Raymond Chen has debunked the claim that Windows 9x ran "on top" of DOS. It's not true. DOS was used as a boot loader for Windows 9x. When Win9x loaded it took complete control from DOS and DOS ran in a Virtual Machine. The reason it was prone to crashing had more to do with its own poor design. NT was designed by Dave Cutler from the ground up and he designed resiliency into the OS so that one program crashing couldn't crash everything.
Some corrections: - Windows 2000 was not underappreciated because it was overshadowed by the quick release of XP or the bad reputation of Me. The major cause was that it was not sold with consumer PCs at that time. If Microsoft would have let OEMs ship Windows 2000 in a consumer friendly variant (perhaps instead of Me) back then, appreciation and recognition would probably have been higher. - The slogan "Built on NT-Technology" was not chosen to differentiate it from the failure that was Me - In fact Me did release 7 months after 2000. - The backwards compatibility was not an emulation. It changed some variables visible to the targeted program which would make it less likely to crash or refuse to run. You could call it a "simulation" instead perhaps.
@@SixOThreeyes, MS could have made it the general OS for all markets, like later Windows XP. But they didn't. Consequently the support for typical consumer features (especially gaming) was also lacking.
Windows 2000pro... The end user version was undercooked upon release. Thats why XP existed... Cause 2000pro didnt work that good. As usual most of the bad experience was due to bad drivers. But 2kPro was good once updates were released... Basically it turned it into a winXP, just looked different.
YES! Windows 2000- my favourite operating system. I used it until Vista came around. My parents bought a PC from a bank upgrading their systems for $10. It was uniform and smooth. Just like Windows 7.
Man I LOVED Windows 2000 at work. No BSODS, no hangs, nothing. My coworkers were stuck on Win 98 and it was a headache for both users and the IT people. I was a veteran user since NT 3.51 so I was very insistent in Win2000 for the IT dept when they renewed PCs.
I worked as a junior programmer on a 150+ employees company, I spearheaded the upgrade from win 98 to 2000 sp3, boy... that was a day and night difference, the stability security and ease of use for IT was over the roof, networking was no longer a headache, boy... Windows 2000 was Microsoft being on it's tip top game
Windows 2000 felt like a liberation after the unstable-by-design Windows 9x series. I was an early adopter and loved every bit of it. On my home server, I ran Windows 2000 until the end of support in 2010 and on my workstation I skipped XP and went directly from 2000 to Vista. Win2K and Win7 are my favorite Windows editions of all time.
@@NourMostafa_Productions I stand corrected. I uses Win2K until the end of support. Then I migrated my home server to a Windows 7 system. It now runs on Windows 11. Ofc, I went over 3 generations of hardware as well.
@@oldschooldude8370 Not on tne proper hardware. I built a new PC for Vista, all hardware had cerified drivers and it ran rock-solid. Just like Win2k and Win7.
Windows 2000 was an excellent OS. It made my life so much easier after Win98. I had it installed on a bunch of computers, as a matter of fact I still use one computer with Win2000. Works perfectly.
@@Tornado1994 Xbox 360 also uses a scaled down version of Windows 2000. That is really interesting how it ran games that were released later down the line, like GTA V and so on.
@@Tornado1994, No, the Windows CE in Sega's Dreamcast is NOT based on Windows 2000, CE is not an NT derivative. The operating system of the first XBOX is a stripped-down version of Windows 2000.
About time finally people realize how underrated Windows 2000 is. I can literally watch this video on Windows 2000, that's just a testament to how well it aged!
@@oldschooldude8370 It was not as stable as Windows XP. No, I started doing Windows with 1.0, I wasn't "over my head". I had been doing Windows NT since the very first version. Services proliferated out of necessity in the 2000s. The lean aspect of Windows 2000 was in large part because of its lack of necessary services. XP was more resource intensive, but hardware was improving so rapidly that it didn't matter. I see both 2000 and Windows ME in the same light - the last compromises of their kind, and good riddance. In some ways XP is the first real Windows, a real OS with rock solid stability if not abused, and infinitely better than Windows 2000.
I went from 98 to ME, used it for 2 days and said no, went back to 98 for a week, then a dad's friend gave me a copy of 2000, went to that and was very very happy. About 2000 being the most stable version of Windows, i think it still holds that crown. I used 2000 until 2003 and never had a crash or blue screen. 2000 really deserves more love and credit then it receives. Really I believe Vista deserves that too, for the features it introduced. But that's not the point. 2000 was a fantastic OS for it's time.
2000 was basically XP without the fluff. It also ran well on systems that struggled with XP, which was quite common at that time. I don't remember anything you could do on XP that you couldn't on 2000, until new software started dropping support for Win2K sometime after 2005.
Most of the things that people liked about XP were already there in 2000. 2000 even had a release of DirectX9c ,showing it had some serious gaming credentials. XP was NT 5.1so wasn't a big step from 2000's NT 5.0. Most people just never used 2000.
I know I originally used Windows ME on my computer but I always knew Windows 2000 was different and based on WindowsNT. I did actually did use it a few years later and I realized how important it was to get to Windows XP. The same is actually true for Windows Vista, I know a lot of people that don't like it but it was important to get to Windows 7, wich to this day is my personal favorite Windows OS. Yeah, all of my current PCs are on Windows 10 and I get notifications on two of my machines from Microsoft during Windows Update but I'm not not willing to up/downgrade to Windows 11 right now.
XP was largely 2000 with a shiny facelift. My broke school district still used 2000 in a lot of schools until they found money to replace their old Pentium III beige boxes with Windows 7 machines.
XP literally was making the worst looking Windows ever into the best looking Windows ever. The only thing it visually lacked were the Aero Glass effects from Vista. They should have combined that with XP's Luna interface, would have been **chef's kiss** Nevertheless, in the end there was no reason to stay on 2k when XP got updates for much longer.
I have a virtual Windows 2000 PC and a virtual Windows XP PC, but they all lag on my 2019 laptop. I gave the virtual PC's two gigs of ram while my laptop has a quad-core cpu and 8 gigs of ram. I don't think a quad-core cpu is made for more than two virtual PC's with more than two cpu cores.
@@bwofficial1776 I would call it "ugly facelift", literally the first thing I always did is switch to classic mode ;)... But you are right, WinXP Vanilla was reeeeaaaly close to 2000. THe only new thing that I really loved is that they disabled write cache for USB mass storage in XP, so you didn't have to eject USB sticks anymore unlike Win2000. But with SP2 maaaany changes and improvments came that 2000 didn't get, and then XP was really ahead. I still loved 2000 a lot, because it as a big step up from NT 4, especially with USB and installing hardware :)...
Man, I loved the 2k/Me UI. That blue, and the new icons. Gradients everywhere. And 2k was pretty solid. This was also the era that I was switching to Linux, but I have nostalgic soft spot for Win98, Me, and 2k. And even XP to some extent, although mostly I remember that one for the viruses that infected laptops across my college campus in 2004.
As a kid, I always thought windows 2000 was ME given what ME stands for, So i always preferred XP, mainly because I got to help install it on the school computers, That was awesome haha
It was about piggybacking off of the hype of the new millennium arriving. That's why both operating systems had similar names. Still, imagine if Windows ME was actually good, how different would the story be? Also, I'm fully expecting people to start referring to Windows 2000 as an underrated or misjudged OS similar to how some people talk about Windows Vista as over-hated or misjudged these days.
