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Half Of Businesses Still Use Windows 2000
bonch writes "An AssetMetrix study shows that half of business are still running Windows 2000 four years after the release of Windows XP, and that usage of Windows 2000 has only decreased by 4% since 2003. Microsoft will officially stop supporting Windows 2000 by the end of this month, offering one last update rollup later this year. Windows XP's slower adoption illustrates Microsoft's difficulty in competing with the popularity of its own software platform, and makes it more difficult for Microsoft to convince people to upgrade when Longhorn is released late next year."
when Longhorn is released late next year
Yeak, okay...
Yeah, right.
More
I have not run into a compelling reason to upgrade from Win2k to XP. Win2k has been very stable for me. It seems that my XP boxes get more security patches than my Win2k boxes. I don't need all the eye candy of XP.
Windows XP's slower adoption illustrates Microsoft's difficulty in competing with the popularity of its own software platform
I don't think the "popularity" of Windows 2000 is a factor. I think its more of businesses have a hard time justifying that hit for another $199 to Microsoft for an updated version when the version they've already paid for meets their needs.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Certainly in the mass market. Why upgrade if you're not getting any significant benefit and possibly causing yourself huge amounts of grief?
Deleted
As long as it runs their copy of Office and all programs they're running are also compatible with 2000 still, I don't see the incentive to spend thousands on a upgrade that is probably seen as highly unnecessary at this time, not to mention they're probably running them on boxes that would be slowed down by XP. The lack of support coming at the end of the month may have some incentive to move to a new version, but I still doubt many will see it as a great need to move on.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
The simple fact of the matter is that upgrading from Windows 2k to Windows XP, doesn't offer much, a server running Windows 2003 Server, can still operate the same without switching the clients to Windows XP. Windows 2000 also takes uses less hardware requirements, and if it runs all their programs with ease, why would they risk switching to a new OS with problems? Then there is the fact of security Windows 2k has been around about 5 years, its going to have less exploits then a system like XP which can have more potential security flaws, then ones that been around longer.
Most buisnesses have already bought Windows 2000, the cost of maintiaing it is equivalent to the cost of maintaining windows xp, so why would buisnesses upgrade to windows XP at an extra cost? We use Windows 2000 at our office and we dont think that upgrading to windows XP will increase our productivity.
The initial model of growth probably was that as buisnesses purchase and add NEW hardware, they will obivously prefer latest software. Now that PC penertration has into businesses has almost saturated, this model will no longer mean profitable buisness for microsoft.
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What happens when Longhorn comes out? It'll be five years old in a year, even though it's still the most up-to-date desktop OS that Microsoft offers (discounting Media Center Edition, 64-bit, etc.) I'm contemplating trying to convince my company to move to XP (from Windows 98) and support is one of the key selling points... so what happens when Longhorn comes out? You have a few months, and then you lose support if you're running anything less on a desktop?
There are two main reason I have seen for not upgrading:
1. There isn't very much difference between XP and 2000. 2000 is a fairly stable platform that runs pretty much all the same software as XP. "If it ain't broke"
2. The activation stuff sucks. Even as a legal owner I find it is a huge pain in the ass. This is especially true when you upgrade a server. It's not uncommon to upgrade servers either by changing/adding hardware or just replacing the whole machine which can cause you to have to reactivate Windows. Now, it's not that hard to reactivate but it's just a stupid little thing you have to do and the machine won't work until it's done. It feels risky to upgrade machines running XP because you're not sure if everything will go smoothly because of the activation crap.
I use 2000 on my main development machine because sometimes I do have to change the hardware for testing purposes and I got tired of having to continuously reactivate Windows.
I don't know what I'm going to do if they stop supporting 2000. More reason to spend more time in Linux or OS X I guess (although technically I simply must spend some time in Windows for development purposes).
The ratio of people to cake is too big
If Microsoft is really interested in getting businesses to upgrade from Windows 2000 to Longhorn, then all they need to do is a couple of things. One make the upgrade procedure from 2K to Longhorn as smooth and painless as possible and two provide the upgrade at a very good price, like the cost of media or shipping or some other nominal fee. Seriously! If progress is being held up (or support is costing too much) then Microsoft needs to offer a deal that cannot be refused. It cost more to get new customers than to keep old ones. Besides, Office is where the real money is anyway, so keep em hooked by keeping them on Windows by making it a no brainer.
