December 21, 2004

• I have a friend who swears by virtual environments for development. He can set his machine up however he wants and set up his dev and test environments as restorable image files on disk. VMWare, Virtual PC, Bochs, Qemu, etc. There are several options, and you can develop/work on XP and test on a clean 2K env. Or boot into linux and work on W2K... I think this will become more common in a few years, but if you're working with W2K now, it may be helpful already...
• Has anyone had a problem where Windows 2000 does not run What is this, some kind of trick question? Ahem. I did that once- I formatted my laptop and installed a new operating system. It only recognized the keyboard. No mouse, no internet, no video (not even VGA). I had to boot to dos, download the drivers from another pc, copy them over on a disc, and install them from the command line. It totally sucked. My advice to you would be to run XP on that laptop. If you prefer 2k over xp, I'd assume that you're thinking of the home edition of xp, and I'd suggest that you try xp pro and see if you like that better. If you absolutely must have 2k, then download a the 2k network driver that's compatible with your laptop from another computer and copy it over on disc, then download everything else you need. You'll have to do a bit of googling or combing through documentation to find which drivers you need for your specific model of laptop.
• I should've read more before replying. So what is going on here? Are the notebook manufacturers now blackballing their models with proprietary BIOS Plug & Play chips to force Win2K customers to buy up to the more expensive models? No, they don't. If anything they'd assume that people would pay more to get xp over 2k. This is just how notebooks are. They created these laptops, and their components, to run on a certain system, and not necessarily on any other. Not like a sound card or something, that could conceivably be put into any desktop, or a desktop that you can open up and insert any new device. The laptop I was talking about in my previous posts had stop/play/prev/next CD buttons on it, and I never got those to work again, although I didn't really try too hard because they were not essential. I didn't notice earlier that you have to program under 2k. So I withdraw my earlier suggestion that you run xp, and suggest that you either try to make your laptop work with 2k (or at least as many parts of your laptop as possible, like I did) or go with VMWare like MCroft said.
• Laptops, particularly major brand laptops, are often crafted around proprietary chipsets. Perhaps proprietary isn't quite the right word, because usually these chipsets are chosen more for cost than any competitive feature advantage. A particular chipset might only appear for a few months in one or two models from a particular manufacturer. The point is, the major manufacturer often has to handcraft drivers in order to get Windows running on their weird laptop chipset. Needless to say, they put the effort into whatever Windows version is most likely to be used on that model laptop. If it's a consumer model laptop, there's only likely to be support for WinXP. If it's a corporate aimed model, the manufacturer might put the effort into getting Win2k or WinNT working, but they'll often neglect any hardware outside of the core features. For example, I once worked with some IBM Thinkpad models that were literally incompatible with Windows itself. IBM had to handcraft the Windows source code to get it working, so only one very particular version of Win98 would run on these models. Forget any upgrades or switching to WinNT, etc. IBM wasn't wasting any more programming man-hours on these beasts once they were out the door. As a result, it's entirely the norm that you'll have to use weird proprietary manufacturer drivers to get Windows working on a laptop, particularly if it's an alternative version of Windows. As a result, if you have to run something like Win2k, the first step before you buy the laptop is checking the manufacturer's web site and seeing what drivers are available for which OS, for that model. Checking a particular laptop model out on the Linux web sites can also be useful, even if you aren't planning on running Linux. Since the Linux community often has to handcraft their own drivers, they focus on the most widely used hardware. If a laptop model is well supported for Linux, it's likely using mostly industry standard kit, with little weird limiting hardware. The fact that it's an HP is additional bad news. The Omnibooks are generally surprisingly decent, but HP's driver support is generally mediocre at best, and they're support web site is a nightmare. You can search in there for hours and end up convinced they never even manufactured the product you're holding in your hands.
• "Any experiences, references, or links would be greatly appreciated." My first suggestion for you would be that you learn how to slipstream Service Pack 4 into your Windows 2000 install disk, or at least look around for a Win2K disk which already has the SP slipstreamed; the reason why this matters is that SP4 has more up-to-date drivers in general, as well as better support for PnP, USB, etc. As for resolving specific driver issues, I suggest you look at the Win2K Resource Kit or the Microsoft Press books on administering the OS to learn how to create a custom install with any desired drivers in the appropriate locations; you'll find that MS makes plenty of provision for administrators looking to provide install-time support for new hardware.