Windows 2000 is probably my favourite Windows. I always liked the slightly overhauled, yet classic, appearance. The fade effects and use of Tahoma blew my mind at the time with its simple understated elegance. Shame it never made it into the household in its purest form. It was a corporate enterprise OS also often found in educational establishments - my school had it and I did work experience in 2003 where they were slowly transitioning away from it. XP looked Fisher Price and its appearance aged very badly, so I always preferred to run it in classic theme. The "Home" and "Professional" branding also went with SP2 in 2004.
I used Win2k for a long time and I didn't need to format it once despite everything that was thrown at it by me. Unlike the 98 SE or 95 OSR2 which needed a refresh every half a year... so yes, it was a great OS. So much, that I completely ignored XP and Vista, upgrading directly to Win7 when 2k started to show its age and incompatibility issues with newer applications after all these years.
I bought my retail version of Windows 2000 in April 2000. The only issue early on, like you mentioned with plug and play, was that Windows 9x and NT used completely different driver models. Hardware manufacturers weren't overly concerned with NT support, especially on PCMCIA devices until XP showed up and everyone scrambled to get their drivers ready. Service Pack 1 in August 2000 helped with this in a big way, Service Pack 2 was a nice big leap forward and by the time SP3 and SP4 were on the scene, all the issues had been ironed out. Then people started going for Win2003 and XP. I still have a machine that runs Win2K to this day, though the hardware was upgraded a good long time ago to a Pentium 4. In a lot of ways back then, Windows 2000 was "NT for the rest of us". That only got magnified with XP later in its life once the NT codebases were once again unified. (Souce: Dave Cutler)
About 20 years ago I was a developer of a shareware utility that ran on every version of Windows including 2000, XP, Me, 98, and (maybe, I don’t remember) NT. Because NT/XP/2000/7 weren’t DOS-based, but Me and 98 were, there were some significant differences under the hood that made it extra annoying to code, debug, and support. If it had been a regular application it probably would have been a lot easier, but my software had components that ran as a background service, which made things more complicated.
NT stood for "New Technology" - Windows 2000 Professional was also the ONLY version of a Windows client operating system that included a Terminal Server CAL, which is one of the reasons it was so short lived.
Excellent examination of Windows 2000. Im guessing you weren't using computers in 2000, i was an IT manager at the time and your documentary is very accurate, bravo!
I remember getting a new Dell Dimension 4000something back in 2002 with XP pre-installed. First thing I did was switching to 2000 because it was more lightweight and felt more mature/complete. I used it that way for 1 or 2 years, then finally switching back to XP when SP2 came out because I wanted to stay more up to date and it became clear that Microsoft shows more love to XP than 2000.
I worked at a private school during windows 2000 and installed it so many times I remembered the CD Key to install it. Not only on new systems, but upgrading Windows NT4 Workstations to Windows 2000. I even ran it at home until I could run XP properly. I liked 2000 due to it's ease to setup, sysprep, and join to a Windows 2000 Server domain controller.
Windows 2000 was the best version of Windows during its time and beyond. Very stable, elegant, and stood the test of time until Windows 7 came out. Forget ME, XP, and Vista, Windows 2000 was the gold standard of the first decade of the 2000s.
W9x had lots of issues with blue screens and hard drive faults, or so was my experience back then. With Windows 2000, most of those problems were gone, and the system was just so solid. I used it both at home and at work. Something left out in this video, is the network and user permission functionality, that was essential in many work/business scenarios.
Windows 2000 was really great and i have a lot of nostalgia for it for sure. Its thr last time in my life where i especially had a lot of time to be very invested in, and tinker around with, home pc stuff.
Funnily enough, I've settled on ME on my nostalgia PC after its original hard drive kicked the bucket. I wound up really liking its particular balance of advancement with DOS compatibility, which lined up well with what I was wanting out of a retro setup, primarily focusing on the aughties that I grew up in with a dash of interesting DOS odds and ends that was just a little bit outside of NTVDM but without needing all-out DOS mode. And, with a couple decades of hindsight, the drivers worked too - apparently that was the big stability issue with ME, vendors were cheaping out on making sure their 98 drivers actually worked with ME, putting assumptions over testing.
I used to fix PC's back then and i remember a fully updated Windows ME was not that bad. But it needed those updates to provide that stability. I also remember numerous times performing a fresh Windows ME install, like just finished installing and booting up for the first time to the desktop for the very first time, popup error on some run32dll or something. Like right out the gate. i would just press OK and it would still get to the desktop but that's so Bad
Best in terms of usability and performance. If somebody tweaks it to work with current software then I'm all in. Windows 10 is all ended the great experience.
I used windows 2000 pro as a dial up server which stayed online for 3 years, on a Pentium 1 75mhz machine. 3 years of dialup in the limewire/kaaza days hosting as many as 20 computers. We did eventually get 1mbps internet, and i remeber the wonders of downloading music videos in an hour, instead of days. I really miss those days. When i got my first job, i slowly upgraded and built up that machine, eventually replacing it with an amd athlon XP, used as my gaming rig, still using the same windows 2000 install on an old hard drive. Used it way past the windows vista days until i fell away from computers.
Been using Windows since 3.1 came out. Had Win 2000 Professional on my old PIII machine, it is still my favourite OS of all times followed by Win 7, XP and Win 98 SE.
My PIII converted numbers DVD into DIVX for ~3 years and lot of other things with Win 2k and I remember hibernation took 15s with my 1Go memory 😂 rarely I had to reboot.
I have a vague memory of 2000 (I believe my nana had this as a regular home computer in the early 2000s/2010s) and I loved the paint tool and how fun and easy it was to navigate, my fondest memory was booting it up and hearing the sweet sound of the machine running, it sounded like a loud jet but it made me happy and I loved booting it up just to hear that sound before helping her open the paint app so I could be occupied for 2 hours
When Fry's Electronics was a going concern, they once wrongly marked full release Windows 2000 with the upgrade price. I lucked out and they had to honor the price but fixed it after the sale. BTW, I was told the NT stands for Northern Telecom who supposedly developed the core for the Windows NT. Windows 2000 took a while to load, but it was a rock solid OS.
i'm one of i feel like 5 people who actually thought 8.1 was a banger. i ended up loving the full screen start menu, ironically. once i customized the hell out of it, it was actually pretty great. i'd willingly choose it as an os. windows 8 O.G. was a rly unfortunate launch for what was actually a pretty decent os. i'll admit to being one of the people who cried "change!!!" at first, but once i really gave it a chance, i liked it. i can't believe you actually mentioned the 8.1 enjoyers. thanks, bro.
I greatly miss early 2000’s windows. Full of personality and simple, No bloatware and spyware and the mysterious yet adventurous feeling you get is priceless
If you do, I’d like an honest comparison to WinME with all the patches. I looked after WinME properly - with a respect for update patches that is more 21st century - and I think it has a broader range of good & bad scenarios than Win98 and certainly Win95.
Good video. I lived and worked with all these versions of Windows starting with 3.0. As for NT vs 9x, one needs to remember that outside of large companies very few users had hardware capable of running NT. This only really began to change in the new millennium.
Idk a lot about computers or what this video was really about (Idk if I ever even used Windows 2000), but the little music-related easter eggs are always what keeps me coming back to watch. Stuart Sutcliffe, Pearl Jam, Doctor Robert, I think I even once spotted a "George Harrison Ham Sandwich" icon once lmao!! I really appreciate these fun little videos even if I don't quite grasp all the content. Keep it up!
I would definitely agree Windows 2000 Professional was the best Operating System ever released it’s was very stable once updated to Service Pack 4 and all the other updates.