This is a lot of work for Microsoft programmers and designers to pull off and a lot of expense. But most of this work needs to be done anyway and in the long term it can only pay off for the company and for its customers. Longhorn is going to take a while to get here, so they might as well make it worth the effort.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Why doesn't MS try a subscription based scheme? A small amount for installation of the OS, and then a renewal fee each year?
They already do.
Here is a list of the new features in XP. Notice the use of words like "Enhanced, Improved, Greater, Easier" -
.NET Platform
For the life of me, I can't figure out why anybody would consider moving thousands of workstations to XP. The only thing I can come up with is the built in firewall which can be controlled via group policy.
User interface improvements? Big deal, so now it looks like nintendo. Better help? Users call the help desk. 64 bit? Big deal...
-Intelligent User Interface
-Comprehensive Digital Media Support
-Greater Application and Device Compatibility
-Enhanced File and Print Services
-Improved Networking and Communications
-Integrated Help and Support Services
-Improved Mobile Computing
-Reliability Improvements
-Stronger Security Protections
-Easier Manageability
-64-Bit Support
-Looking Forward: The Microsoft
On our network of fifty users, we are staying with Windows 98 Second Edition for the near future; Win98 doesn't suffer from most of the worm and trojan activity that affects Win2000 and WinXP. Also, for our purposes, Win98SE Just Works.
"If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it." --- Arthur Kasspe
It has to be released then according to MS: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle/default .mspx
Check out the table. Notice how the licencing end dates run out at the end of this year for OEMs and next year for system builders? Longhorn has to fill that spot or the contracts need to be renegotiated.
How much of the other half still runs win95/98/me ? It just depends when they bought their comuters and how long they last, not how long MS thinks its software should last.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
I'm the only IT guy, and my company uses a windows2000 server with active directory and such on a Dell. Runs fine.
Assuming you're under fifty employees, have you looked at MS's Small Business Server? For about the price of the server OS on its own you get all the big server products provided you run them all on the same box.
Granted, there's not a lot to make SBS 2003 a must-have over SBS 2000 apart from:
1. Exchange 2003's Outlook Web Access is much nicer than 2000's
2. ISA Server 2004 instead of ISA 2000 (if you get the SBS 2003 Premium edition and apply SP1)
and they're just nice-to-haves really, along with all the other Server 2003 nice-to-haves.
I can recall similar tales of various versions of NT back in the day suffering from slow adoption. Aside from what has been previously stated in this thread about just what XP offers to business users as opposed to 2000 (almost nothing), let's keep mitigating factors in mind.
.NET being scrapped as native to the OS, there are less headaches than one could initially surmise. I will stress, however, that the pattern of not being able to get something to work right and trashing it demonstrates a development problem which, if not rectified by now or soon, could result in an extremely poor product coming out of Redmond. They need to be at the top of their game, as their enemies come from all fronts with attractive offerings of their own these days...
The enterprise costs of XP in support are greater than 2000 in a number of cases. Many companies bought into 2000 in the very beginning, and got hardware that worked at that time. Resources are a problem for many of the machines built OEM for Win2k. Additionally, compatibility issues with other software and hardware solutions arise. Speaking from personal experience, our company committed to a software phone system which, as it turned out when we tried to upgrade to XP, just STOPPED WORKING. This is really bad for a CALL CENTER. Compatibility issues such as these mar XP's widespread corporate adoption.
I will go so far as to predict Longhorn will have the same adoption problem if Redmond continues current patterns. With WinFS and
The Crimson Dragon
Old Macs hang around, too. If staff are getting their work done on the old junk they're using, management is loathe is spend money on a replacement.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Do you know how many businesses use 98 still? A LOT. Many businesses are still using 95 and 98 on their old computers because they can't afford new computers. Businesses are not going to change as quickly as Microsoft wants them to. NEWS FLASH!
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
WinXP is laid out all screwy too, makes it really hard to configure or use. I don't think it's any more stable either. Also, the "eye candy" you refer to is absolutely garish - it's like they got a retarded monkey to try to imitate Mac OSX. First thing I did on my work computer (which is XP unfortunately) was switch the style to classic to save my eyes and some of my sanity.
No kidding! It's pretty funny that after years of making less than impressive operating systems, what is now hurting MS is that they made a good one and now people aren't upgrading. If something works, why change it?
