Windows 2000 For Everybody?
Jim Forkner – Center for Academic Computing
I’ve been running Windows 2000 ever since it was called Windows NT 5 and as far as I'm concerned, this is the most exciting system since the original Windows 95. Now that it’s finally here, it’s actually more than we’d hoped for and it is without a doubt the most stable Windows system to-date. But be forewarned: Don't assume that adding Win2000 to your existing machine is going to fix everything – it’s a very complex system – make no mistake!
Is Win2000 for everybody? Well the quick answer is what you’ve often heard your doctor say: “It depends . . .”
Depends on what you say? Well, take a little time to scan this article. Then you’ll have a much better feel for whether or not Win2000 belongs on your PC. And generally speaking, you just might be surprised at how powerful and functional this new system really is. There’s definitely a lot of new capability and although at first glance, it looks a lot like Win98, once you roll up your sleeves and start to learn it, you’ll find that there’s a lot under the covers that's different from Win9x and from WinNT4.
Probably the most obvious and most welcome feature, especially for laptop owners, is Plug and Play support – something that Win9x users have taken for granted for years. Better yet, Win2000 supports more devices out-of-the-box (more than 12,000 at last count) than either Win95 or Win98, and that includes the latest USB and FireWire devices. Even so, the emphasis is on business use, so it’s important to check with the manufacturer of certain exotic devices to be sure that they’re fully supported under Win2000.
Win2000 has the same stringent hardware requirements that WinNT4 has, so especially those people with home machines need to look before they leap – it’s a very complex system – more than you may need or want in the final analysis. In addition, the internals have changed in such a way that sometime in the future the same drivers written for Win2000 will also run on “Millennium” (the follow-on to Win98) eliminating the constant problem of installing the “latest” drivers to support all hardware devices. Although Win2000 can run almost all application programs that can execute on Win9x, there are a few that it won’t. And, just as certain DOS programs – games primarily – wouldn’t run on WinNT4, they won’t run on Win2000 either (and for the same reasons – one of Win2000’s design points is local security, so it never gives applications direct hardware control.) It’s also very important to realize that many current system utilities were not designed with Win2000 in mind, so they may not work correctly, or in a few cases, may actually cause damage to the Win2000 file system.
Windows 2000 has lots of completely new features. Some are on the desktop side, some on the server side, and some are in both places or they work in a complementary client/server relationship.
Unless you’ve had a chance to work with a Beta version, it’s somewhat surprising to find that on comparable hardware, Win2000 is faster than Win98 and about as fast as WinNT4.
So, if you’re not sure what to do about Windows 2000, here’s a quick summary, with the details laid out in the rest of this article.
Summary
Laptop
users as a
class are probably the biggest winners. Win2000 fully supports PnP devices,
so there should be much fewer problems setting up and modifying laptop configurations.
Especially advantageous for sensitive corporate data is the Encrypting file
system (only if using NTFS) that allows automatic encryption of individual
files or entire directories, if the machine is lost or stolen, these files
are doubly protected. New Offline Files and Folders enables powerful offline
file manipulation and editing with automatic resynchronization when
reconnected to the domain . . . a feature that’s much more powerful than the
existing “Briefcase” because neither the system, nor the user need do
anything special to use the files once they are enabled. Realize,
though, it’s still a new system, so it doesn’t yet support as many devices
specific to laptops as Win98 does, and it’s almost a “give” that you must
upgrade your BIOS to the latest version (and I recommend that you keep
checking back often over the first few months to always get the latest BIOS.)