I used Windows 2000 back in the day and absolutely loved it. I had a dual-boot set up with Windows 98SE and 2000, but I found myself using 2000 more and just having 98SE there for compatibility with older games / software
When I was in college I used windows ME , and everyone in college kept saying how great windows 2000 was. Eventualy My hard drive died, and i started over and tried Windows 2000. I was amazed at how much more stable it ran. This whole time I was fighting with win ME that I didn't even know what stability was! Of course once Windows XP came it it was over because xp was just a better version of 2000. Long story short, all hail the NT kernel!
2000 was just plain great. I also still love the basic aesthetic that was carried over from 95/98, and was never much of a fan of the new themes foist on us in XP and beyond. It's to the point where on XP, I switched back to the classic theme but I also went so far as to edit explorer.exe so that the start menu icon would remain as it was in 2000 and earlier. Hell, I even still do this on Win7 using Classic Shell. The NT architecture, which I was first introduced to on 2000, was indeed like night and day. Before 2000, it was just a given you could never have your computer running for longer than 24 hours because you'd always have to reboot, frequently. With the NT kernel, the stability is such that I could generally have a system uptime of several months straight without having to restart. Uptime was something Linux users took a lot of pride in, and it's clear to see why when the non-NT architecture was so unstable. 2000 also gave a user control over the system that was unparalleled as far as Windows was concerned, and gave users a lot of authority under the hood. Security was also improved to a great degree, IIRC. You could honestly say that Windows 2000 was absolutely an OS for power users. While nothing can truly compete on that front with a fully open source OS like Linux, Microsoft was heading in a direction that could cater towards those who were sort of 'halfway to Linux'. Unfortunately, I think that direction has been lost with the latest versions of Windows.
Windows 2000 has always been my favorite Microsoft operating system. Because of some devoted users and programmers, I was able to use Windows 2000 up to around 2020 with KernelEx and Extended Core. But as I started requiring a lot more from my PC, I had to abandon the OS I loved so much. And say what you will, but I think Windows Classic GUI looks so much better than Windows 10/11's default GUI. Windows 2000 was certainly a very rock-solid OS, but you had to know some things in order to really use it since compatibility was a bit wonky and because you didn't have things like system restore or repair, you couldn't just magically undo system issues with just a few clicks. But with such a lightweight OS that with a few system modifications could run a lot of software well after it's end of support, what wasn't to love?
Unlikelly. DOS kernel was already a problem on year 2000. Microsoft originally wanted to Kill before year 2000, but only managed to do at 2001. By other hand, the main real reason to MS-DOS endures that late was ONLY thing: games. Around 1994, DOS extenders enables to create 32-bit protected DOS programs, where a special loader provides protected mode functions over a real mode operating system. However for professional programs, a functional DOS 32-bit extender was the Windows 3.1 Enhanced Mode, later Windows 95/98/Me. No real reason to rebuild the whell that was given by Windows. Games was the major usage of DOS extenders due to Higher speed to Access the video hardware without an heavy operating system on place. Windows 95/98/Me provides virtual device drivers for those DOS games had Access for video, disc and sound hardware with minimal interference. 3dfx Voodoo Glide API also gives some time extra to DOS, since gives 3D acceleration even on Pure MS-DOS or running on Windows 95. Eventually DirectX provides accelerated hardware Access for video and audio, and with this even protected DOS extenders becomes obsolete. Still with this late DOS era due to gaming, it was a little harsh to provide a NT consumer version before 2000.
You just unlocked a lot of memories. Sure, Windows 2000 and XP were my favourite ones. Nothing compares to them. Even the boring office-like Win 2k seems so beauitiful right now.
My first job we had a Windows 2000 box as the server, and I got to work on it directly sometimes for some graphics work since it drove the high-end printers. It was such a joy, 100% stable, unbelievably fast for that day and age… and then you’d go back and do your day to day work on a Windows 98 box that blue screened three times a day, randomly stuttered, absolute Swiss cheese of security holes and constantly random issues with drivers or hardware support or broken updates or some other such nonsense, and it was like.. why does it have to be this way? (And yeah, I know the answer was the DOS legacy but still)…
Unfortunately. Microsoft didn’t had enough time to implement the complete compatible mode to Windows 2000 which became available on Windows XP and later.
So when I switched to Windows from Mac i purchased by mistake NT 4 with the parts for my new pc. Drivers eere an issue but not insurmountable. My biggest headache was drivers for my sound card. When 2000 came out i was paying attention and got it. What breath of fresh air. Worked from the start and was near bullet proof. Had this also when we got new PCs at work. Made using them Soo much better. How i miss this OS to this day. The darn thing was light on resources and just worked. Happier days indeed.
What is awesome is there is still a community keeping windows 2000 alive and usable as a daily OS on more modern hardware. Nearly all the work has come from the Japanese developer Blackwingcat, and he is still releasing drivers and software patches using kernel extenders to make 2000 a viable OS even today. I used Win 2000 as my daily back in 2020 for about a year until I upgraded to my current system, but it worked exceptionally well! Seeing his work makes me hopeful that someone may get the same idea to use kernel extensions and dependency walkers on modern software to keep windows 7 going for many years to come.
I have always wanted to explore the OS (Windows 2000) a bit more, but didn't quite understand how to use it for other things besides school and general office work. It was the only OS I admired for its clean appearance.
I actually won a copy of Windows 2000 Pro when it came out in February 2000. I received the box from Microsoft, and it was a superb operating system. I used it for years and love it completely.
A friend gave me a copy not long after W2k was released and I was blown away when I installed it and could leave my computer running without having to reboot it after running for more than a few hours. I could leave the pc overnight running tasks and not worry about it crashing overnight. I used it until begrudgingly moving to W7 and skipped over the xp generation because it did everything xp did already.
If I remember correctly (I might be wrong), XP x64 had no support for 32 bit apps. I tried it but didn't keep it around because of that. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a lack of support for 16 bit apps, that would not have been a dealbreaker for me.
I'll never miss the modern Windows UI. Seriously, I have software that can transform the dull flat look of windows 10 into a very Windows 2000 look, complete with 3D buttons and everything and I am never going back to the bland modern windows 10 look, nor am I ever going to "upgrade" to windows 11.
That’s only because the age you are, people glorify certain things because of what your life was like at that time. Usually ages 13-15 are when people solidify their music and entertainment tastes. You may also be younger and just glorifying the past due to a bleak future.
As someone who worked at Microsoft PSS (product support services) in different roles from 1995 to 2010, I have to say that the absolutely biggest change in Win2000 from all the previous NT-versions was the introduction of Active Directory. And that in itself was derived from the Exchange Server 4-5.5 directory services, which was sorta kinda an x.500 directory of user names. The joys of planning AD-sites over slow links, dirsync to legacy Exchange servers and whatnot... But AD finally paved the way for Windows into really large companies as the OS of choice, and we still see the result of that in M365, Azure (or Entra or whatever it's called these days). That is the real legacy of Windows 2000.
Windows 2000 Pro was my go to for a long time when a lot of people were still using 98 or had moved onto XP. It just did what I needed it to exceptionally well and gave me very few issues.
I will always remember Windows 2000. I grew up with it the longest. I learned how to use Microsoft Office on it and I loved playing games on it. It might've been a business operating system, but my family got away with using it at home.
I remember back in 2000 my schools library got brand new computers and they came with Windows 2000 Professional. I thought Windows 2000 was great and really wanted to have the OS at home. But in 2001 I had a friend that his Dad worked for Compaq computers, he got the final version of XP 3 weeks before it was actually launched. he installed it on my computer at home 2 weeks before the actual OS came out. I fell in love with XP and felt I had a better version than 2000 and knew Windows was going to change for the good.