I don't think this is unique to Windows, though. How many shops are still on older versions of Solaris, Red Hat, or Suse? Heck, even Steve Jobs can't understand why people on OS X 10.2 and previous have not upgraded yet. Unless you *have* to have the latest and greatest -- or are running some sort of R&D operation -- most businesses are simply going to stick with what works.
XP does not give any increase in productivity and therefore there is no need to upgrade. Also at the rate Microsoft releases new operating systems the workload on the integration teams increase. Rolling out a new operating system requires a lot of testing on all the hardware found in the corporation. Because of this, it really has to be important to actually roll out a new version of Windows.
With the eye-candy disabled, XP is just a more up-to-date Win2K - just as stable/unstable really.
The interesting thing is - what % of businesses are XP? Even if MS get some of the Win2K people to go to XP - how are they going to get the XP people to go to Longhorn? It isn't going to happen extensively!!! MS are actually possibly more screwed (at least in terms of getting people to Longhorn) if they get Win2K people to go to XP at this stage.
And it's still long time to wait for direct Win2K -> Longhorn upgrades (2 years? More? -including evaluation/install time for businesses).
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Your system is down for a minimum of several days, and possibly weeks as all the apps have to be reinstalled/upgraded/reconfigured. It may not work at all.
If the system is WORKING then only a fool would bugger about with it. I have no intention of upgrading any of my WIn2K servers until such time as they are down for other reasons. And even then, only if I am sure that all the third party apps are guaranteed to work - most of our mission critical stuff is ONLY certified for WIn2k server edition. Mission-critical means if its down, we stop earning money. So down is not very good news.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Just because you have a new version doesn't mean you're innovating. Countless industries crank out the same crap every year (auto, entertainment, etc.) There are no real innovations in the newest version that I'd need to have, so I'll save myself the time and expense of an OS upgrade.
If MS doesn't want customers complaining (not sure this is true, but...), they need but support useful products for as long as customers are willing to pay for them.
Dare to Hope. Prepare to be Disappointed.
Like the link says, only "Mainstream" support will end. You can still get support on a per-incident basis (which isn't really that much different then before.)
Additionally, Microsoft will continue to release security fixes for Windows 2000 for several more years - they still release patches for Windows 98 now.
It won't change much for most people.
At my company, we've got several hundred servers running Windows 2000 still. IIS6 in IIS5 compatibility mode isn't perfect, and IIS6 in native mode breaks a lot of apps. And there's a ton of other little gotchas with Windows Server 2003 - Can't run Exchange 2000 on it, can't run a lot of 3rd party software, etc etc. It's not an extremely hard upgrade but like any other major upgrade it's a lot of preparation.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I work for a large international company and we're still using Win95. We see no reason to change. Many of our PCs are used for basic Office apps and Unix terminal emulation. We're not connected to the Internet so we see no reason to spend thousends of pounds replacing the 486s running Win95. At ~£1000 per base unit and over 4,000 units it's £4,000,000 we just don't need to spend.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
I can definitely see why companies still want to use Win2k over XP. Windows 2000 is simply better suited for corporate use. It does not have any particularly distracting eye candy (think color blue) and just seems to have the best useful-to-crap features ratio of all the MS operating systems. I remember when our network was windows-based, I had the servers running 2k, and we just got a couple of P4 machines (when they first came out) preinstalled with XP home. It was a hell of a time getting those things fully working with the rest of the network. We ended up having to downgrade those machines (fun with xp-only drivers there!) because Home edition just wouldn't do what we wanted.. this is say that those copies of Home were just money wasted. XP just has a bunch of useless stuff built into it that has no place in a corporate environment. Win2k is really the least of the many evils.
Now I have the servers running Linux and even still, XP machines have problems playing nice with the samba shares. Win2k works fine, however. Go figure.
I like Windows XP. However, I just don't understand why they did some of the things that they did with it.
1. MSN Messenger auto running. Sure in a corp environment you can just have it disabled but it's annoying for small businesses that just don't have the IT resources to do it.
2. OS popups. Notifications above the tray that bring you the most inane messages ever. Try plugging in a USB2 device into a system that only has USB1.1 and follow the popup's instructions. Who the hell thought this was a good idea? I'm sure this is from MS's "usability" group that brought us Clippy and Search Mutt.
