Ha... I had to support a SBS one time. Good riddance, I say. 😀 I had gone to school to learn networking on 2000 Pro and Server, and SBS just felt kinda like "some of the power of Server, but without actually giving you any control of anything." I'm sure it was supposed to make it.. erm, "easier" to use. But I really think it was just a tactic to make you want to buy the full enchilada. heheh

Anywho, I've been wanting to build a P4 (So423) box with 2K Pro on it. That poor OS gets overshadowed by XP too often. Nice to see it getting some love.

What're you going to do with the server setup?

I also had a VAIO P3 laptop -- one of the really thin and sleek metallic grayish-violet ones. PCG-R505 I think it was? It was my first laptop, that I bought with my first real full-time career-oriented job, and I *loved* it. Carried it with me everywhere and ran it to death.

This is awesome! I love that you're networking them together.

Windows 2000 is probably my favourite version of the Windows operating system. My brother and I had it installed on our shared computer from 2001-2003. Occasionally we'd switch back to Win98 for some reason (I think it might have been for game compatibility, but I don't remember specifics now), but we'd always switch back to 2000 and really noticed and loved the improved stability compared to Win9x. I bought a boxed copy of Windows 2000 Professional at some point within the last year because, despite using it for so long back then, we never actually had a legitimate copy. 😉 Figured it was about time.

It definitely required more computer. I had a PII (or maybe Coppermine PIII by that point) with Win ME, and decided to try Win 2K Pro not long after its release. It was clear that I needed more memory, and my sound drivers weren't quite ready for the NT model yet, so I had to abandon ship for a while. Some games didn't work quite right either. It took a year or two, but by the time XP came out, things had improved substantially.

Yeah come to think of it, that might have been our problem too and why we would occasionally switch back to Win98 for a little bit. I remember we had an AMD Duron 800MHz and 128MB in 2001 (upgraded to 256MB by 2003). I think that might have been fine-ish with Windows 2000, but I'm having a hard time remembering now. But the game compatibility would've been the main problem for my brother and I (more-so my brother who basically only ever used a computer to play games ... by that point I was probably programming more then gaming).

Very cool! Really dig that Vaio. I had a Pentium III Vaio notebook (very similar to yours) that appeared to have been struck by lighting through the modem port, and didn't work needless to say, so I threw it out.

Didn't realize Windows 2000 turned 20 today! Hard to believe that XP will be turning 20 next year too.

Anyway, I do really like Windows 2000 a lot. I really couldn't pick a "favorite" version of Windows, as I like almost all of them (yes, even Me and Vista), but 2000 is definitely a good one.

Ugh. I was working retail when XP was released. I think I just grew another gray hair.

Very nice setup with the client and server versions on 2000. If id have to rank my favorite Windows releases its definitely 2000 pro, XP pro, windows 7 ultimate.

SirNickity wrote on 2020-02-18, 22:46:

Ha... I had to support a SBS one time. Good riddance, I say. 😀 I had gone to school to learn networking on 2000 Pro and Server, and SBS just felt kinda like "some of the power of Server, but without actually giving you any control of anything." I'm sure it was supposed to make it.. erm, "easier" to use. But I really think it was just a tactic to make you want to buy the full enchilada. heheh

I'll get back to that point at the end of this build...

And yes like quite a lot of the posts above, 2k does get over looked a lot but I can understand why It's right between 98SE and XP
It's actually a very good alternative to Win9x playing all but 3 of my games right out the box but that's still 3 I need to duel boot into 9x for so may as well just use that all the time
Likewise XP just makes more sense then 2k for later games, I grew to like XP but 2000 still feels more "professional"

Onto the server build!
SBS can be split into 3 stages. First the Stock standard Windows 2000 install, Only thing I did different here was hit F6 to select the ICH5R storage controller (and why the floppy drive was desirable) The fact I'm using an IDE DVD drive means I can use the original CD's.

After the regular Windows install has complete , put the CD back in the drive and this is where things look a bit different

Plan your Installation is just a bunch of help files
Setup Small Business Server kicks off the wizard which asks for company details (Name, Address, etc) What IP address and domain you want. Basically promoting the server to a Domain controller. This is what I call stage 2 and really you could stop here and simple have a DC.

Next is stage 3, all the SBS stuff below

I can't install SQL as I don't have a premium key. Not that I'd know what to do with it anyway but lets install everything else.