I only knew of 2000 bc of schools computers but after using it in school vs using windows 98 se at home I fell in love with it! It just worked better, looked neater and in all was just brilliant to use! So I begged my mom to get is which she was able to get me the upgrade version of it which I was still happy to have as it did the same! Now alot of people don't know this but there was a home version of windows NT that was being made alongside of 2000 and xp which was called Neptune at the time but due to a code leak it was quickly scrapped and was replaced with ME
Your videos are an absolute joy to listen to while I'm at work building PCs. Have you considered doing a video covering the history of Microsoft as a whole? These videos probably already exist but your voice is really nice lol
Windows 2000 today is the greatest old Windows to virtualize. Still almost fully compatible with VirtualBox 7 (with guest additions!), and no online activation. Which means if you didn't lose your product key, you can have you own copy still working today :)
2000 is one of the MVPs of Windows. For me, if I need to run an older piece of software that won't run on Windows 10, I go to Vista and if it won't run on Vista, I go to 2000. I don't even consider XP, because 2000 can do what XP can and whatever 2000 and XP couldn't do, Vista usually would. 2000 and Vista were the best Windows experiences I ever had and I miss them dearly.
One thing I still miss from Windows 2000 is the possibility to preview audio and video files directly from the Explorer. In the sidebar when you selected a file of that type, you would get an embedded media player where you would be able to play the file without opening it in a standalone player. This feature never reappeared in the Windows Explorer in future versions of Windows.
I have good, vague memories of Windows 2000, so I really enjoyed this. I enjoy all your videos, especially the history videos. (Also, I work for the government and one of our programs is still run on MS-DOS, which blows my mind but is also not surprising at the same time).
8:09 - According to Dave Cutler, who's pretty much the highest authority when it comes to NT, it does indeed stand for "New Technology". Oh, and Windows 2000 definitely has a special place in my heart. With '95 to '98 SE, I always configured it to give me the option to boot straight into DOS mode and still did a whole lot of stuff in DOS over Windows, but when I got into the Microsoft beta program in 1998 and gave Windows 2000 beta 3 a try, I quickly switched to it as my primary OS.
I absolutely LOVED Windows 2000. I often switched back and forth between that and Windows XP, both had things about them that I liked which the other lacked, but my all time favorite Windows feature was in Windows 2000, and that was the "preview" mode. You could listen to entire songs or watch entire videos even without actually having to open the file, it just played in a sidebar in the folder. Windows 2000 was also stable af. XP was pretty good at that too though, both had hardly any BSOD for me especially when compared to Windows 98 SE, which I had used for a few years before the other two.
Oh hey, you made a video on Windows 2000! At the time, all the machines in our household had Windows 2000 preinstalled with associated COA’s. Definitely was something consumers were getting preinstalled during ‘00-‘03 and I had several PCs with Win2K on it. The only thing that crashed was Active Desktop.
Windows 2000 will ALWAYS be my favorite version of Windows! it ran on EVERYTHING! it was rock solid in stability. by the time SP4 came out, it ran almost everything out there regarding software (games, productivity, creative... whatever). size wise, a full install with EVERY SP and update from MS, oh it occupied a whopping 4.5gbs of HD space. i loved how clean and simple the GUI was (XP GUI was a god awful mishmash of horrid colors, button styles and clutter IMO). networking and IT related duties were a breeze on a Win2k and Win2k server LAN/WAN. Windows 2000 will forever and always occupy a very special place in my heart that no other OS will ever beat out (even Windows 7, which is 2nd place for me). how i do miss those days...
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Raymond Chen has debunked the claim that Windows 9x ran "on top" of DOS. It's not true. DOS was used as a boot loader for Windows 9x. When Win9x loaded it took complete control from DOS and DOS ran in a Virtual Machine. The reason it was prone to crashing had more to do with its own poor design. NT was designed by Dave Cutler from the ground up and he designed resiliency into the OS so that one program crashing couldn't crash everything.
Some corrections:
- Windows 2000 was not underappreciated because it was overshadowed by the quick release of XP or the bad reputation of Me. The major cause was that it was not sold with consumer PCs at that time. If Microsoft would have let OEMs ship Windows 2000 in a consumer friendly variant (perhaps instead of Me) back then, appreciation and recognition would probably have been higher.
- The slogan "Built on NT-Technology" was not chosen to differentiate it from the failure that was Me - In fact Me did release 7 months after 2000.
- The backwards compatibility was not an emulation. It changed some variables visible to the targeted program which would make it less likely to crash or refuse to run. You could call it a "simulation" instead perhaps.
Agreed. you had to know 2000 existed to go for 2000. It wasn't promoted or pushed for general audiences.
I went with 2000 because I loved the fading menus lol
It's stability and very surprising compatibility with existing software and hardware made this even more disappointing.
@@SixOThreeyes, MS could have made it the general OS for all markets, like later Windows XP. But they didn't. Consequently the support for typical consumer features (especially gaming) was also lacking.
Windows 2000pro... The end user version was undercooked upon release. Thats why XP existed... Cause 2000pro didnt work that good. As usual most of the bad experience was due to bad drivers.
But 2kPro was good once updates were released... Basically it turned it into a winXP, just looked different.
YES! Windows 2000- my favourite operating system. I used it until Vista came around. My parents bought a PC from a bank upgrading their systems for $10. It was uniform and smooth. Just like Windows 7.
Same! 😊
Still use it today for old games 😅
@@DankUser I still use it for work related things as a microelectronics engineer, doing mostly (hilariously outdated) industrial maintenance stuff.
@@DankUser do you have a original Pc from the y2k Times, that you play your old games? 😮
@@lukasgossweiler2385 runnin on a latitude d610 =D
Man I LOVED Windows 2000 at work. No BSODS, no hangs, nothing. My coworkers were stuck on Win 98 and it was a headache for both users and the IT people. I was a veteran user since NT 3.51 so I was very insistent in Win2000 for the IT dept when they renewed PCs.
I worked as a junior programmer on a 150+ employees company, I spearheaded the upgrade from win 98 to 2000 sp3, boy... that was a day and night difference, the stability security and ease of use for IT was over the roof, networking was no longer a headache, boy... Windows 2000 was Microsoft being on it's tip top game
Windows 2000 felt like a liberation after the unstable-by-design Windows 9x series. I was an early adopter and loved every bit of it. On my home server, I ran Windows 2000 until the end of support in 2010 and on my workstation I skipped XP and went directly from 2000 to Vista.
Win2K and Win7 are my favorite Windows editions of all time.
First off. Windows 2000 Support ended in 2010. Not 2014. That's XP
Second. Pls tell me you're lying when you said you used Windows 2000 UNTIL 2014
@@NourMostafa_Productions I stand corrected. I uses Win2K until the end of support. Then I migrated my home server to a Windows 7 system. It now runs on Windows 11. Ofc, I went over 3 generations of hardware as well.
Vista was so bad. Sorry you made that crucial mistake. 2k sp2, xp sp3 & win7 sp1 are all solid.
@@oldschooldude8370 Not on tne proper hardware. I built a new PC for Vista, all hardware had cerified drivers and it ran rock-solid. Just like Win2k and Win7.
@@Aranimda It was garbage. An abortion of win7.
My favorite part of Windows 2000 was the unique progress bar splash screen. I just loved watching it as a kid.
