Windows 2003, 2000, or XP

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Frozen_Fallout

Frozen_Fallout

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Jan 8, 2003
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Ok I have just about had it up to here with windows... but right now I don't see any other choice because Im a gamer I cant really look to anyother OS to play my games. So my question to you people out there should I use 2000 Pro which I have liked in the past, its seems faster then anyother OS I have worked with and it seems alot more stable, or should I go with XP which I do have on my computer right now but I am having frequent program crashes and everytime something messes up it takes XP like 6 min just to fix it self and get back to working order and this is happening alot as of late(it was my first try at actualy using XP on my home Machine and I only did it because I needed to formate my computer because I messed up 2000 doing some stupid stuff that I hope I won't ever do again, and peer presure from my friends that don't know anything about 2000 but love XP and they are some what knowledgeble about computer but as of late I think I have passed them up in knowledge)or should I try out this new OS M$ is trying to pawn off called Win 2003, or should I even try out Longhorn which I hear is a good OS but I also here it sux.

Personly I don't like XP's User Interface at all and I cant find my way around and it just looks stupid and if you want any good login screens or themes you have to mess around with XP and doing so could and did mess up my computer (thats why Im looking to see what OS you guys think I should put on my computer now that I messed it up again).

I really liked 2000 but I have heard some reports that say that XP is faster... Now I don't know how true that is but I have used booth with the same computer and by the way things ran XP is alot slower and yes it was slower before I messed with the OS to get some better eyecandy (I don't want a desktop for a 5 year old) And I know all my games work on 2000 so I don't have to worry about 2000 not working with my games which is why I am thinking about going back.

But then there is this new OS out there 2003 and this OS looks nice and clean a better meger of 2000 and XP then 2000 by it self but I don't know if my stuff will work on it or if my games will not run on it.

Or should I be thinking about the futer and look ahead to Longhorn.

Anyway I couldn't find much information on ether longhorn or 2003 on this form so if you guys could help me out I would be very thankfull

Thanks in advanced

Frozen
Fallout

P.S. I also love to mess around with networking stuff as to why I got 2000 in the first place and another reason to go back 2000 just has alot more options for networking then XP pro, or atleast it seems that way to me

Remember what your fighting for, Remember why you even started fighting, and Remember who you are
 
Thought I should add in my computer specs just so you don't think I was trying to run a 300mhz on XP

AMD XP 2800+
512 PC 2700 RAM
Nforce 2 A7N8X Mobo
R 9700 Pro


Remember what your fighting for, Remember why you even started fighting, and Remember who you are
 
Longhorn isn’t out yet, and I never heard of Win2003. The latest is XP, maybe a XP second addition will come out or something before Longhorn gets here.

If you are the only user, then it’s your decision, you tried both W2k and XP. Is there any benefit to XP over W2k, since you’re a gamer then I would say yes compatibility where XP would take the lead? As for performance yes XP is full of bloat ware and tweaking is key, some of your games may go either way. XP isn’t an OS you just jump in and have a wonderful experience, just like the previous OS you become use to them and it could take years to figure out all the bugs and what not. Believe me I been frustrated with XP many times, but once I put fourth the extra effort I usually end up satisfied. I take my gaming serious and feel Win98 is the best OS for gaming, but XP is so close it’s give or take on the performance, but the stability of XP is incredible. I never cared for W2k myself, I believe the games run just as well, but in some games XP did better. It’s really your choice.


***************************************
When you feel that reality does not suit you, live a fantasy life.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by jiffy on 04/23/03 01:13 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
 
Lots of territory here :smile:

The first thing to understand is that --unlike 95,98 or me-- win2k and XP do not come out of the box in ready to use condition. The default services are geared mainly to getting a network connection going. Other defaults are used to make the software as non-specific to any machine as possible so it installs smoothly. To get the maximum performance from any NT derived system you really do have to climb into them and customize them for your own uses. And, fortunately, Win2k and XP are both highly customizable operating systems.