The Wizard also sets up some default shares

2003 did the same and it was always left as default on c:\ which caused problems few years down the track. remember this was back in the day of physical servers and no easy way of extending partitions not to mention the boot partition which would slowly fill up with updates, upgrades, etc. c:\ was the worst place for most of this! Although to be fair on techies of old it's a pretty non descriptive screen.

Here you can see setup making good use of all the CPU's (It was updating the AD schema at the time) at no point of the install did it go above 45% 😀

Once setup is complete you get a check list but your better off installing updates first namely: Win2k SP4, IE6, ISA SP2, and the rollup packs for Win2k and Exchange 2k SP3.

Now back to that checklist

Out of the box SBS supports 25 concurrent connections. This was one of the annoyances of SBS as it enforced this. Non SBS setups relied on honesty so if you didn't keep track and setup a 26th user who logged in while the other 25 were on someone would loose connection. Caught me out once back in the day as it took a few weeks after I set up a user for everyone to be in and the random disconnects to start happening.
I doubt I'll have more then 5 machines trying to access this server at the same time so no need to add any licences.

Define Client Apps is interesting and something I'd never used before.

Basically select the programs you want Windows to create a group policy to auto install on client PC's. Group Policy was still new back then so this was quite cool (if you used any of the software)
You can add your own as well but it's up to you to package it (or not in my case)

User Creation
The details will become important later on

One thing I loved about Exchange 2000 and 2003 was how well it integrated into windows

You can even specify which programs you setup in the "Define Client Apps" section you want to apply when that user logs on

You now have a working server complete with a user to logon with.
Next week (if real life doesn't delay me again) We'll add the laptop to the domain and see what everything looks like from the client side

chinny22 wrote on 2020-03-10, 17:01:

Out of the box SBS supports 25 concurrent connections. This was one of the annoyances of SBS as it enforced this. Non SBS setups relied on honesty so if you didn't keep track and setup a 26th user who logged in while the other 25 were on someone would loose connection. Caught me out once back in the day as it took a few weeks after I set up a user for everyone to be in and the random disconnects to start happening.

🤣 I worked for a place where we ran into that problem once. We were a full enterprise shop -- two data centers, many many sites, etc. One day the CIO decided we were going to turn on CAL enforcement. I don't remember exactly how long it took for things to blow up spectacularly, but it wasn't long. "Oh crap! TURN IT OFF!!" hahaha!

Yeh always thought it was very un Microsoft not to enable it by default let alone not require it at all!

Ok time to get this back on track!

Lets join the domain with our OEM Win2k install

Windows will want to reboot as normal. What's not normal is what happens when you log on as the user we setup before

Even though the server is SP4 the SBS Install CD's were only at SP3 so this is what was included during the setup wizard, no doubt it's possible to update this somehow but this was one of those features which would have been really useful but never saw used in the real world, We'll do the same and manually apply SP4

After SP3 is applied next reboot comes up with another screen related to our SBS install

It's quite nice that it gives the option to postphone, Unlike more recently where even Sever OS's would auto reboot by default after applying updates ! WTF Microsoft?

Hitting Start now and those programs we setup earlier are setup for us automatically (accept my lazy Office package that starts the normal setup wizard)

What I was surprised at was it doesn't map a drive letter to the company share that was created during the server install, instead it just creates a shortcut on the desktop. bit crap for what was supposed to be the main share for company files.
So you can easily select your local HDD or personal folder which gets mapped to z:\ but you have to go to your desktop then select the Company shortcut? messy!

Anyway that's it for the Client side. It's ready for the user to get to work. Nice and quick. Next post will be software!

Windows 2000 is my favourite version of Windows. I transitioned to it when it was first released and used it right until MS dropped support. Amazingly stable, and very good multimedia capabilities compared to NT4 as well!

This is really fun to watch this project progress. Windows 2000 has got to be my favorite windows followed very closely with XP Pro.

First off lets look at some SBS apps

First is TS client, this was the predecessor to Remote Desktop client that came with XP and later.
I think XP SP3 and newer breaks compatibility from memory but useful up till then as can be installed on any OS including 9x and allows you to connect to NT4 TS edition which newer RDP versions won't do. It is more basic though and doesn't allow any drive, printer, etc redirection.

