Smack2k wrote:Looking for opinions... […]
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Looking for opinions...
Have a Year 2000 build I am working on, and trying to figure out which OS to put on the system, Windows 2000 Professional or Windows 98 SE? I am leaning toward 2000 as I don't have a 2000 machine right now, but am on the fence as I dont know how compatibility with games is and how good driver support for the video cards / sounds cards / etc is...
Machine Details:
ASUS CUV4X Motherboard
PIII 933 MHZ
768 MB RAM
Opinions on the OS?
I agree with tayyare.
98SE Partition 1 Boot Drive
2000 Partition 2 Windows 2000 SP4
For XP you can easily install this on Z77, Z87, Z97, Z170, Z270 no problem and play all the XP retro games if necessary at the max resolution. But your current rig is best optimized for 98SE and Windows 2000 is harder to get running on modern computers so take advantage of the dual boot option (98SE/2KP).
For the memory of 768MB I believe it should work in tests from long ago. 512MB slot 1, 256MB slot 2. If any BSOD occurs during 98SE install then remove the 256MB module and reinstall again from scratch until completion.
PhilsComputerLab wrote:Well I tried all 4 OSes on that same machine. Windows 2000 is giving me the most issues. USB 2.0 driver won't install because of some licencing and needs SP4. And OpenGL isn't working for some reason. And it didn't play ball with the Promise controller, got extremely slow booting times and file corruption errors.
I'll re-visit 2000 at some later stage, but first impressions are not that great. So my advice is to do your own tests with whatever machine you are using and don't be a Lemming 😊
Yeah I had similar issues with Windows 2000 and USB ports before switching to XP later down the road. I couldn't remember if it was the USB drivers causing hit or miss connections. I might revisit those issues again on the resurrected fanless P4 when I have more time. I usually used Vanilla W2K Pro then since I just love its small size and snappy UI. The service packs back then felt too bloaty after installed and I liked keeping the OS image as small as possible then since space was a premium I stayed away from XP for as long as possible. 98SE was always very compact in comparison.
tayyare wrote:
I was using Windows 98SE in my home PC in year 2000 like many others. Then came the Windows 2000 and ME. I just waited a bit to see what they were. I had chance to try them in the company I'm working for, and had access to both of them. I choose ME over 2000 since I really still didn't want to give up real mode dos yet (yeah I know, but it's a 10KB patch that works and was readily available even at that time) so I made the switch from 98SE to ME in early 2001. The funny thing is, during that period, my interest in computers was all time low (fiancé, wedding preparations, job change etc.) and I was away from computer magazines and general PC talk in internet. So I did not have a chance to see what people say about ME during that period.
I used it without ANY problems till late 2005 or early 2006,when I finally switched to XP. Even just this alone means that I was regarding it much more than a "not that crap" OS. It was not 100% stable, but not worse than 98SE in any possible way and performance was quite ok (from MMX 233 to PIII 733 to P4 1.😎. I always amazed at all those biased bad reputation that surrounding it.
Interesting I remembered a friend who had ME on the laptop. I couldn't get to the ME DOS prompt like 98SE using the F8 method. That was enough to piss me off that MS would do that since we all knew it ran on top of MSDOS. Also that hand drawn ME logo was a bit tacky whereas Windows 2000 looked like they actually cared. That DOS patch you mentioned shouldn't have been required. I think that's partly what killed ME from the outside to not be given a real chance. It didn't add something new making it worthwhile like 4GB memory patch, SATA drives, and PCIe graphics card support and maybe it would have had some sway today instead of 98SE. If Windows 2000 and XP had not come around so soon after I think we would all be ME retro users. 😀 Maybe had they waited for 2001 it would have been called 2001SE if they added all these modifications. (95B/98SE/2K1SE).
Oh and if you are inclined and have enough hard drive space. Just make 3 partitions or a 4th for extra data storage only.
C: 98SE bootable - 2GB FAT16
D: 2KPro SP4 - 8GB FAT32 so you can still see it in DOS
E: XP SP1, SP2, or SP3 - 16GB FAT32 in case you are running a lot of programs.
F: Free space partition - whatever is left. Good for storing images of boot partition in case of boot loader or OS corruption you boot off a 98SE floppy disk and restore C: image and all is well.
Done.