One of the better XP/2k setup sites is here:
<A HREF="http://snakefoot.fateback.com/tweak/winnt/default.html" target="_new">http://snakefoot.fateback.com/tweak/winnt/default.html</A>
(but don't do the OS2 thing they talk about, it doesn't work)

If your friends have XP they have win2k. The pro version of XP is essentially win 2k with a bunch of eyecandy and toys tossed in for consumer appeal. As you've noted, there's a performance hit because of it and personally I think most of it just gets in your way.

You can turn the XP stuff off if you want. Most of it's in your performance dialgue (Control Panel / system / advanced / performance) If you switch off stuff like the visual enhancements, window animation, menu fading etc you can pickup a lot of performance. The Tweak UI powertoy (get it from microsoft's winXP website) is also a good tool for tweaking the desktop and getting rid of the creepy stuff you don't use.

But... by the time you do all that you will be left with what amounts to Windows 2000 with service pack 3 ... which I think is one of the most stable and speedy operating systems Microsoft has produced.

Of course there are a huge mess of win2k tweaks you can apply (most can also be used in XP, btw). Shutting down unneeded NTFS features, turning off unnecessay services, tweaking the session manager, enabling compatibility mode etc. can yeild clearly noticeable performance benefits and get otherwise sticky programs to run smoothly.

Finally, Win2003 is a server package, not really intended for workstation uses. I'm sure you could re-arrange it to run properly on a workstation but I'd bet real money you'd end up in a constant scramble for drivers and patches to make things work... so, you may as well rule that out until a single user version is released.


For my money, I'd say win2000 with service pack 3 and a good healty set of tweaks and customizations is the way to go.

The only time I would suggest XP is if you turn off all the garbage.




--->It ain't better if it don't work<---
 
Thanks for the help I still don't know what exactly to do but I do think I am not going to try and use 2003 because of some of the points you bring up. but I am still stuck... As for the Gaming thing yeah XP lets you play games that are like 4 years old but hey I don't play games that are that old and if I did I have another computer with win98 on it that will run them games just as fast as this baby. I think what I am going to try is messing up... I mean I am going to try and mess around with XP some more and see if I can find some good tweeks out there since I have to wait a while to reformate I might as well try and learn something and maby I can even save the computer from having to be reformated. Thanks for your help.

Just wondering I might be wrong on the whole XP only plays games that 2000 wont when the game is like 2 to 4+ old and if so Im sorry but I have not run into a game on 2000 that I could not play that was any newer then 4 years and since them games are that old I have them on my 450mhz machine because they run just as fast on that then on my current rig.

-------------------------------------------------
Remember what your fighting for, Remember why you even started fighting, and Remember who you are
 
Windows XP does. at least, load faster and what's funny is that I am currently running it on a 300Mhz machine and it loads way faster then my 1700+ amd with 512 megs of ram running 2000. *shrug*

GK

Yes, I made it past newbie w00t.
 
But then there is this new OS out there 2003
Click to expand...
<b><A HREF="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/default.mspx" target="_new"><font color=red>Windows 2003 Server</A></b></font color=red> is not for Home user.

:smile: Good or Bad have no meaning at all, depends on what your point of view is.
 
You have answered your own question. Go with 2000 Pro over Xp. And follow what Teg has told you to do. See what happens when you play with eye candy. It messes you up. Your computer ran better with 2000 pro.
 
i disagree a upgraded a day ago to windows 2k and i beleive that it loads much faster than xp however i didn't do too much tweaking to my xp.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by pIII_Man on 05/04/03 00:59 AM.</EM></FONT></P>
 
Once you have 2k stable and you are fairly sure you aren't going to get any startup errors... Try going into Boot.ini (a hidden file in your boot drive's root directory) and adding <b>/NOGUIBOOT</b> to the end of the win-2000 line in the Operating Systems section.

Xp is SLOW beside that!



