Windows 2000 runs AJAX apps on Google's Chrome browser
THERE ARE a lot of users of Windows 2000 still out there, and the good news is that those old systems can get an extra speed boost on AJAX applications by running Google's speed-optimised Chrome browser.
All this despite Google, because the firm still refuses to support this old yet leaner and stable OS.
Surprise: Google's Chrome browser running on Windows 2000
Windows 2000 -Win2K hereinafter- is specially popular in corporate environments with support contracts; formal support for this OS ends in mid-2010 which means it still has two more years life. However, those Win2K users were not very happy when Microsoft left them running ancient IE 6 by refusing to support Win2K with Internet Explorer 7.
The complaints were repeated once again when Google released its Chrome browser officially supported only on Windows XP and Vista. In fact, if you attempt to download the installer from a Windows 2000 machine you cannot, and even if you download the small "active installer" elsewhere and then transfer it to a Win2K system, it refuses to install.
We've been running it for over a week:
it works
Needless to says, Win2K users weren't thrilled: "Another win2k user here. How hard is this to do, Firefox manages it. What's wrong with Google's engineers do they moonlight for MS."
"Yet another disappointed Win2k user. I've just tried it out at work, and like it, but we run XP and Vista there," Were some of the comments that could be read on the blogosphere the first few days after the Chrome release.
Others added: "I also would REALLY like to try Google Chrome. I use Win2K because I think it’s all that’s necessary and I won’t tolerate the DRM & “Mandatory Activation” in XP etc." And " W2K - it’s the OS I use 98% of the time, only booting up an XP machine as a last resort. There’s so much high-quality software out there that’ll run happily on W2K upwards, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just laziness that makes programmers code their apps for XP/Vista only," chimed another.
Here is what you get when you attempt to install it on Win2K
Fortunately for all of them, some users took things into their own hands, and a blogger in Japan found a solution which allows it installing and running Chrome on Win2K. We tested it and can confirm it works, so here is the easy way to do it.
First, the requirements: you need to have Service Pack 4 installed over Windows 2000. Then you need Security Roll-up 1. We just went ahead and downloaded the "unofficial Service Pack 5" from MajorGeeks.com which integrates SP4 with the SR1. Just to be safe and since Gears is delivered as a .MSI installer, we also downloaded and installed Windows Installer 3.1 v2.
Once you have all this, you need to grab the latest Beta release of Google Chrome, which at the time of this writing is build 149.29. If you are using Windows 2000, the Google server won't let you have the files but you can use the direct download links for the full off-line installer we provided here.
Entering the information into your
system registry
Once you have the EXE installer and the .MSI for Google gears you are halfway there. Then you need to grab this file from this Japanese blogger and extract it. Ignore the provided .Bat and run only the chrome2k.reg file which adds exceptions to the Google Chrome file names.
Then you can run the Gears and Chrome installers. After installation, and the first run, the browser will pop up a dialogue saying it detected Windows 2000 and that it's an unsupported configuration. Accept that, the browser will run just fine. The browser just runs perfectly fine in our tests, and it should give a new life to old, slower systems still running Win2K, specially for AJAX web based applications given the improved, faster Javascript engine in Chrome that is faster than Firefox's own.
Procedure done: Chrome installed in Win2K
Extreme hacking
Okay, we hear all you saying, but how about this nasty pop-up dialogue box
every time you run the browser?. The good news is that the Japanese didn't stand
still and found a way to patch it. The more adventurous amongst you can download
a freeware hex editor,
and point it to the chrome.dll file located in
"\Documents and Settings\{your user name}\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\0.2.149.29"
...and patch it to make the nasty "Windows 2000 not supported" warning dialogue go away for good. This probably violates the EULA, several international treaties, the Berne convention and will probably have former U.S. Secretary of War Defense Rumsfeld himself coming in a black helicopter to get you and translate you to an undisclosed location.
In any case, this Japanese guy dubbing himself "Black Wing Cat" says that if you patch at offset 0008F317 the sequence of bytes "83 F8 01" with "83 F8 00" -on build 149.29- the dialogue goes away.
We tested it and it works. Your mileage might vary. Consult with an attorney and your conscience. We neither condone nor disapprove patching bytes on files residing on your computer. *cough*
In short Despite the firm's official stance of not supporting Windows 2000 for its Chrome Browser, Google's latest software can be made to run just fine under Windows 2000, provided you follow this simple procedure. This could make your old Win2K system a lot more useful. We think Google should just make Win2K a supported platform and please a lot of users in the process, avoiding these silly unofficial procedures. µ
L'INQs Google Chrome does not work on Windows 2000? Internet Sh## Japanese blogger "Black Wing Cat"
[UPDATE: the same blog has published today the byte offset to patch in the new build 149.30 to remove the warning dialog on start-up, over here]
Share this:
Business Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
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.
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!
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.

This issue isn't even worth printing.
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.

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