3. Window pane focus changes. This one I just don't understand. In 2k, if I open Windows Explorer in folder view, I can use the scroll wheel to scroll the pane that the mouse is over. In XP, I have to click the pane first to scroll. This probably doesn't affect many people but for those that it does, it is super annoying.
Since 2k still works for most people, I can see why XP would have such a problem replacing it.
IMHO this is a symptom of Microsoft taking something that ought to be plumbing or commodity, and turning it into a high-value, highly-visible product. The O.S. ought to be like plumbing and electrical wiring in your house, it just works. It's even more basic than the appliances, because you just assume that there's line current there when you plug in the toaster, or what have you. You just assume there are pipes behind that faucet and toilet. Furthermore, in the electrical case, you just assume there's a circuit breaker, GFI in the case of kitchen, bathroom, or outdoor.
Following the house analogy a little further, Microsoft has turned the house into, "Here's the house + basic plumbing fixtures + basic appliances." Actually, that's not too far from the way a house is bought, EXCEPT...
1: They've defined the whole package. When you buy a new house, you usually get to spec out fixtures and basic appliances.
2: They want you to re-purchase the whole thing every 3 years. Usually I only re-purchase as things wear out, and repair as needed.
3: They tend to bundle more appliances in with new releases. I'd never expect the toaster, food processor, and TV to be part of my "house" purchase.
Now compare the house model to Gentoo Linux. Gentoo has releases, but for the most part you can ignore them. At the lowest maintenance level, you just run "glsa-check" and keep up with security fixes. Higher maintenance levels are available if you want to stay closer to the bleeding edge, but at no point are you forced or expected to chuck it all and reinstall the OS. Some updates can be painful, like the new baselayout last week on my server. (The desktops took it just fine.) But it was still better than a reinstall.
OTOH, to be able to turn PVC piping and Romex into something people will line up for at midnight to buy is an interesting marketing feat, in itself.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Mainstream support for W2K ends, not support. All this means is that there will be no more functionality changes or enhancements. Security patchas, phone support, and debug escalations are all still in place, exactly as they are today. Stop the madness.
First of all, Microsoft tried a subscription scheme back in 2001 and no one switched, mostly because it was more expensive than the current pricing schedules (Microsoft got greedy and was trying to lock in their ridiculously high profit margins to the end of time). Plus, to make a subscription model make sense, businesses would have had to update on Microsoft's schedule. That idea will never fly with a business.
It is a very expensive and time consuming process to update the system for businesses because they have to test and probably update lots of other programs as well as the system. Some of the programs you don't find in the consumer market and there is no guarantee that the vendor has an updated version that works with the latest system. If the business is using programs in that category, then they have to either wait on the vendor to create an update or they have to switch to another program. Switching programs can create even more problems. All in all, upgrading the system when there is no real reason to do so just isn't done. Forget Windows 2000, I know of businesses still running DOS for some of their programs simply because the function the program provides still works just fine.
Bottom line, the goal of the last few Windows upgrades has been more to generate hardware sales for PC vendors and cash flow for Microsoft than it has been to introduce real innovation and savvy businesses recognise that. Longhorn doesn't look to be any more than an enhanced DRM platform that will require faster hardware at this point and that is not likely to make it a compelling upgrade for the average business (nor for an informed consumer). Microsoft is stuck in a rut, in the sense that it looks like Longhorn will be "more of the same" from Microsoft, and that just won't cut it anymore.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
"Windows 95 and Windows 98 were reduced from a collective 28% to less than 5%;
Windows NT popularity was reduced from 13.5% to about 10%; and
Windows XP became the most popular operating system for companies with fewer than 250 PCs."
I don't think ME was ever popularly deployed in businesses. I shudder to think about it. Win2k was available then.
On top of this, MS is suffering from the aftereffects of its own campaign to get companies to upgrade every time a new version came out. There are still quite a few businesses and government agencies who are stinging from the horrible botch that was ME.
I know there are certainly still county and state government offices around where I live still using ME simply because nobody will budget OS upgrades.
The workers are NOT pleased.
It's hard to justify upgrading your stable W2K server to XP if a successor product is just around the corner. Longhorn has been "just around the corner" for years.
It's common practice for software vendors to preannounce product in order to keep customers from looking elsewhere. But sometimes the tactic can backfire.
Does the development of a Win2K clone called ReactOS have any bearing on this discussion? (And is ReactOS genuinely a Win2K clone? I can't find links on their website to pin this part down.)