---><font color=green>It ain't better if it don't work</font color=green><---
 
teq you seem like a 2000 geru...you should stick up for me when i'm defending 2000 over xp :)...j/k...anyway, i have a question about boot.ini

This morning i used my computer for a bit to make a cd and went off to school (didn't change any settings or install anything). When i got home and started my computer up, it says (invalid boot.ini file, booting from C:\winnt\) after it goes through the startup i get a blue screen (of death) which has a paragraph about some registry entry in the system root\system32\system SOFTWARE area (registry can't load the hive file located in...being bad i guess (it only lasts on the screen for about 1 second, then the computer reboots...so hard to tell exactly).

Anyway, ever hear of this? the system won't even let me in safemode command prompt, so i'm at a loss on how to fix anything without dos? Is there an easy fix or am i going to have to re-install windows again?

"sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick"
*grabs a stick and places it into the flames; mmmm, smores*
%Think before you act would be a good motto%
 
i did a search for boot.ini and it didn't find any file by that name (yes i know its hidden). The only boot file i found was one named boot.dos. with a hex editor it just looked like:
0: 43 3A 5C 3D 53 2D 44 4F 53 C:\=MS-DOS

Any idea why i can't find/don't have a boot.ini file under windows 2000 pro? Courious because my other computer just crashed and says that its boot.ini file is invalid.

"sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick"
*grabs a stick and places it into the flames; mmmm, smores*
%Think before you act would be a good motto%
 
sounds suspiciously like a virus. Format your drives.

Treat your body like a $600 car. God didn't intend it to last so use it. Run it into the ground!
 
well, of course i would never rule out the possiblility of a trojan or a virus of some kind. but the system drives were brandnew and the first thing i installed was norton antivirus 2003 pro with ALL the latest updates. The only other stuff i put on the system were programs from manufactures cd's (ie asus mb utilities), ms office, etc...
So its unlikely that is the problem.

After researching more, it seems that operating systems don't like new video cards. I went from a vga card (to install) to a 9500pro then a 9700np. Maybe it was just too much for it and it died. Although, i don't know why the boot.ini file would be affected by a video driver...but i'm going to stick my guess at that. Fortunitly i only lost a few days of installing programs and not years worth of downloads or anything. Although the thought of reformatting scares me...at 320 gigs, it takes over an hour to format the drives :).

"sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick"
*grabs a stick and places it into the flames; mmmm, smores*
%Think before you act would be a good motto%
 
I was always on the XP side of this great debate, until XP simply stopped working on me a couple days ago. Just one morning I woke up and nothing worked right. sooo....(sigh) i formatted and reinstalled everything only this time on win2k pro. lemme says this, to hell with eye candy!

it would appear to me that 2k pro is the stepping stone between win98 and winXP. XP is very clearly designed for the happy happy house wife who only uses her $3000 gateway and her uberexpensive uncapped cable service to surf QVC and check for email (probably ebay emails). while yes, its pretty and yes, its got alot of handy features, win2k is definitely the clear winner in my opinion. It takes ALOT less harddrive room (by as much as a gig or 2), its ALOT faster, it seems to run ALOT cleaner, and oh, did i mention its ALOT faster? ive never had a full system crash that wasnt recoverable EVER on win2k pro. with winXP it locked up all over the place with me.

so theres my 10 cents.
 
dont get me wrong, if i had a nifty family computer that i used to surf QVC and ebay, XP would be wonderful. but for people who actually use their computer daily for surfing, gaming, filesharing, office apps, downloading, theres no other way to go but with win2k.
 
Lol too bad for uncle Bill. We'll just have to let the whole world know that 2000 Pro is alot better than XP. I wonder how good will Longhorn be. Me I'll wait a long while. It may be XP clone with more eye candy.
 
""Now that would really mess up Micro$""

Do you have trouble understanding word "buying"?

How is that "buying 2000 Pro" suppoze to "mess up Micro$"? LOL

..this is very useful and helpful place for information...
 
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