentium 3 laptop and so far so good 😁
I will try to bring full support for DOS back sometime these days.

Tetrium wrote:

With enough tweaking 2k may have had good compatibility with older games (though I doubt compatibility was better then with 9x) but XP compatibility is simply better.
On top of that many modern programs won't work with 2k but will work with XP.

I was running 2k on a day-to-day basis until relatively recently and I disagree with your statements. Aside from the obvious things like IE6SP2 and above, the only programs I encountered that would work with XP but not 2k were firewalls. Until recently, Steam still worked. You can even install recent versions of the .NET framework, apparently. Can you give some specific examples?

But I do agree that an excellent reason not to run 2k (and IE6) is because it is no longer receiving security updates.

Jorpho wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

With enough tweaking 2k may have had good compatibility with older games (though I doubt compatibility was better then with 9x) but XP compatibility is simply better.
On top of that many modern programs won't work with 2k but will work with XP.

I was running 2k on a day-to-day basis until relatively recently and I disagree with your statements. Aside from the obvious things like IE6SP2 and above, the only programs I encountered that would work with XP but not 2k were firewalls. Until recently, Steam still worked. You can even install recent versions of the .NET framework, apparently. Can you give some specific examples?

But I do agree that an excellent reason not to run 2k (and IE6) is because it is no longer receiving security updates.

I thought DOS compatibility in 2k was much worse then 9x (because it's basically a DOS GUI) and XP (because of it's compatibility option)?

Edit: I did some reading about 2k or XP as gaming OS. Seems XP is obviously preferred over 2k by almost everyone.
Jorpho, maybe 2k worked almost as good as XP for you, but it doesn't appear to be the general consensus. In general, XP is preferred over 2k for gaming by far, including by me.

I'm not sure why you were having problems with firewals in 2k and not with XP, but you do know XP already has a firewall, right??

Apparently you can only get DOS games to work by completely emulating DOS, which sounds like total incompatibility to me.

Jorpho, how many programs do you know that work in 2k but not in XP?

Edit2: Oh, and I actually do know something that should work in 2k and not XP, and that's certain kind of hardware like 1x LS-120, Floptical and a couple other devices that would not work anymore in XP, or at least only partially.
Still that advantage over XP is imo totally annihilated by the fact that 2k is aging extremely fast right now. Hardly -anything- made today will work with 2k correctly (or even at all) without vast investment in time and efford to get it working on 2k somehow.

So my only real reason for using 2k instead of XP would be if I for some reason needed an OS with the NT5 kernel and some of this obscure hardware. It seems 2k has no other advantage left, everything 2k can do, XP can do also.

Edit3: Another edit!
XP has one more advantage over 2k! XP seems to be much more compatible with nLite then 2k. Yet another advantage XP has over 2k. You can nLite XP and easily create XP install media that has your personal tweaks already done the moment you hit the desktop for the 1st time!
You can nLite XP to run on slimmer systems better then 2k.
This means you can create XP media that you don't need to tweak for hours after you installed, complete with all updates released the day you created your nLited install media. You can create unattended XP media, start the install, go take a shower and get some food. When you walk back you're looking at the desktop at a fully updated XP tweaked the way you want it, ready to go!

2k can't do that. 2k needs tons of tweaking after you're done installing, and in the end you work more for less result.

Tetrium wrote:

I thought DOS compatibility in 2k was much worse then 9x (because it's basically a DOS GUI) and XP (because of it's compatibility option)?

2K has the same compatibility options as XP, though as I recall they're not enabled by default. (It's a trivial matter of registering a DLL.)

Apparently you can only get DOS games to work by completely emulating DOS, which sounds like total incompatibility to me.

I have never read anything to suggest that the NTVDM of XP is less of a DOS emulation than the NTVDM of 2K.

Edit2: Oh, and I actually do know something that should work in 2k and not XP, and that's certain kind of hardware like 1x LS-120, Floptical and a couple other devices that would not work anymore in XP, or at least only partially.

Indeed, I have also encountered at least one obscure piece of lab hardware with that problem.

Still that advantage over XP is imo totally annihilated by the fact that 2k is aging extremely fast right now. Hardly -anything- made today will work with 2k correctly (or even at all) without vast investment in time and efford to get it working on 2k somehow.

I agree that 2k is aging, but as I said: what programs do you know of that won't work correctly in 2k without this vast investment in time and effort? I have encountered very few of them. It is my understanding that the internals of 2k to not differ greatly from that of XP.

Let me be clear that I am not particularly arguing in favor of 2k over XP; you are quite welcome to use XP for gaming and I will in no way disparage your choice. I just want to know more about this assertion of yours, as it differs considerably from my experience. If my experience differs substantially from that of others, then it might be interesting to know why.

Jorpho wrote:

I have never read anything to suggest that the NTVDM of XP is less of a DOS emulation than the NTVDM of 2K.