Be certain to enable APM support in the Power Options Applet in Control
Panel. If you’re not a tinkerer, the best way to run Windows 2000 on a laptop
is to buy one with it preinstalled – you’ll be guaranteed that it’ll work and
that you’ll be able to get technical support in case you need it. Business
users with
64+MB and Pentium or better computers are likely to be the ones to benefit
the most from Windows 2000. It’s more stable than Win98 and it supports more
applications than winNT4. Also, it's built to handle new and exotic types of
hardware, including biometric security scanners, smart cards, and so on,
which make business machines more secure. Systems
administrators thinking about installing Win2000 on their servers or clusters must
positively look before they leap. There are many advanced server features,
like Active Directory, that are new. And it will take time and experience,
preferably on a prototype domain to test out the many new features. Finally,
it’s worth noting that Servers can be run in “NT4 domain compatibility mode”
on an existing NT4 domain, but once the domain is upgraded to Win2000 Active
Directory, there’s no going back . . . except by restoring the domain
controllers – not a pretty picture. So be very careful. Power
users who
love to tweak and experiment are going to have loads of fun. Windows 2000
will easily outperform Windows 98, and should match WinNT4, providing
features that neither system has. Gamers may or may not benefit
from Win2000. It all depends on which devices you use and which games you
run, so it’s very important that you check with the manufacturer before you
upgrade – or else plan a dual-boot system until you’ve checked it out for
yourself. In any event, Win2000 offers better stability than Win98, and can
run many of the same games as Win98, it’s just those who play DOS-based games
that may have problems. Home
users who
don't use their PCs for more than a word processor and some software to help
when tax time rolls around aren’t likely to get much out of Win2000. It
demands far more resources than most casual home users may have to spare, and
may make a system perform worse, not better. It definitely will take more
time and effort to understand the system in the event you need to change your
configuration. |
System Requirements
In the past, Microsoft tended to hedge when stating minimum system requirements, but lately, they’ve finally figured out that it’s not a good idea to understate the requirements – and besides, with today’s systems, you’ve probably already got what it takes. In general, the requirements are about the same as the current ones for NT 4.0, but you'll obviously get better performance on more recent hardware -- not just CPUs, but hard disks, video controllers and network adapters as well.
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Win2000 Professional
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Win2000 Server & Advanced Server |
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CPU |
166+ MHz Pentium (Pentium Pro preferred) |
166+ MHz Pentium (Pentium Pro preferred) |
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Main Memory |
64MB minimum, but 128MB or more is better |
128MB is the absolute minimum, and any server doing “real” work needs at least a minimum of 256MB |
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Disk Space |
2 GBytes with 1 GB free space |
We don’t build servers with less than 4 GB minimum and preferably 9 GB or more spread across 2 or more spindles (for performance) |
Win2000 Pro is the less demanding than Server, but it still requires a fair amount of resources to make it work well. More is better in every case, and remember, whatever you buy today will be outdated in 6 months and obsolete in 18 months, so choose wisely.
Servers are more demanding machines than desktop computers -- so it stands to reason that Win2000 Server requires more processing power than the Pro client version. Servers that do a lot of transactional processing, or Web servers that process ASP pages, should use a Pentium II or better.
As far as main memory goes, nothing less than 128MB will do on a server, and that's assuming it's only running one service, such as a Web server. At the absolute minimum, you should add another 128MB (or more) for each additional service the system runs. But you’re really cutting your own throat if you don’t have at least 256+MB on your Server.
We always recommend SCSI over IDE for better disk performance and in the case of a server; you really should start with an absolute minimum of 4GB. Frankly, at today’s prices, it would be cheaper to buy a preconfigured machine with a 9GB drive already installed than take the time to reconfigure an existing system by installing an additional hard drive later on.
Performance
Several PC publications have run extensive performance tests, comparing Win2000 with WinNT4 and Win98. With a 400 MHz Pentium II processor and tons of real memory (256+MB) both Win2000 and NT4 performed within a gnat’s whisker of each other. And in the case of Win98, all that extra 16-bit code used for compatibility with many older programs got in the way, so Win2000 actually outperformed Win98.
One of the most noticeable things is the difference in Video performance, where Win2000 is a little slower than WinNT4 with some video boards and faster with others. This is likely due to the newer, less “tuned” code in the Win2000 drivers. Remember, the Win98 and WinNT4 drivers have been around for several years and many have been extensively optimized. You can expect that this is an area that will receive much attention from the video card manufacturers in the coming months.
