Around 2001 I ran Win2k on a Super Socket machine as an upgrade from 98SE. Massively more stable and had the feel of a 'real' OS with background processes, user permissions etc, whereas I regard 9x more as a program loader 😀

Games performance was slightly lower, so for a pure gaming build I'd stick with 9x.

Jorpho wrote:

There is a lengthy article at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457057.aspx suggesting that with adequate system resources, Windows XP will outperform 2000.

Look at the date on the article.It was written in 2001 before any service packs were released so it's no longer applicable. Nobody still using XP uses it without any service packs installed.I remember SP1 wasn't so bad,but as was said the service packs released after that made XP feel more and more bloated and to make matters worse, SP3 changed XP so much that you simply couldn't get along without it because all future patches and hotfixes from MS assumed SP3 and a lot of software released after that would also assume SP3 was installed.

I love 2000 on those little Compaq armada 600MHz PIII machines. I honestly HATED '98.
I would prefer 2000 over 98 any day because of stability, drivers, and internet. plus, you can run 2000 on a 486 like '98, despite not being really supported.
screw windows 98. i would rather use '95 or NT.

sliderider wrote:

Look at the date on the article.It was written in 2001 before any service packs were released so it's no longer applicable. Nobody still using XP uses it without any service packs installed.I remember SP1 wasn't so bad,but as was said the service packs released after that made XP feel more and more bloated and to make matters worse, SP3 changed XP so much that you simply couldn't get along without it because all future patches and hotfixes from MS assumed SP3 and a lot of software released after that would also assume SP3 was installed.

I looked around to see if anyone did some benchmarking.

Here's one comparison between SP1 and SP2:
http://icrontic.com/article/does_service_pack … 2_slow_you_down

Here's another for SP2 vs SP3:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/xp-sp3-per … home-about/1747

I suppose to be fair the best comparison between SP1 and SP2 would be have SP1 plus a third-party firewall, assuming there's no way to disable the firewall in SP2 to the point that it has zero effect on performance.

I used 2k SP4 for gaming up to a Core duo, until I got my first quad-core cpu, and was forced to either find the data-center version (not likely as, its to expensive.) or move to XP or Vista. I actually went with Vista due to DX-10... So for my gaming PC's... I completely skipped over XP.
I'm an odd one as I've also skipped over Win7, thanks to Vista, and my latest gaming PC is running win 8.1 with classic shell. which makes it look like 2k again 🤣.

From long experience using it, SP4 is nearly as compatible as XP SP3, with 9x games, you just need to manually enable the 9x compatibility modes in the registry. It uses less ram so its a better choice on slower machines then XP.

I was a hold out for a few years after XP came out but overtime my own (subjective) experiences as well as reading some of the architectural changes (such as they were from NT5->5.1) convinced me there's generally little reason to stick with 2000. If your system works well with 2000, it will probably work well with XP. The exceptions are 486's, as Windows 2000 is the last version that will run on a pre P5 CPU, and systems with small amounts of memory. (obobskivich raises a good point about idle memory burn. I am unable to cut down an XP SP3 base install to use less than ~110 MB or so on a fresh boot. 2000 SP4 saves 30-40MB off of that. Interestingly I have distinct memories of using XP on 128-256MB computers back in the early 2000's and not seeing them disk trash. Maybe SP2 ballooned the working set?)

Jorpho wrote:

There is a lengthy article at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457057.aspx suggesting that with adequate system resources, Windows XP will outperform 2000.

Indeed, here's another oldie from MSDN entitled, quite modestly, Windows XP: Kernel Improvements Create a More Robust, Powerful, and Scalable OS.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I never liked XP. I ran Windows 2000 until late 2003 when I bought an LCD monitor and wanted to use ClearType fonts. I can't believe nobody ever managed to hack cleartype support into 2000.

Agree on ClearType. It's the number one thing I miss using old versions of Windows. (I have LCD monitors).

FWIW, if the need ever arises again you might want to try SmoothText. It's a subpixel antialiaser for Windows 2000 (it also more or less works on NT4). ClearType it's not, but it does help.

There are only two real reasons why I run XP as my day to day OS instead of 2000:

- it has a 64-bit version
- It has better compatibility with newer programs and drivers (which is mainly due to the fact that Micro$oft's newer programming languages have artificial limits imposed on them to disallow for Windows 2000 compatibility)

Windows 2000 is a great OS, especially for lower-end hardware, but the lack of compatibility with newer applications really kills it. Besides, I can achieve similar results with an nLite-ed copy of XP, and much better program compatibility to boot.

Sorry if being kinda uneducated and clueless here, but, reading the comments I glean that bypassing the XP-activation should be easy or trivial...(?)

Which makes me wonder, how would that be done ?
(just curious, honestly don't know how..)

Is this something very obvious, or does it involve access to some special thingy ?

Some versions of XP have no activation.
Mainly the corporate versions.

I used win2k for a few years on a PIII & then an early model P4, as soon as XP came out however I did switch over pretty quickly. I will say for me though that either are better than 9x, i hated that OS. I currently run 2k on my PIII sig build, lighter memory usage mostly, plus it will run a few old games XP won't, Aquanox 1 for example. XP all the way other than that tho. I have one system running Win7(core 2 quad Q6600) but rarely use it.

bestemor wrote:

Sorry if being kinda uneducated and clueless here, but, reading the comments I glean that bypassing the XP-activation should be […]
Show full quote

Sorry if being kinda uneducated and clueless here, but, reading the comments I glean that bypassing the XP-activation should be easy or trivial...(?)

Which makes me wonder, how would that be done ?
(just curious, honestly don't know how..)

Is this something very obvious, or does it involve access to some special thingy ?

SP3, at least, allows for installation without having to enter a Product Key (ref. Wikipedia). If you don't have an SP3 CD, you can easily generate one using nLite.

Beyond that, I think it's really just a matter of not installing the Windows Genuine Advantage update.

BSA Starfire wrote:

I currently run 2k on my PIII sig build, lighter memory usage mostly, plus it will run a few old games XP won't, Aquanox 1 for example.

This could very well be due to the different graphics hardware (or even just different drivers) on your other computer. In any case, I believe GOG sells Aquanox these days, so there is almost certainly some way to circumvent the problem.

Yeah, Nvidia's post-61.xx driver regressions often were a cause of 'help this game wont work xp'. Aquanox definitely can run on XP, however 'the way it's meant to be played' means a crash and you should buy the latest Nvidia card and sponsored Nvidia games because it's the way YOU'RE meant to be played.