A GPL clone of the software that Microsoft no longer supports would allow internal fixing of broken things -- as long as the clone correctly runs the software in use.
According to the original report, the sample only covers windows-based PCs. Therefore the headline really means that over half of the PCs which run Windows are running the Windows 2000 variant.
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
Push for legislation requiring software vendors such as Microsoft release the source code of software that they no longer support.
While they'll bitch and moan, you'll have tons of programmers on the side who'd be chomping at the bit to supply support for legacy systems/OSes.
Hell, I imagine that for the most part, you have the potential to rebuild a good deal of the computer industry, just by fixing holes in old MS products, etc, that MS in turn would save a fortune in no longer having to support.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Make that not knowing their customers' customers.
While it may be fine for a Microsoft customer (Don't laugh. So its like a Mafia customer. They make them an offer...) like Dell to sell all the machines with XP pre-installed we (a Dell customer to the tune of several 10K units per year) just strip that puppy off the machine and install a plain vanilla Win2k from a CD because its absolute murder on the software when something changes.
If the OS changes and breaks something in our software, its a lot tougher and more expensive for us to fix (when its even possible. We probably won't be able to rehire the same team and most of the, uh, interesting documentation was done by osmosis.)
Microsoft's XP can sit on the shelf 'till the Longhorn cows come home.
Win2K is curently fine. We wouldn't even have gotten off NT4.0 if they hadn't 'end-of-life'd it. It did what was required and stayed out of the way.
If that hurts Microsoft's pocket book, maybe they should get into the toy business.
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Windows 2000 is one of their best platforms. It performs ok, and is more stable than anything they have previously put out. The only reason they would stop support for it is so that they can FORCE people to make unnecessary upgrades, and get more money.
The fact that usage has only dropped by 4% shows that their customers still want to use it. I would think they would do a better job of doing what their clients want.
This seems like a bad move.
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Of course, if you look at the AssetMatrix site, they say Unfortunately, my quick glance didn't turn up the full report from the study (I found their news release, which said to go to their website, which linked to the news release) , the data used, or the definition of 'market share' as used in the news release.
But to answer your question, from the news release:Of course, we have no idea what those numbers mean, so it's fairly useless, other than to know that they've chosen a system that makes the numbers go down with time for Win95/98.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
... considering that Win2K was Microsoft's first, and last, decent operating system.
Yes, I've had to do this a number of times, actually. But one problem is, after you read off the long code over the phone to them, you may or may not get an activation key back.
I'm not quite sure what the limitations are, but Microsoft obviously has measures in place to limit the number of times someone can re-activate XP that way. I've had customers who radically changed and upgraded their PCs a number of times over the last few years. When they had a drive crash and no good backups, it was up to me to swap out their drive and re-install XP and their apps from scratch. Their key refused to activate again, because apparently, MS decided it had been re-activated too often already and they put some kind of "block" on the code.
The spin on this story seems to be that MS will be hurt because their customers aren't upgrading to Win XP.
The other fact that this story reveals is that many MS customers are so happy with Win 2K that they don't want to change. That inertia is far more damaging to the prospect of Linux on the desktop than it is to MS's bottom line.
I'm one of those who has not upgraded from Windows 2000 to Windows XP. It's not the software I dread, it's Microsoft's increasingly ridiculous enforcement of its own personal theory of Intellectual Property rigor. No, I'm not someone who cheats on licenses. I am meticulous about having valid licenses for all the machines in my home/office. HOWEVER, that means (a) I've paid for them and (b) I have the right number. It does NOT necessarily mean that when I have to reload a system, I have the kind of records to know whether the huge box of CD-ROM's I grab from my basement is organized enough to know that I've got the correct one of six disks. That means there's a huge chance as they get stronger with THEIR bookkeeping that one day it's going to start barfing at me about how I appear (to them) to have a disk that isn't the right one for this machine, or I appear to have two machines on the net using the same license. XP is even more strict about licenses than 2000, so I just dread their faulty software ragging on me.
Even just to install the later version(s) of Media Player, you have to agree to some awful license that lets it sniff out your machine and make its own determination (without asking for my input) about whether I'm in violation of their license policies.
And now they have other tools that are starting to do this as well.
And XP is full of "more of same", which is why I have resisted upgrading.
