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The Joys of Windows 2000 in the Year 2007
by Aaron Smith on Tuesday, March 20 2007Yesterday, I had to install a fresh copy of Windows 2000 to test the systray unavailable problem (which, by the way, we can now duplicate). Of course, installing an old operating system these days can be a bit cumbersome.
The initial install of Windows 2000 went fine. I booted from the CD, formatted the selected partition, and was sitting at the desktop in, to my suprise, about 40 minutes. My problems began, however, when I realized the hardware on the test machine is much newer than Windows 2000, so none of the drivers (LAN, Sound, etc.) were automatically installed. In retrospect, that's probably why the install didn't take very long.
No problem, I thought. I learned some time ago to keep a CD around with LAN drivers so that whenever I installed a new OS, I could pop it in, and be connected to the tubes in a matter of minutes. No such luck with Windows 2000.
See, the LAN driver installer needed a newer version of the Windows Installer than what shipped with Windows 2000. The latest Windows Installer for Windows 2000 from Microsoft's site requires at least Windows 2000 Service Pack 3. Although I had SP4 ready to go, it wouldn't install without first having SP3 installed, which of course required SP2, which in turn required SP1. Needless to say I ended up with a CD containing SP1, and SP2, two seperate MSDN cds, one with SP3, and one with SP4, and a CD with LAN drivers, all so I could can get connected only to download and install additional 30 high priority updates, plus about 10 optional updates, all but two of which required a reboot. All for one bug.
I started the Windows 2000 install at 9:30 yeaterday morning. I finished at 4:15. I was able to duplicate the bug in about 10 seconds. Granted there were a lot of other irons in the fire during the whole install time, but the fact still remains that it took a solid day to get Windows 2000 installed and updated. And I still don't have the sound drivers installed. There's an DECtalk Express on that machine, and I decided that was good enough for speech.
Now that this OS has been updated, I think it's time to lock the drive away so that it doesn't get reformatted, lest I have to endure this suffering again.