Neither have I. Why bring this up?

Jorpho wrote:

but as I said: what programs do you know of that won't work correctly in 2k without this vast investment in time and effort?

I just want to know more about this assertion of yours, as it differs considerably from my experience.

and as I said, what programs do you know that work in 2k but not in XP?
All you mentioned is a firewall issue, it didn't work in 2k and worked in XP? But why bother with a 3rd party firewall if XP comes standard with a firewall already?
Do you actually know of any programs that work in 2k but not in XP? I haven't come across any.
You want my assertion? You might as well ask the general assertion as to why XP is preferred to 2k by the vast majority of internet users, as I mentioned in my previous post.

Lets get back to basics here, I mentioned I see no real reason to use 2k. Then you come along and mention 2k is more decent then I give credit for. However, since I'm already on XP, what good reasons can you give me to use 2k instead of XP in certain situations?
In other words, what can 2k do that XP can't?
And I put it in bold explicitly since you seem to be evading this question the whole time now.
The only thing you come up with is that it worked for you, and that's just not good enough.
I use XP, you tell me 2k isn't worse then XP (in your opinion) but fail to back it up by any real proof about 2k's advantages over XP.
I have given you my 'proof' as to why I think 2k isn't worth it, compared to XP.
...and now it's your turn! 😉.

Go ahead and tell me the advantages of 2k over XP 😉
Set an example 😜

XP is preferred over 2K simply because it was used by alot more people (it being a OS marketed for home users). You basically have an entire generation that grew up with XP and their only previous OS before that was some 9x OS. So usually they confuse 2k with ME or assume it's a 9x derivative or assume it's a POS because it's old.

You'll also see alot of bad mouthing of XP 64bit simply because most people never used it. XP 64bit was a great OS as long as you had drivers for it but all you'll see all over the internet is how bad XP 64bit was.....even though it's exactly the same as XP 32bit, which everyone looovvesss. (obviously 2003 OS code but pretty much the same anyway)

If you want to know the truth of gaming compatibility 2k vs XP then just look at my Game Compatibility List. I long ago stopped comparing NTVDM between OS's and just switched everything to DOSBox tho so you are not going to get anything for NTVDM from my list (NTVDM compatibility from NT4 to Windows 7 are pretty much the same...except for WDDM drivers in Vista+ preventing fullscreen from working and some WOW 16bit issues in Vista+ for 16bit Windows games).

I long ago stopped running 2k on real hardware but I do use it in VM's alot because it is less resource intensive and you don't have to worry about getting around activation. Of course nowadays it's easy to find hacks for ESX, Vmware and VPC to get BIOS activation working for OEM releases of Windows 😉 but it's still a PITA if you like to keep your emulators up to date so I just use 2K since it does everything without the BS of newer versions of Windows.

Tetrium wrote:

Jorpho wrote:

I have never read anything to suggest that the NTVDM of XP is less of a DOS emulation than the NTVDM of 2K.

Neither have I. Why bring this up?

You seemed to imply that XP was superior in that respect and did not use DOS emulation. Perhaps I misunderstood.

Jorpho wrote:

and as I said, what programs do you know that work in 2k but not in XP?

I did not address this because I was confused as to where exactly I implied there were any such things.

All you mentioned is a firewall issue, it didn't work in 2k and worked in XP? But why bother with a 3rd party firewall if XP comes standard with a firewall already?

Either someone forgot to tell that to Norton, Comodo, Zone Labs, Online Armor, and so on, or clearly the XP firewall is something that can be improved upon. At any rate, the issue here is that these programs work in XP but not 2k. 2k is in no way superior in this regard! As for why they don't work, I don't really know the particulars and can only speculate that XP handles network security differently than 2k.

Whatever this difference is, it did not have much effect on my computing needs as I can hardly recall any other occasion when I came across something that would only run under XP and not 2k. You say there are many such programs, which surprises me.

However, since I'm already on XP, what good reasons can you give me to use 2k instead of XP in certain situations?
In other words, what can 2k do that XP can't? And I put it in bold explicitly since you seem to be evading this question the whole time now.

Will you please re-read the last paragraph of my previous post!? Heck, take a look at my last post on page 4!

Then you come along and mention 2k is more decent then I give credit for.

Yes, that is what I am saying. I am not saying it is inherently superior to XP in some way. I want to know why you think 2k is so drastically inferior. And don't tell me about all the added features of XP; I know about those already. Tell me about these mysterious programs that will run under XP but will not run under 2k "without vast investment in time and efford". (Yes, IE6SP2 and the .NET 3.5 framework are obvious ones.)

I have given you my 'proof' as to why I think 2k isn't worth it, compared to XP.

And the major thrust of your argument is that "everyone else says so" ? And that it "seems" to work better with nLite? (We can deal with that in the other thread.)