Next was something I didn't know about, RDP via HTTP

Using IE5.5 on the laptop this works really really well. Fast responsive I'm really impressed.
Unsurprisingly modern browsers don't by default work but this is definitely something I want to play with.
As far as the server thinks it's just a normal RDP connection.

oh and both of these are locked down to Administrators by default, MS weren't so crazy to think that using your sole server as a terminal server was a good idea.

Next is Outlook Web Access

Pretty basic but does what you need.

Not that Outlook was much better

I've kept with the SBS theme and installed Office for Small Business, This included Word, Excel and Outlook and was ok back in the day but a lot of PowerPoint presentations were doing the rounds back then. You could get away with the viewer but alot of people opted to get Office Pro that included PowerPoint.
Office 2000 was also a pretty important version of the suite (although released in 99) with no major upgrades in XP (aka 2002) or 2003 meant it wasn't uncommon to see this version up till Office 2010.

I cant talk about Outlook with out mentioning the Exchange integration with Active Directory.
Open Active Directory User and Computers, same spot you spend a lot of time managing user permissions ant the like. And right there in the same spot you have another 3 tabs relating to Exchange, so convenient! Sadly this was lost in Exchange 2007 and onward.

The funny thing about Exchange 200o that people may not know is it maps a M:\ drive to itself. A legacy left over from early pre exchange/outlook days but I always thought it was messy and pointless. It had gone by 2003 anyway.

My Overall Impression of SBS?
I think SBS was a bit miss understood. Back then I thought ugh cut down version but If you followed the wizards and did everything the "SBS way" it is actually quite powerful. However as most techies were used to doing things on the standard versions of Windows, Exchange, etc they carried on doing so and missed out on a lot of the benefits. I learnt this with a production 2003 SBS server where after creating a user the mailbox would not be created until you restarted an exchange service which took about 30 seconds, not a big deal back then but annoying. Then I found using the user creation wizard got round this issue (then a SP fixed it and I went back to creating users manually)

What about running it now?
I can see people maybe wanting an old Windows server or even domain controller but that's covered in a standard Windows install. But if you do want to play around with some of the other older server software like exchange or proxy servers then SBS is probably a good way to go.

SBS still has a bit more to it like ISA server which is a kind of combined proxy/firewall which could be useful and shared fax which isn't much use now but was heavily used back then and dropped in 2003 which caused us problems at the time. I may look into these later but would need to rearrange my network to get it working.

But hope it gives some of you a bit of insight into the business side of things when our retro PC's were daily drivers. And just as playing a game of Need for Speed Porsche brings back good memories of 2000 so does seeing some of these screens again 😀

I'll admit I'm surprised the 2000 is anyone's favorite. It fits right in between 98 and XP but not enough to replace either.

Gaming wise 2000 does make a good alternative to 9x and slightly better compatibility then XP and I do use it when I can
BUT
Win98SE plays 100% of the games and can play dos games as well.

and as for NTx32 based OS's XP can run just about everything.

I think I kind of get it though. XP is the workhorse, It'll do late 90's upto games upto roughly 10 years ago, but it lacks character? a certain charm? I don't know something the earlier OS's had maybe because it was around for so long.
2000 will always be special, Kind of like 95 but more so but think begrudgingly XP gets my vote as favorite.

Windows 2000 is my favorite Windows release ever. It has compatibility with most 98SE games and most XP games, is as solid as XP and runs on a lot leaner hardware. It is also rock solid. Windows 2000 / RedHat Linux dual boot was what I lived on until Windows 7 was released. (Ok, I cheated, I used XP briefly in the post SP3 era..)

My own Windows 2000 20th anniversary build is a Socket A Duron 1300 with Voodoo 3 3000 AGP and a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. It is not fully built yet though.. Oh, and it will feature RedHat Linux 6.2 dual boot, of course.

I have win2k on a p3 866, fx5200, game theater xp, and I really like it. A playing XIII on it the other day.

Nice setup.

I've never used SBS myself, but did use Windows 2000 Server (+ Advanced Server) in the early 2000s for web hosting with IIS. I used it both at home & at work, as well as running 2000 Pro as my main OS for a few years on a Pentium III 650MHz PC with 256MB RAM. I didn't switch to Windows 2000 until early 2001, so drivers had started to mature by that point and I had no problem gaming on 2000 at the time.

I only have 2000 Pro currently installed on 1 PC in my collection - a Celeron 700MHz with 192MB RAM. That install is leftover from back in the day and I really could do with doing a clean install and increasing the RAM.