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Maintaining Windows 2000 for the Long Term?
MarkWatson asks: "I keep two Windows machines: a Windows 2000 laptop (bought with XP, but installed an old Windows 2000 license and Linux) and a desktop with XP (dual boot to Linux). I would like to avoid ever buying a PC with Vista, a situation that looks good because I believe both my Windows systems are reliable, fast, and will service my Windows needs for the long term. My problem is this: I like Windows 2000 better for a few reasons, but mainly because the license is transferable. I would like to still be using Windows 2000 5 years from now in a secure and reliable way (again, just for when I need Windows). Since I am far from a Windows expert, I would like to know your strategy for archiving Microsoft's latest Windows 2000 updates, and generally dealing with security issues. My strategy is to set my firewall up to run in stealth mode and not use Windows for general web browsing. Any suggestions will be appreciated!" How would you keep an old Windows OS (like Win98, and WinXP in another year or two) running long after official support for it has ended?
Prayer?
What if the entire Universe were a chrooted environment with everything symlinked from the host?
Eventually, new patches will stop coming out for it. Sure, some people will hack up XP patches, where they can, but eventually they'll stop coming.
So, what can you do? Make sure that you're running what patches do exist, make sure you never ever expose it live to the Internet, make sure that all of your apps are patched, make sure that you're running fully up-to-date antivirus. Don't install any software which is at all questionable, don't visit any questionable websites. Turn off what you can; if you don't use WSH, turn it off. Turn off autoassociations for it, at least. Turn off as much of ActiveX as you can, javascript and so on. There are lots of guides to hardening Win2000/IIS and so on, and most of the reccomendations here are ones that you should be following anyway.
If you wait long enough, of course, people will be targeting Vista rather than Win2000/XP, and you won't have to worry about it; kind of like how Win98 is actually a fairly safe operating system to be running these days.
Oh, and scan it with an up-to-date BartPE disc every once in a while, just to be sure. Make sure you grab the module for Spybot from the Spybot website.
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So ok, its not a perfect solution and might not fit as you didn't specify what you windows needs are, but what about running Win2k virtualized inside a vmware world? Both my laptop and desktop run Ubuntu only these days, but I do have an XP virtual machine on the desktop to "boot up" should I need something which requires Windows. I don't really find much of a reason to do that these days though.
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If you do need to keep Windows natively on the hardware, I would advise setting up a hardware firewall between the machine and the internet, and browse securely with an up to date browswer (Firefox or Opera). Disable MS Filesharing if you don't use it.
Over the long term, you might want to consider why you're keeping Windows and find an alternative (Linux/OS X, whatever). I can't imagine that anything after Vista is going to be any better and well, you will have to upgrade your machines someday
Win2k - Offline Updates: http://www.heise-security.co.uk/articles/80682 . From a post here on Slashdot a while ago, it's a pretty slick tool. Just keep running it until they stop making updates for Win2k, then burn it to multiple high-quality archival CD's for safety :D A firewall (or even consumer router) never hurts, unless it's the Norton firewall.
;D )
Win98 - I'll agree with another poster, virtualize it. VMWare Player is your friend. (and why is Win98 your friend too? I suppose it's not WinME
I recognize people by their sigs. Is that a bad thing?
Others have already made good suggestions for the short-term, such as minimizing exposure, installing all patches, using non-IE browsers when necessary, etc.
If it's at all possible, block all traffic, incoming and outgoing, except what you need. If it's possible, only allow certain processes, such as firefox, to access the Internet at all.
Also, make a full-image backup plus frequent additional backups so you can restore your system if it gets compromised.
The long-haul solution is to go virtual. Get a lightweight Linux with your favorite VM and install Win2K on it. Back up the image frequently. This way if your laptop dies you can replace it and not worry about driver issues. Heck, you can even do all "Internet" traffic on the Linux side and restrict the Windows network to a private-virtual-lan with the host system. Even then, block all traffic except what you really need, such as for file transfer and for printing.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Windows 2k retired from mainstream support on 6/30/2005. It is currently under extended support until 7/13/2010.
So for the next 3 1/2 years you will continue to receive security and critical patches, and you will be able to pay for support if you need it. So there's nothing to panic about yet.
After 2010 though, if MS doesn't extended support, you may want to look in a new direction. Possibly an emulator for Linux to run what ever 2k app you need, or a replacement for those apps you are using. Worst case scenario, (2k support ends and numerous viruses are released for it) you can still run it, you just have to take into consideration the extra security concerns.
