dacs.doc electric

WINDOWS 2000 has finally been released, so for the curious I thought I'd share my first experiences with it and offer a few tips.

Installation

Before trying to install Windows 2000, you should check the hardware compatibility list at http://www.microsoft.com/hcl/ or in \Support\Hcl.txt on the Windows 2000 CD. There may also be some compatibility issues with your existing applications, so you'll also want to check for this at http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/ compatible/. Microsoft's emphasis has been on testing business applications rather than on consumer titles.

Over time I've chosen hardware components compatible with a wide variety of operating systems, so except for my network card, all my components were on the hardware compatibility list. I chose a clean install in an empty partition rather than an upgrade from Windows 95, 98, NT 3.51, 4.0, or Windows 2000 Release Candidate 2, which are all supported upgrades by Microsoft. A clean install ensures the highest chances for success, but it also means that you'll have to reinstall all of your applications under the new operating system.

The installation went as smoothly as it did with Release Candidate 2, and my network card worked fine being identified by the chipset manufacturer (Winbond W89C940) rather than as a Linksys card. I manually overrode the modem definition from a "standard modem" to a U.S. Robotics 56K internal fax/modem to have control over the modem speaker volume.

BIOS Upgrade?

Everything seemed to work well as I started to set up house in my new operating system. I set up my Internet connection and starting reading the Windows 2000 newsgroups at news://msnews. microsoft.com/ using the included Outlook Express news client. (Look for the series of newsgroups whose names start with microsoft.public.win2000.) One thing that caught my eye was a discussion of how Windows 2000 may install your PC as a "Standard PC" versus an "ACPI PC". ACPI stands for Advanced Configuration and Power Interface, a standard supported by most PCs that have come out in the past couple of years. This is of particular interest to laptop users, since it helps manager power usage during suspend and hibernate operations. I knew the Intel Atlanta 440LX motherboard in my Micron desktop was one of the first to include ACPI support, but Windows 2000 had installed my machine as a Standard PC. Even so, I could still shut down Windows 2000 and have it automatically power off.

I found out that Windows 2000 is strict in its ACPI requirements. If your computer BIOS is dated before 1/1/1999, it assumes that your BIOS is "bad" for ACPI purposes, unless it is explicitly on its good BIOS list. If the date is later, it is assumed to be good unless the BIOS is on its bad BIOS list. Since I had never upgraded my BIOS, the date was older than the cutoff. I found a BIOS upgrade for my machine at the Micron support site, along with cautions about not performing an upgrade without consulting Technical Support beforehand. I found more complete instructions on installing a BIOS upgrade on an Intel motherboard at the Intel site (http://support.intel.com/sites/support/). As a final precaution I downloaded a BIOS upgrade from Micron at my current level, in case anything went awry and I needed to get back to my PCs original BIOS. I also recorded all my current CMOS settings, which are reset in the process of doing a BIOS upgrade.

I prepared a boot disk according to instructions to perform the BIOS upgrade (and a separate boot disk to restore my old level of BIOS if necessary). The BIOS upgrade procedure seemed to go according to plan. Then it was only a matter of crossing my fingers to see how Windows 2000 and my other operating systems reacted to the BIOS upgrade. Windows 2000 seemed to boot OK after going through some turmoil in rediscovering the hardware. Windows 98, however, hung before completing its boot. I wound up reinstalling over the existing installation and managed to recover. I verified that my other operating systems (Windows 95, Linux, etc.) could also boot.

After all of this (I viewed it as an educational process), Windows 2000 had still installed my machine as a Standard PC. It was later that I found my PCs motherboard "MICRON" "ATLANTA" on the "bad" BIOS list in the file TXTSETUP.SIF on the installation CD. Nevertheless, I did gain two benefits from my BIOS upgrade. Partition Magic now fully recognizes my 18GB third hard drive when running under Windows 95/98 (it was never a problem under NT). And now my power light flashes when I go into standby from Windows 98, rather than just looking dead.

OS Satisfaction

I really like my new Windows 2000 with all the user interface improvements and enhanced hardware support (USB and DVD-ROM, for example). The boot time is still longer than any other operating system I use, but Windows 2000 performs well once it's booted. Sufficient memory (at least 64 MB, I have 128) and a fast hard drive help (my new IDE hard drive is 7,200 rpm versus 5,400 rpm for older ones), but I don't think an incredibly fast processor is necessary (my 266 MHz Pentium II seems fine).

AutoDial

One thing that detracted from full satisfaction was that Netscape, RealPlayer, or any non-Microsoft applications wouldn't autodial for an Internet connection if one wasn't already available. Of course the Microsoft Internet applications, which use the Internet Explorer dialer, dialed as necessary without a hitch.

The answer was revealed in Windows 2000 help by searching for autodial. Aside from going into Settings | Control Panel | Network and Dial-Up Connections | Advanced | Dial-up Preferences, the key stumbling block for me was a new service called Remote Access Auto Connection Manager, which needed to be started. You can go into Settings | Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Services and double-click on that service to bring up its properties. On the General page just change the Startup type to Automatic.

Desktop Themes

I reported in my December 1999 dacs.doc article on Release Candidate 2 that Windows 2000 doesn't come with any Desktop Themes like those in Windows 98, or that you can install in Windows NT 4.0 from the NT 4.0 Resource Kit CD. It turns out that Windows 2000 does have an updated themes.exe file that is used if you've done an upgrade from a previous version of Windows that already had some desktop themes installed. I also discovered that the Desktop Themes can be installed from the NT 4.0 Resource Kit even on a clean install of Windows 2000.

Final Thoughts

I've found Windows 2000 to be quite stable so far, and would recommend anyone frustrated by Windows 9x to consider it. Of course, if you're a heavy game player you may still need to run Windows 98, although Windows 2000 does now have the latest DirectX support. A dual boot configuration with Windows 98 and Windows 2000 might make sense for some.

As is always the case with a new operating system version, it will be a few months before all the vendors update their system utilities. For instance my current antivirus program doesn't run under Windows 2000. But soon Windows 2000 will be an attractive option for many, particularly if you are in the market for a new machine this year. Business users will probably want to wait for the first service pack before taking the plunge.