Memories unlocked.
Windows 2000 was an excellent OS. It made my life so much easier after Win98. I had it installed on a bunch of computers, as a matter of fact I still use one computer with Win2000. Works perfectly.
Yes sir.
Fun Fact: The SEGA Dreamcast Windows CE OS is actually based off of Windows 2000, its a Scaled down variant of Windows 2000 and is NT Based.
@@Tornado1994 Xbox 360 also uses a scaled down version of Windows 2000. That is really interesting how it ran games that were released later down the line, like GTA V and so on.
@@Tornado1994, No, the Windows CE in Sega's Dreamcast is NOT based on Windows 2000, CE is not an NT derivative.
The operating system of the first XBOX is a stripped-down version of Windows 2000.
@@novel886 Yes it is. CE is a Scaled Down NT Code. It is NOT 9X based, and does NOT run DOS.
About time finally people realize how underrated Windows 2000 is. I can literally watch this video on Windows 2000, that's just a testament to how well it aged!
Big whoop. Were you admining the OS in the day? No? It sucked, which is why it died so quickly.
@@ultrametric9317Maybe you were in over your head? It was a solid OS.
@@oldschooldude8370 It was not as stable as Windows XP. No, I started doing Windows with 1.0, I wasn't "over my head". I had been doing Windows NT since the very first version. Services proliferated out of necessity in the 2000s. The lean aspect of Windows 2000 was in large part because of its lack of necessary services. XP was more resource intensive, but hardware was improving so rapidly that it didn't matter. I see both 2000 and Windows ME in the same light - the last compromises of their kind, and good riddance. In some ways XP is the first real Windows, a real OS with rock solid stability if not abused, and infinitely better than Windows 2000.
@@ultrametric9317 Gotcha. I took the time to eliminate services on a power-user level.
A friend of mine used 2000 up until the release of win 8. He then switched to 7. Great OS.
I went from 98 to ME, used it for 2 days and said no, went back to 98 for a week, then a dad's friend gave me a copy of 2000, went to that and was very very happy.
About 2000 being the most stable version of Windows, i think it still holds that crown. I used 2000 until 2003 and never had a crash or blue screen.
2000 really deserves more love and credit then it receives. Really I believe Vista deserves that too, for the features it introduced. But that's not the point.
2000 was a fantastic OS for it's time.
2000 was basically XP without the fluff. It also ran well on systems that struggled with XP, which was quite common at that time. I don't remember anything you could do on XP that you couldn't on 2000, until new software started dropping support for Win2K sometime after 2005.
Most of the things that people liked about XP were already there in 2000. 2000 even had a release of DirectX9c ,showing it had some serious gaming credentials. XP was NT 5.1so wasn't a big step from 2000's NT 5.0. Most people just never used 2000.
I know I originally used Windows ME on my computer but I always knew Windows 2000 was different and based on WindowsNT. I did actually did use it a few years later and I realized how important it was to get to Windows XP. The same is actually true for Windows Vista, I know a lot of people that don't like it but it was important to get to Windows 7, wich to this day is my personal favorite Windows OS. Yeah, all of my current PCs are on Windows 10 and I get notifications on two of my machines from Microsoft during Windows Update but I'm not not willing to up/downgrade to Windows 11 right now.
XP was largely 2000 with a shiny facelift. My broke school district still used 2000 in a lot of schools until they found money to replace their old Pentium III beige boxes with Windows 7 machines.
XP literally was making the worst looking Windows ever into the best looking Windows ever. The only thing it visually lacked were the Aero Glass effects from Vista. They should have combined that with XP's Luna interface, would have been **chef's kiss**
Nevertheless, in the end there was no reason to stay on 2k when XP got updates for much longer.
I have a virtual Windows 2000 PC and a virtual Windows XP PC, but they all lag on my 2019 laptop. I gave the virtual PC's two gigs of ram while my laptop has a quad-core cpu and 8 gigs of ram. I don't think a quad-core cpu is made for more than two virtual PC's with more than two cpu cores.
@@bwofficial1776 I would call it "ugly facelift", literally the first thing I always did is switch to classic mode ;)... But you are right, WinXP Vanilla was reeeeaaaly close to 2000. THe only new thing that I really loved is that they disabled write cache for USB mass storage in XP, so you didn't have to eject USB sticks anymore unlike Win2000.
But with SP2 maaaany changes and improvments came that 2000 didn't get, and then XP was really ahead. I still loved 2000 a lot, because it as a big step up from NT 4, especially with USB and installing hardware :)...
Windows XP takes the cake. I grew up with 95, then 98… then I’ll never forget the first time I used XP. It was revolutionary.
Definitely was a special moment for me also
XP was Win 2000 with a little eye candy and faster boot times.
Man, I loved the 2k/Me UI. That blue, and the new icons. Gradients everywhere. And 2k was pretty solid. This was also the era that I was switching to Linux, but I have nostalgic soft spot for Win98, Me, and 2k. And even XP to some extent, although mostly I remember that one for the viruses that infected laptops across my college campus in 2004.
There's something about the default blue, on a high resolution CRT. That's peak computing for me
And that start up sound of 2k..❤ Many memories of getting hold of a copy from a source 😂 ah to be 15 agian.
@@tarajoe07 well said, i know what you mean
As a kid, I always thought windows 2000 was ME given what ME stands for, So i always preferred XP, mainly because I got to help install it on the school computers, That was awesome haha
yeah, it makes no sense to me that they called them 2000 and ME
It was about piggybacking off of the hype of the new millennium arriving. That's why both operating systems had similar names. Still, imagine if Windows ME was actually good, how different would the story be?
Also, I'm fully expecting people to start referring to Windows 2000 as an underrated or misjudged OS similar to how some people talk about Windows Vista as over-hated or misjudged these days.
Some claimed the 'ME' stood for 'Media Edition'.
I don't know why 2000 Wasn't loved more, I used this all the way to Win 7.
People weren't aware.
Windows 2000 is probably my favourite Windows. I always liked the slightly overhauled, yet classic, appearance. The fade effects and use of Tahoma blew my mind at the time with its simple understated elegance.
Shame it never made it into the household in its purest form. It was a corporate enterprise OS also often found in educational establishments - my school had it and I did work experience in 2003 where they were slowly transitioning away from it.
XP looked Fisher Price and its appearance aged very badly, so I always preferred to run it in classic theme. The "Home" and "Professional" branding also went with SP2 in 2004.
I used Win2k for a long time and I didn't need to format it once despite everything that was thrown at it by me. Unlike the 98 SE or 95 OSR2 which needed a refresh every half a year... so yes, it was a great OS. So much, that I completely ignored XP and Vista, upgrading directly to Win7 when 2k started to show its age and incompatibility issues with newer applications after all these years.
I bought my retail version of Windows 2000 in April 2000. The only issue early on, like you mentioned with plug and play, was that Windows 9x and NT used completely different driver models. Hardware manufacturers weren't overly concerned with NT support, especially on PCMCIA devices until XP showed up and everyone scrambled to get their drivers ready. Service Pack 1 in August 2000 helped with this in a big way, Service Pack 2 was a nice big leap forward and by the time SP3 and SP4 were on the scene, all the issues had been ironed out. Then people started going for Win2003 and XP. I still have a machine that runs Win2K to this day, though the hardware was upgraded a good long time ago to a Pentium 4.