• Thanks -- some very good info all around, especially from Nal. This points me in the right direction.
• nal: You can search in there for hours and end up convinced they never even manufactured the product you're holding in your hands. damn straight, there. i bought my laptop (hp pavilion) because i needed a cheap work computer, but damned if HP doesn't drive me nuts whenever i try to look anything up in the support files. i have an empty memory-ish slot of some sort on the bottom of the machine and i can't even get HP to tell me what the hell it is for.
• You'll find that manufacturers cut corners by putting in hardware that relies on software to function. The notorious Winmodem is one egregious, hate-inducing example. Not only does your computer slow down when it has to emulate hardware, but you had better hope your OS (including Windows) has drivers for the thing. I suspect that's what you're running into here. Better off with a Mac. You'll know it works. The money you think you're saving on a Windows box will just go on boxes of tissues to wipe away the tears of frustration.
• Why do you want 2000 anyway? If you turn off the themes in xp, it looks just like 2000 anyway. Since xp is based on 2000, they have a lot more similarities than differences.
• If your going to go the xp way, definately go pro. It's far superior, the home version sucks.
• The best HP story I heard was when I got a cheap laptop running ME (I know, I know, mistake to begin with). 6 months after purchase I was thinking about upgrading to 2k. Thankfully, other people had thought of the same thing, and had discovered before I that while most of the drivers were supported, the FAN was not. And, short of downgrading, there was no solution. No operational fan is a bad bad thing. I just gave up and donated the machine to mom to use as a web client. This message brought to you by your friends at Dell: Better Living Through No Inventory
• If it runs xp it should run w2k no problem. The price diff is porbably becuase it's XP Home which is about $100 less than w2k/xp professional. Home doesn't have a webserver and a few other things, though some people say you can get IIS running on Home. Beware if you have a Dell (or some specific) w2k disk you wont be able to install it on new hardware.
• If your going to go the xp way, definately go pro. It's far superior, the home version sucks. Why say such a stupid thing? Home is perfectly fine if you're a casual user and it costs much less. Pro is not superior in any way, it just has a few more components (only required for developers) and is slightly more complex to administer.
• Better off with a Mac. You'll know it works. The money you think you're saving on a Windows box will just go on boxes of tissues to wipe away the tears of frustration. Amen. I've just about given up all hope of having a properly running Windows box. Ever. I made a leap of faith and continued my PC ownership and bought some new hardware a year ago with the promise of XP. Sure, I knew it was still a sieve security wise and there'd still be plenty of woe...but I thought it'd be better, at least better enough to be functional. But... I spent probably 30 hours in the last two weeks doing tech work instead of actually working...and...still don't have all the problems resolved. Currently I'm thinking of going all Mac. 95% of what I need is available on a Mac and the amount of time I spent on maintenance and fixing MS fuck-ups is so trivial that it's largely irrelevant. For the other 5% there's always Virtual PC and I'll probably get rid of my previous PC, a dual P3-450, when it's such a dead dinosaur that it's in danger of turning into crude oil. With only three tasks assigned to it, and it actually does them well, it's actually pretty problem free. (crosses fingers, knocks on wood) So... anyone have a reasonably modern Mac that they'd like to trade for a wiz-bang PC that I can't stand? Hardware is great, would make an absolutely brilliant Linux box. I just can't take the enormous time-suck that is Windows.
• If it runs xp it should run w2k no problem Actually, the driver model changed between Win2k and WinXP, so WinXP drivers usually won't work for Win2k...although Win2k drivers will sometimes work for WinXP, after complaining a bit. No guarantees. Difficulties abound further when dealing with proprietary laptop drivers that don't conform to the driver model, so they are even less portable between Win versions. For this same reason you should always check the README accompanying laptop drivers, as you'll often find they require some bizarre, non-standard installation procedure. If you installed Win2k on a laptop designed for WinXP I'd expect you to get it running, but I wouldn't expect anything other than basic hardware to work, just like Roly experienced.