Here is the page for MS's support life cycle info: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifeselectindex
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I have lots of customers who had this same concern about Windows NT. Virtually everybody had that beige box in the dark corner of the datacenter with a sign on top saying "don't touch" running some critical app in Windows NT, where registry modifications and tweaks go back years and couldn't be replicated. Newer hardware wouldn't support NT so they kept it running.
The ideal solution is a VM. At least if you use VMware ESX, the virtual hardware exposed by the VMM (virtual machine monitor) is always constant regardless of the physical hardware, and the virtual I/O devices are rather old, so any old OS would support it. In fact, in most cases this solution runs faster than the old beige box regardless of the virtualization tax due to the speed of the new processors.
You can keep a system running for years and years with this method, even backup the full VM as a file.
Disclaimer: I work for VMware, but I see this all the time with actual customers.
She managed a 3.9 GPA this semester, so this setup didn't hurt her.
That may be true. But, did she get laid this semester, or did she have to spend all of her free nights dicking with this ungodly complicated system?
Windows 2000 does not support drives > 137 GB. I just reinstalled Win 2000 on an (older) box with a 200 GB drive. It reported the drive size as 137 GB. The C partition (20GB) was fine, but the D partition (180 GB) was inaccessible. It suggested I run diagnostics. Fortunately I did NOT do this. Instead I installed Service Pack 4 and then did further upgrades on-line. It first required me to manually upgrade to IE6, and then install the MS BITS update package followed by 50-60 patches. Several reboots were required. After that partition D was fine. I did a quick Google and learned that running a file system check before the SP4 install would have completely corrupted the partition. So, maintaining Win 2K systems is already somewhat painful. As MS removes support, it will become more so.
[Insert pithy quote here]
There were a bunch of security patches released after the Rollup, so you need to install those as well. IE 5 isn't supported anymore, either, so you might want to upgrade to IE 6 for those few sites that don't work right with Firefox.
It supports larger drives just fine; I have a 750GB drive happily running on my Windows 2000 box. To fully use a hard drives that's >137GB, Windows 2000 requires service pack 3 or later and a registry hack. You didn't need the IE and other extra patches just to be able to use the other partition.
Windows XP requires service pack 1 and a registry hack. It's possible for OEMs to upgrade the copy of XP they ship to have this feature by default.
For people who just have to format the entire hard drive as one big partition, then this limitation in Windows 2000 can be annoying. Those of us who prefer to keep the OS drive on the small side, separating out data files onto a separate partition, are barely effected by it. I'm already going to install SP4 on any new Windows 2000 system anyway, so I just need to remember which registry key to tickle after that's done and this problem goes away.
Sounds like you don't know Mac OS very well. Pretty much all the stuff you cite - OpenOffice, Firefox, whatever - could have been run natively under OS X. You can even run many xNix apps from the Fink or OpenDarwin projects, tho' native OS X versions are usually much preferable.
/and/ Windows - when you could easily have made a simpler system by removing a whole OS from the equation.
Including running W2K under Virtual PC.
I see no need for what is effectively a triple-boot machine - OS X (with Classic, quadruple-boot), Linux
There's not really much good reason for running Linux on a Mac - there are fewer drivers & proprietary apps in PPC form than x86 and OS X provides pretty much all the Unix goodness one could want.
The virtualisation idea isn't bad, but run W2K with up-to-date A/V and antispyware and so on, behind a hardware firewall, and it's pretty safe even today. Remove & replace all the MS internet apps and it's not bad at all.
Liam P. ~ "Intelligence is a lethal mutation." (me)
Heise Security released an script called Offline Updater.
.iso for each OS and/or it can also create an all-inclusive DVD .iso for all of the above versions. You then burn the .isos you created and the installation is entirely automated (some reboots required but automatically continues with the install).
/ ctupdate302.zip i st=1&forum_id=108277
This script will allow you to create all-inclusive, fully-automated update cds for the English and German versions of Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows 2003. The script will create a CD
Here is an short and sweet write-up on this - http://www.heise-security.co.uk/articles/80682/3
Here is where you download the file (.zip) - http://www.heise.de/ct/ftp/projekte/offlineupdate
Here is Heise Security's Forum on the script - http://www.heise-security.co.uk/forums/go.shtml?l
$diff terrorists hippies
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$rm -rf *terrorists *hippies
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