In a lot of ways back then, Windows 2000 was "NT for the rest of us". That only got magnified with XP later in its life once the NT codebases were once again unified. (Souce: Dave Cutler)
About 20 years ago I was a developer of a shareware utility that ran on every version of Windows including 2000, XP, Me, 98, and (maybe, I don’t remember) NT. Because NT/XP/2000/7 weren’t DOS-based, but Me and 98 were, there were some significant differences under the hood that made it extra annoying to code, debug, and support. If it had been a regular application it probably would have been a lot easier, but my software had components that ran as a background service, which made things more complicated.
NT stood for "New Technology" - Windows 2000 Professional was also the ONLY version of a Windows client operating system that included a Terminal Server CAL, which is one of the reasons it was so short lived.
Excellent examination of Windows 2000. Im guessing you weren't using computers in 2000, i was an IT manager at the time and your documentary is very accurate, bravo!
NT 4 and Windoss 2000 were my two favorite OS's. Great video!
100% agree same here
* Windows 2000, not windos's 2000
NT 4 was bulletproof
I remember getting a new Dell Dimension 4000something back in 2002 with XP pre-installed. First thing I did was switching to 2000 because it was more lightweight and felt more mature/complete. I used it that way for 1 or 2 years, then finally switching back to XP when SP2 came out because I wanted to stay more up to date and it became clear that Microsoft shows more love to XP than 2000.
Not to mention XP was quite a train wreck until SP2 rolled out. 2000 just worked.
I agree: Xp, at the beginning, had a lot of issues; only with the Service Pack 2 began to work properly.
I worked at a private school during windows 2000 and installed it so many times I remembered the CD Key to install it. Not only on new systems, but upgrading Windows NT4 Workstations to Windows 2000. I even ran it at home until I could run XP properly. I liked 2000 due to it's ease to setup, sysprep, and join to a Windows 2000 Server domain controller.
Windows 2000 was the best version of Windows during its time and beyond. Very stable, elegant, and stood the test of time until Windows 7 came out. Forget ME, XP, and Vista, Windows 2000 was the gold standard of the first decade of the 2000s.
Well said.
Exactly how it felt to me
Great video brother. That 20 minutes flew by. I love tech history!
W9x had lots of issues with blue screens and hard drive faults, or so was my experience back then. With Windows 2000, most of those problems were gone, and the system was just so solid. I used it both at home and at work. Something left out in this video, is the network and user permission functionality, that was essential in many work/business scenarios.
9:45 you can't just show that family when the only reason they're known today is that one ancient UA-cam Poop
Windows 2000 was really great and i have a lot of nostalgia for it for sure. Its thr last time in my life where i especially had a lot of time to be very invested in, and tinker around with, home pc stuff.
Funnily enough, I've settled on ME on my nostalgia PC after its original hard drive kicked the bucket. I wound up really liking its particular balance of advancement with DOS compatibility, which lined up well with what I was wanting out of a retro setup, primarily focusing on the aughties that I grew up in with a dash of interesting DOS odds and ends that was just a little bit outside of NTVDM but without needing all-out DOS mode. And, with a couple decades of hindsight, the drivers worked too - apparently that was the big stability issue with ME, vendors were cheaping out on making sure their 98 drivers actually worked with ME, putting assumptions over testing.
ME is not 2000.
I used to fix PC's back then and i remember a fully updated Windows ME was not that bad. But it needed those updates to provide that stability. I also remember numerous times performing a fresh Windows ME install, like just finished installing and booting up for the first time to the desktop for the very first time, popup error on some run32dll or something. Like right out the gate. i would just press OK and it would still get to the desktop but that's so Bad
I think it’s wild this video comes out days after I installed Windows 2000 on a virtual machine purely out of nostalgia. As always, great video!
Yes, 2000 was, and is still, my favorite Windows !
Windows 7. Stable, simple, beautiful.
WIN7FOURLYFE
Best in terms of usability and performance. If somebody tweaks it to work with current software then I'm all in. Windows 10 is all ended the great experience.
Same for XP.
I'm still using it. It's a great operating system.
@varniitprofessional There's an extended kernel in the works, if you're willing to hold out for a little while.
I used windows 2000 pro as a dial up server which stayed online for 3 years, on a Pentium 1 75mhz machine. 3 years of dialup in the limewire/kaaza days hosting as many as 20 computers. We did eventually get 1mbps internet, and i remeber the wonders of downloading music videos in an hour, instead of days.
I really miss those days. When i got my first job, i slowly upgraded and built up that machine, eventually replacing it with an amd athlon XP, used as my gaming rig, still using the same windows 2000 install on an old hard drive. Used it way past the windows vista days until i fell away from computers.
Been using Windows since 3.1 came out. Had Win 2000 Professional on my old PIII machine, it is still my favourite OS of all times followed by Win 7, XP and Win 98 SE.
Pentium 3 or the P3 Health Partners Inc?
@@WohaoGWhat are you on about
My PIII converted numbers DVD into DIVX for ~3 years and lot of other things with Win 2k and I remember hibernation took 15s with my 1Go memory 😂 rarely I had to reboot.
I have a vague memory of 2000 (I believe my nana had this as a regular home computer in the early 2000s/2010s) and I loved the paint tool and how fun and easy it was to navigate, my fondest memory was booting it up and hearing the sweet sound of the machine running, it sounded like a loud jet but it made me happy and I loved booting it up just to hear that sound before helping her open the paint app so I could be occupied for 2 hours
Windows NT5 aka Windows 2000 was phenomenal. I never had a single issue running it back in the day.
When Fry's Electronics was a going concern, they once wrongly marked full release Windows 2000 with the upgrade price. I lucked out and they had to honor the price but fixed it after the sale. BTW, I was told the NT stands for Northern Telecom who supposedly developed the core for the Windows NT. Windows 2000 took a while to load, but it was a rock solid OS.
i'm one of i feel like 5 people who actually thought 8.1 was a banger. i ended up loving the full screen start menu, ironically. once i customized the hell out of it, it was actually pretty great. i'd willingly choose it as an os. windows 8 O.G. was a rly unfortunate launch for what was actually a pretty decent os. i'll admit to being one of the people who cried "change!!!" at first, but once i really gave it a chance, i liked it. i can't believe you actually mentioned the 8.1 enjoyers. thanks, bro.
Windows 8.1 on Surface worked like a charm ❤
@@gioel4charms (bar)
@@gioel4 i just straight up used it on a desktop! people thought i was silly, but i had a cute decorated start menu and they didnt. their loss!
Windows 8.1 is the way for handheld gaming pc but microsoft.....
I dual booted Windows 2000 with Windows 8.1
I greatly miss early 2000’s windows. Full of personality and simple, No bloatware and spyware and the mysterious yet adventurous feeling you get is priceless
You have to make a video on Windows 98, the fact that they made a second edition the next year would make a great documentary.
If you do, I’d like an honest comparison to WinME with all the patches. I looked after WinME properly - with a respect for update patches that is more 21st century - and I think it has a broader range of good & bad scenarios than Win98 and certainly Win95.
SE was a service pack, albeit a service packed with a bit of marketing budget thrown its way
Good video. I lived and worked with all these versions of Windows starting with 3.0. As for NT vs 9x, one needs to remember that outside of large companies very few users had hardware capable of running NT. This only really began to change in the new millennium.
Loved Windows 2000! And barely ever got to use it-perhaps just a few times at school. Could it also be that very few new home systems came with 2000?
Very few ever had it from the factory. It was a business OS aimed at business users.
