Any thoughts on above question? There are many of us with old applications that run perfectly well on Win2k, but would like the protection and features of a 'modern' browser. Is Chrome with above pateches still the best choice, or is a simple Firefox install the easiest route? Anyone?

Here I am commenting on a post over a year old. I loved my Win98SE. Then after upgrading my machine several times, decided I should get into this century and got Win2000Pro SP4. I LOVE IT!!! Someone up there ^^^^^^^ said something about it not doing certain things. NOT. No problems until this week. A couple of the sites I am on everyday will no longer be supporting IE6. As I see above, which I should have read BEFORE dling several ver of IE7 and IE8. Found I cannot install either. Soooooo I installed Firefox. Didn't like it a few years back and like it less now. Thought I would get Chrome or Opera. Chrome brought me here. I REFUSE to use any form of XP or Vista (and yes, I have had those experiences on machines I have fixed).

What I would like to know now is, do the above fixes still work? If not, how is Opera? I am thinking that now I am going to have to find a way I can buy 7. And of course legally. I am old and tired and these things do not need to confuse me or make me mad! LOL Someone? Anyone? Thanks in advance!!
Can I post my email here? I guess if not, it will be removed. linncrk@netscape.com. Which, BTW, I sorely miss the very first ver of Netscape Communicator. No bloat. Excellent browser. Stable. At least the first ver was.

This article is about using a *browser* on Win2K so obviously main focus is *desktop*, not servers with 16GB of ram.

For many of us Win2K boots faster and runs faster than XP, Vista, etc.

It is stupid to upgrade to a newer OS, version of Office, etc if it is *worse* for your needs than the "old".

(I still use Office 97 as well, many many times faster than the latest version and not missing any features I use)

Chrome rather than Firefox or Opera... the other two *are* useful, Chrome has some big advantages in niche of "cloud computing" type apps. (better isolation and precompiling of java, etc)

Its time to let it go,
Just because something is working doesn't mean that it shouldn't ever be improved or try to improve.

A house with bad fondations still a bad house no matter how pretty the decorations get, you may be able to half ass install a deck, but you just going to add more stress to the whole.

Couldn't we improve tapes and cartriges?
Probably, but whats the point?

CRT is also dying, some swear that the quality is the best and all, but how long till LCD is undenialbly better?

How long people will have this fear of unknown that isn't that unknown anymore..

windows 2003/2008 is there, its out, its good, but people still on 2000.

"windows xp/vista uses more memory on idle then 2000"
If its iddle you are not using, so what is the point of bringing this up?
there is little to no wear and tear on a computer for leaving it on, for it to be iddling with 1gb of ram or 100mb
as long it brings full performace when I am using, I don't care it uses all of my 16gb of ram or not..

A server computer isn't a little toy, its a SERVER!

A computer power full enough to handle connections from other computer, not that thing you use on your basement to play solitary or keep your little access db.

What about multi core computers?Something 2000 can't even concede..

Thats something trivial nowadays, Multicore computers, 4gb ++ of memory, and over 1 TB of Hard drive space.

Keep the past as good memory stop clinging to it

Castro: Win2K is used on plenty of old computers. Who cares about HYPEtreading? Rubbish on a Win2003 server network? have you heard of protocol standards? TCP/IP is TCP/IP, networks only care about moving bytes around, the OS is irrelevant as long as machines speak the same protocol.

Shut up!

2K seriously is not a good OS.
Cant handle hyper threading, rubbish on a 2k3 network. Not to mention the issue with USB. Have you ever tried to plug in a keyboard at the log in screen? Will take you 3 reboots or 10 mins for that machine to pick it up. You have to hack it to crap to get modern day apps on it. WOW you save 200mb of ram when Idle. 2 Gig of ram is like £20 now days. Stop being so tight. Win2k goes in 2 years. Thats 2 years too long for me. Terrible OS

I'd like to thank for this sort of article and, hmm, maybe ask for more. For a series?

Win2k are important. If you test applications for use in a company, MSFT wants you to buy an extra license for every XP installed into each of them. I went so far as to call their licensing help line to make sure I understood right.

So yes, I do have a few XP installations around, but otherwise it's 2k all 'round. And they run and run for weeks with tons of applications started.

And to tease those who wrote how little RAM their 2k use, how about my NT4 (used for our internal Lotus Domino server) idling at 27 MB RAM used ;-)

Heck why even bother with Chrome. I don't see why the heck you keep comparing Chrome, a browser which is still beta with the final stable release of FireFox.

An Apples to Apples comparison would be Chrome Beta vs the Firefox 3.1 Beta. Funny that, Firefox 3.1 ion average is faster with Javascript (integrated support). Well what do ya know.....

Why would people want to patronize a browser like Google Chrome when the maker doesn't even want them as customers? It's not even a great browser, and other, better browsers are available (Firefox, Opera). It just seems like a lot of effort for a company hostile to a certain OS.

I run Windows 2000 because its more stable than XP, no DRM, and no activation. I had wanted to run Google Chrome to try it out and ran into the error message you described in your article. I am going to give this hack a go and see how it works.

Thanks for the info!

I still run 2000, it still supports almost everything I use. Its the only way I don't have to get sucked into buying more RAM for my old machines. 2k fully installed is about 3gb and consumes about 170mb of ram while idling. My XP Pro boxes average 8gb and 400mb and my Vista box average 15gb and 1.2gb RAM. I see no reason for the Broken OS (Vista) or even having to run XP.

Patching the binary ? WTF ? Why not simply edit and compile the open source version of the browser ? It baffles the mind :-)

They should continue to not support it, but take all the nagware and anti-install crap out of it. Maybe they could put "run at your own risk on Windows 2000" in the documentation.

It's either sheer bloody mindedness or downright stupidity that causes developers to artificially limit their software in this way.

Win2k is almost functionally identical to XP (bar a few minor features like window theming , sub-pixel rendering, UI alpha blending etc.) so unless the program in question specifically relies on those features then there's no reason to exclude Win2k.

Yet increasing numbers of developers are excluding Win2k regardless. Even little shareware apps are starting to do this now.

Fortunately I discovered this:
http://www.msfn.org/board/KDW-FCWIN2K-t120936.html

While it's definitely not for beginners, it's not that difficult to follow the instructions, and it has allowed me to successfully install at least 4 separate XP only utilities (different to the ones listed in the link above) some of which had extensive shell integration.

They all work flawlessly.


This issue isn't even worth printing.

This is why OS X will never gain mass acceptance. When Win2k came out in 2000 OS X hadn't even been released, and now 8 years later you can still run common place apps on it. 

What about...

OS X 10.0, which came out a year later? 
10.1? Nope
10.2? Nope
10.3? Some apps

So four releases of OS X that "don't work anymore" since the release of 2k.


Is this a bit like a lot of web sites that claim you cant run them on FireFox/Linux - but run 'perfectly well' if you get FireFox to spoof?
I can never work out whether that's deliberate of just extremely poor coding.
I'm not a little worried that megalomaniacs like Google cant write simple automatic testing of releases on various platforms.
Mind you the presence of certain Windows toolkits in Chrome suggest badly trained programmers.

And if I did all those upgrades you suggested most of my windows code would stop working on W2K!

Too useful, too quick, too stable, too clean to live... Pft, come on Google I can't see any reason to block 2K. Best OS MS ever made.