Why should I, a customer who believes he IS in compliance, fear these tools except because I don't trust Microsoft to implement them well and flexibly enough to do anything but screw me? Every time they are wrong, Microsoft gets another sale (or tries to) and I get no recourse. They can deny me bug fixes, upgrades, and so on based solely on their program's opinion of my license management practices.
This problem has to be worse at sites where installation is so complicated that machines are ghosted. Presumably in the ghosting case, you buy a heap of licenses, but then you copy a single image to all the different machines. Well, that's all well and good, but when you get all done, you're all apparently violators.
There's just a limit to what you can mechanically detect. And when you've got as much income as Microsoft plainly has, you need to learn to trust that most people must be paying you and not start to piss them off by treating them like they are cheaters.
They should be investing in tools that allow them to flexibly manage a sense of how many licenses you have at a site, and that don't make me dig around in my basement every time I need to do an upgrade and it wants me to find the original disk from which I installed something to prove I'm a real person. I've given them far too much real money and have been too staunch a supporter of software-for-fee to be treated this way.
Trying to force me into upgrading to a product that treats me worse by cutting support for one that does not is no way to engender my customer loyalty. Maybe if Microsoft doesn't care, it's time to start complaining to the various tools that I (again) BUY on Microsoft's platform and tell them I'm going to be jumping ship from Microsoft and that means I won't be buying their tools any more unless they run on Linux or Apple or wherever I end up. If Microsoft doesn't hear my little voice, maybe it will hear the voices of the tools that I want that are the only reason I buy from Microsoft. Maybe if I could buy Adobe InDesign or Adobe Photoshop for Linux (please don't tell me Gimp is good enough, because it's just not), I wouldn't have to buy Microsoft at all.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
I still run windows win2k pro at home and plan to remain with it until new programs stop supporting it. At work though I've had to set up machines with xp. XP out the box default settings are incredibly annoying but I have to say if you take the time to configure one machine and then make an image of it you can make it even more functional then win2k. I set all the layout looks back to classic mode, installed tweak ui power toys, including the iso recorder, so now all systems have built in burning capacity for standard data as well as iso's. In addition I've read win2k doesn't support hyperthreading while xp does so if your machine runs new intel p4's you're better off with XP, at home though I still run an overclocked athlon xp so win2k is just as good. I still think win2k is a little less bloated and if you're after maximum speed one should go with setting up win2k over xp, but with 2.8p4's and above the speed hit you take with xp is negligble, and with hyperthreading I've noticed the 2.8ghz dell optiplex's are faster with basic tasks then my o/c athlon 2100 at 2.2Ghz.
The best situation that I have had in domain environments is Windows 2003 Server with XP Professional Workstation. The XP Pro machines join the domains and can access the Exchange server with less issues than anyother setup I have worked with. Maybe I'm not doing things right, or maybe I'm a moron, but Windows 2000 machines have some issues loging in due to searching for the DNS. And in situations where there is a Windows 2000 Server, there are sometimes problems with the workstations using Exchange.
I have used Win 3.11(with patched), 98 (SP2), and I'm happy with 2000(SP2). So hopefully Longhorn will follow suit and be just as good in inovations and stability.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Not even close. I have a box that runs perfectly when w2k is installed. When I put XP on it, the sound card doesnt work right (But I suppose a Soundblaster16 PCI card is a pretty esoteric card to test drivers aginst...),
What does the card not do? Work at all? Did you try installing the drivers that came with the card?
and SP2 destroys the machine's ability to connect to any sort of a network. (Again, a 3com 905 seriese NIC are pretty much unheard of, right?)
Again, neither XP nor 2K worked with my 3Com card out of the box, needed the drivers that were on the CD that came with it.
They even crippled some of the features that W2K had for XP, so they could sell more expensive versions of the OS. You can run a webserver from W2k Pro, try doing that with XP Pro.
Getting a web server working on 2K:
1) install 2K
2) once system is working, insert 2K CD into drive.
3) select "Add or remove Windows components"
4) click on IIS.
Getting a web server working on XP:
1) install XP
2) once system is working, insert XP CD into drive.
3) select "Add or remove Windows components"
4) click on IIS.
Wow. That sure was tough. Now, try setting up an ethernet bridge on 2K Pro, XP Pro does it quite nicely, but with 2K you need a server version. Same deal with RDP.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!