Idk a lot about computers or what this video was really about (Idk if I ever even used Windows 2000), but the little music-related easter eggs are always what keeps me coming back to watch. Stuart Sutcliffe, Pearl Jam, Doctor Robert, I think I even once spotted a "George Harrison Ham Sandwich" icon once lmao!! I really appreciate these fun little videos even if I don't quite grasp all the content. Keep it up!
I would definitely agree Windows 2000 Professional was the best Operating System ever released it’s was very stable once updated to Service Pack 4 and all the other updates.
12:26 It literally says on the boot and login screen "Built on NT Technology".
(Which would be "New Technology Technology"?)
Ive held the opinion that Win2k was the best windows since it came out when i was in high school. I still think that today.
Thank you for saying the truth lol
1:12 Nice reference to the Windows 95 Video Guide there
This particular version of Windows was my very first introduction to "3D Pinball: Space Cadet."
Me too. In 2020
I used Windows 2000 back in the day and absolutely loved it. I had a dual-boot set up with Windows 98SE and 2000, but I found myself using 2000 more and just having 98SE there for compatibility with older games / software
When I was in college I used windows ME , and everyone in college kept saying how great windows 2000 was. Eventualy My hard drive died, and i started over and tried Windows 2000. I was amazed at how much more stable it ran. This whole time I was fighting with win ME that I didn't even know what stability was! Of course once Windows XP came it it was over because xp was just a better version of 2000. Long story short, all hail the NT kernel!
2000 was just plain great. I also still love the basic aesthetic that was carried over from 95/98, and was never much of a fan of the new themes foist on us in XP and beyond. It's to the point where on XP, I switched back to the classic theme but I also went so far as to edit explorer.exe so that the start menu icon would remain as it was in 2000 and earlier.
Hell, I even still do this on Win7 using Classic Shell.
The NT architecture, which I was first introduced to on 2000, was indeed like night and day. Before 2000, it was just a given you could never have your computer running for longer than 24 hours because you'd always have to reboot, frequently. With the NT kernel, the stability is such that I could generally have a system uptime of several months straight without having to restart. Uptime was something Linux users took a lot of pride in, and it's clear to see why when the non-NT architecture was so unstable.
2000 also gave a user control over the system that was unparalleled as far as Windows was concerned, and gave users a lot of authority under the hood. Security was also improved to a great degree, IIRC.
You could honestly say that Windows 2000 was absolutely an OS for power users. While nothing can truly compete on that front with a fully open source OS like Linux, Microsoft was heading in a direction that could cater towards those who were sort of 'halfway to Linux'.
Unfortunately, I think that direction has been lost with the latest versions of Windows.
Windows 2000 was 💪! I was amazed how rock solid was compared to 9x at the time.
Windows 2000 has always been my favorite Microsoft operating system. Because of some devoted users and programmers, I was able to use Windows 2000 up to around 2020 with KernelEx and Extended Core. But as I started requiring a lot more from my PC, I had to abandon the OS I loved so much. And say what you will, but I think Windows Classic GUI looks so much better than Windows 10/11's default GUI. Windows 2000 was certainly a very rock-solid OS, but you had to know some things in order to really use it since compatibility was a bit wonky and because you didn't have things like system restore or repair, you couldn't just magically undo system issues with just a few clicks. But with such a lightweight OS that with a few system modifications could run a lot of software well after it's end of support, what wasn't to love?
True! Also... Windows 2000 SP4 fully updated with BlackWingCat's Extended Kernel installed is god sent!
2:12 Stuart sutcliffe, nice Beatles reference and also the Beatles for Sale album cover in the background.
14:14 Pete best lol I love these little references you put in. (George Harrison bread lol)
15:09 Eleanor rigby and dr Robert!
And the ending with George almost leaving the Beatles lol
If Microsoft never took that step and made 2000, we'd probably still be using DOS.
Doubt it. I forget about DOS since NT 4.
@@RustedCroakerSo you had hard time with setting devices on and playing games
@@bumblebity2902 On the contrary, everything was working much better then on 95.
Unlikelly. DOS kernel was already a problem on year 2000. Microsoft originally wanted to Kill before year 2000, but only managed to do at 2001.
By other hand, the main real reason to MS-DOS endures that late was ONLY thing: games.
Around 1994, DOS extenders enables to create 32-bit protected DOS programs, where a special loader provides protected mode functions over a real mode operating system.
However for professional programs, a functional DOS 32-bit extender was the Windows 3.1 Enhanced Mode, later Windows 95/98/Me. No real reason to rebuild the whell that was given by Windows.
Games was the major usage of DOS extenders due to Higher speed to Access the video hardware without an heavy operating system on place.
Windows 95/98/Me provides virtual device drivers for those DOS games had Access for video, disc and sound hardware with minimal interference.
3dfx Voodoo Glide API also gives some time extra to DOS, since gives 3D acceleration even on Pure MS-DOS or running on Windows 95.
Eventually DirectX provides accelerated hardware Access for video and audio, and with this even protected DOS extenders becomes obsolete.
Still with this late DOS era due to gaming, it was a little harsh to provide a NT consumer version before 2000.
You just unlocked a lot of memories. Sure, Windows 2000 and XP were my favourite ones. Nothing compares to them. Even the boring office-like Win 2k seems so beauitiful right now.
It's sad that Windows 2000 was overshadowed by the disgraceful Windows ME.
My first job we had a Windows 2000 box as the server, and I got to work on it directly sometimes for some graphics work since it drove the high-end printers. It was such a joy, 100% stable, unbelievably fast for that day and age… and then you’d go back and do your day to day work on a Windows 98 box that blue screened three times a day, randomly stuttered, absolute Swiss cheese of security holes and constantly random issues with drivers or hardware support or broken updates or some other such nonsense, and it was like.. why does it have to be this way? (And yeah, I know the answer was the DOS legacy but still)…
windows 2000 was great the only problem was a lot of software was not supported on win 2000 yet so myself and many others would switch to older os
Unfortunately. Microsoft didn’t had enough time to implement the complete compatible mode to Windows 2000 which became available on Windows XP and later.
So when I switched to Windows from Mac i purchased by mistake NT 4 with the parts for my new pc. Drivers eere an issue but not insurmountable. My biggest headache was drivers for my sound card. When 2000 came out i was paying attention and got it. What breath of fresh air. Worked from the start and was near bullet proof.
Had this also when we got new PCs at work. Made using them Soo much better. How i miss this OS to this day. The darn thing was light on resources and just worked.
Happier days indeed.
What is awesome is there is still a community keeping windows 2000 alive and usable as a daily OS on more modern hardware. Nearly all the work has come from the Japanese developer Blackwingcat, and he is still releasing drivers and software patches using kernel extenders to make 2000 a viable OS even today. I used Win 2000 as my daily back in 2020 for about a year until I upgraded to my current system, but it worked exceptionally well!
Seeing his work makes me hopeful that someone may get the same idea to use kernel extensions and dependency walkers on modern software to keep windows 7 going for many years to come.
I have always wanted to explore the OS (Windows 2000) a bit more, but didn't quite understand how to use it for other things besides school and general office work. It was the only OS I admired for its clean appearance.
I actually won a copy of Windows 2000 Pro when it came out in February 2000. I received the box from Microsoft, and it was a superb operating system. I used it for years and love it completely.
9:25 is it just me or does PuttPutt Saves The Zoo sound like a fun game?
Im not really a guy who is based on this but i heard people did call it a nostalgic game for them so .. yeah
I love looking at the old systems, their icons, etc. So nostalgic.
5:33 I doubt that people (except a few weirdos) have seen a machine as friend, because it was represented as friendly in ads.
Windows 2000 looked clean.
Windows Me also did...
A friend gave me a copy not long after W2k was released and I was blown away when I installed it and could leave my computer running without having to reboot it after running for more than a few hours. I could leave the pc overnight running tasks and not worry about it crashing overnight. I used it until begrudgingly moving to W7 and skipped over the xp generation because it did everything xp did already.
I used Windows 95, 98, and Xp.
I liked windows 10.
I enjoyed Windows XP 64 and Windows 7
But I loved windows 2000.
If I remember correctly (I might be wrong), XP x64 had no support for 32 bit apps. I tried it but didn't keep it around because of that. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a lack of support for 16 bit apps, that would not have been a dealbreaker for me.
Moving from BSODs on 9xs to stability OF 2000 it was the most drastic change. XP IMHO is 2000+ eye candy
Yesss. I loved Win2000. Stable, powerful, got the job done with no frills.
Working in I.T. at the time, the leap from Windows NT 4 to Windows 2000 was HUGE.
I'll never miss the modern Windows UI. Seriously, I have software that can transform the dull flat look of windows 10 into a very Windows 2000 look, complete with 3D buttons and everything and I am never going back to the bland modern windows 10 look, nor am I ever going to "upgrade" to windows 11.
That’s only because the age you are, people glorify certain things because of what your life was like at that time. Usually ages 13-15 are when people solidify their music and entertainment tastes. You may also be younger and just glorifying the past due to a bleak future.
@@_..-.._..-.._ I was around 21 back when I used Windows 98, not 13-15
As someone who worked at Microsoft PSS (product support services) in different roles from 1995 to 2010, I have to say that the absolutely biggest change in Win2000 from all the previous NT-versions was the introduction of Active Directory. And that in itself was derived from the Exchange Server 4-5.5 directory services, which was sorta kinda an x.500 directory of user names. The joys of planning AD-sites over slow links, dirsync to legacy Exchange servers and whatnot... But AD finally paved the way for Windows into really large companies as the OS of choice, and we still see the result of that in M365, Azure (or Entra or whatever it's called these days). That is the real legacy of Windows 2000.
Temple OS
Windows 2000 Pro was my go to for a long time when a lot of people were still using 98 or had moved onto XP. It just did what I needed it to exceptionally well and gave me very few issues.
I will always remember Windows 2000. I grew up with it the longest. I learned how to use Microsoft Office on it and I loved playing games on it. It might've been a business operating system, but my family got away with using it at home.
Windows 2000 is rock solid stable and thanks to BlackWingCat still usable. Greatest Windows version ever imo! Glad to see it getting some recognition
Underrated for sure! One of the last of the "old style grey" interfaces before they defaulted to something a bit more colourful.
2000 is just so clean, so crisp, so snappy. 7 is good, but still bulky and childlike by comparison
I remember back in 2000 my schools library got brand new computers and they came with Windows 2000 Professional. I thought Windows 2000 was great and really wanted to have the OS at home. But in 2001 I had a friend that his Dad worked for Compaq computers, he got the final version of XP 3 weeks before it was actually launched. he installed it on my computer at home 2 weeks before the actual OS came out. I fell in love with XP and felt I had a better version than 2000 and knew Windows was going to change for the good.
Without comment, windows XP was the best.
I only knew of 2000 bc of schools computers but after using it in school vs using windows 98 se at home I fell in love with it! It just worked better, looked neater and in all was just brilliant to use! So I begged my mom to get is which she was able to get me the upgrade version of it which I was still happy to have as it did the same!
Now alot of people don't know this but there was a home version of windows NT that was being made alongside of 2000 and xp which was called Neptune at the time but due to a code leak it was quickly scrapped and was replaced with ME
Arch Linux is the greatest
red star OS clears unfortunately
In the early 2000s, I ran a bootleg copy of Win2k for several years. It was so good. Everything just worked.
Why is the fact it was bootleg relevant ?
@@cappaculla Because Windows 2000 retailed for $319, compared with $109 for Windows 98. Hence getting a bootleg copy.
Your videos are an absolute joy to listen to while I'm at work building PCs. Have you considered doing a video covering the history of Microsoft as a whole? These videos probably already exist but your voice is really nice lol
Windows 2000 today is the greatest old Windows to virtualize.
Still almost fully compatible with VirtualBox 7 (with guest additions!), and no online activation.
Which means if you didn't lose your product key, you can have you own copy still working today :)
2000 is one of the MVPs of Windows. For me, if I need to run an older piece of software that won't run on Windows 10, I go to Vista and if it won't run on Vista, I go to 2000. I don't even consider XP, because 2000 can do what XP can and whatever 2000 and XP couldn't do, Vista usually would. 2000 and Vista were the best Windows experiences I ever had and I miss them dearly.
One thing I still miss from Windows 2000 is the possibility to preview audio and video files directly from the Explorer. In the sidebar when you selected a file of that type, you would get an embedded media player where you would be able to play the file without opening it in a standalone player. This feature never reappeared in the Windows Explorer in future versions of Windows.
They gave it back in win 11 23h2, few weeks ago
Agree! Windows 2000 was my favorite windows version for all the reasons you’ve mentioned.
I have good, vague memories of Windows 2000, so I really enjoyed this. I enjoy all your videos, especially the history videos. (Also, I work for the government and one of our programs is still run on MS-DOS, which blows my mind but is also not surprising at the same time).
Even during XP, I still stayed with 2000. It was fast, stable, and made my computer feel like a professional tool rather than a toy.
8:09 - According to Dave Cutler, who's pretty much the highest authority when it comes to NT, it does indeed stand for "New Technology".
Oh, and Windows 2000 definitely has a special place in my heart. With '95 to '98 SE, I always configured it to give me the option to boot straight into DOS mode and still did a whole lot of stuff in DOS over Windows, but when I got into the Microsoft beta program in 1998 and gave Windows 2000 beta 3 a try, I quickly switched to it as my primary OS.
I absolutely LOVED Windows 2000. I often switched back and forth between that and Windows XP, both had things about them that I liked which the other lacked, but my all time favorite Windows feature was in Windows 2000, and that was the "preview" mode. You could listen to entire songs or watch entire videos even without actually having to open the file, it just played in a sidebar in the folder. Windows 2000 was also stable af. XP was pretty good at that too though, both had hardly any BSOD for me especially when compared to Windows 98 SE, which I had used for a few years before the other two.
I was a lover of Win2k. You couldn't kill it. BTW, love your Christmas hangings!
Man, I love your videos. They unlock so many fond memories...
I'll never forget Win2k, had this running until xp sp3 and was my favorite OS followed by Win 7
Oh hey, you made a video on Windows 2000! At the time, all the machines in our household had Windows 2000 preinstalled with associated COA’s. Definitely was something consumers were getting preinstalled during ‘00-‘03 and I had several PCs with Win2K on it. The only thing that crashed was Active Desktop.
Windows 2000 will ALWAYS be my favorite version of Windows! it ran on EVERYTHING! it was rock solid in stability. by the time SP4 came out, it ran almost everything out there regarding software (games, productivity, creative... whatever). size wise, a full install with EVERY SP and update from MS, oh it occupied a whopping 4.5gbs of HD space. i loved how clean and simple the GUI was (XP GUI was a god awful mishmash of horrid colors, button styles and clutter IMO). networking and IT related duties were a breeze on a Win2k and Win2k server LAN/WAN. Windows 2000 will forever and always occupy a very special place in my heart that no other OS will ever beat out (even Windows 7, which is 2nd place for me).
how i do miss those days...