Power Management
Power management isn't just for notebooks anymore. All desktop machines shipped today have many power-management features that go beyond simply blanking the screen or spinning the hard drives down. For years, I’ve used Win9x laptop suspend/resume and hibernation to save power and to allow a much faster “resume” of the system than that provided by a system boot. Now, that same capability is available when using Windows 2000.
Some network adapters feature a "Wake on LAN" option that can trigger a machine to come out of hibernation when it's contacted across the network (although this is another area of security concern that must be managed). Win2000 is one of the first operating systems that fully supports these features without OEM “addins.” NT's support for UPS modules is greatly beefed-up and is now incorporated into the Power Management modules.
Hibernation
The Windows 2000 hibernation feature not only saves power but is also a convenience, for desktop users as well as notebook users. The hibernate option is a major step in the announced direction of “instant on” technology, and when enabled, an entry is added to the shutdown menu. If you select this option, Win2000 hibernates by writing the contents of system RAM to a reserved area on the hard drive so the machine can be powered completely off and then restored to the way it was when you triggered the hibernation from the “Shutdown” window.
Hibernation is one computer feature where “more” memory is not better. That's because Windows needs to save your entire memory image to disk. You'll need at least as much free disk space as you have RAM. On larger RAM systems, 128MB or more, selecting the hibernation shutdown option can translate into a lot of disk I/O. So it may take some time to save and restore the system from hibernation. It’s still faster than shutdown and rebooting, but the time advantage becomes less of an advantage the more main memory that the system must deal with.
Device Support
Win2000 “wins” big when compared to WinNT4 on device support. WinNT4 had almost no Plug and Play (PnP) support – providing ISA PnP support if you manually enabled it for certain hardware. While Win98 has Universal Serial Bus (USB) support, WinNT4 had none. In the case of IEEE-1394 (FireWire) support, Win98 supports it and WinNT4 supports only certain devices on a case-by-case basis. (By the way, if you haven’t had a chance to investigate FireWire devices, you’d be well advised to take a look, especially if you have an interest in digital video (DV) or high-speed (up to 400 Mbit) asynchronous machine-to-machine connections or device to machine connections.) Support for devices like DVD drives, USB, and FireWire devices is built-in to Win2000 and almost all Plug-and-Play hardware is supported right out of the box. As with Windows 98, all you need to do to install a new device is plug it in and turn on the system (or in the case of a hot-swappable device, such as a PC Card, just plug it in). Win2000 automatically detects the device and prompts you to supply a driver if it doesn't already have one for it. And it just gets better – most new hardware additions don't require you to reboot the system to have them take effect and often, you need not even insert the distribution CD! Both Win98 and WinNT4 require a reboot after configuring most new hardware and they always require the distribution CD (unless you’ve copied them to the hard drive.)
A general rule of thumb for device support is that if a device existed in either Win98 or WinNT4, the chances are fairly good that it's also supported in Win2000. And at worst, basic support is provided by the drivers "in the box." And most likely, the manufacturer will soon release it’s own fully supported driver version.
And just as it was when NT4 first came out, cutting-edge devices that are too new to have driver support built-in may only function in basic mode – and some not at all. For example, because of the way that CD-ROMs and DVD file systems are supported, you most likely will need to get new drivers from the manufacturers to enable full support if you’re upgrading an existing system.
As always, for a list of devices that are officially supported, take a look at the Windows 2000 Compatibility List.
Application Compatibility
Since Windows 2000 is based on much of the same code used in WinNT4, you’d think that programs that ran on WinNT4 would also run on Win2000. This is generally the case with the same general exceptions that applied back when WinNT4 first became available. In other words, most applications that don't use undocumented APIs or do anything that depends directly on something that’s changed in Win2000 -- i.e., most conventional programs -- will run just fine under Win2000. The kinds of programs that won’t work are disk defragmenters designed for WinNT4 or Win98, or other special-purpose system utilities that modify hard drive partitions. Now Win2000 has its own disk-defragmentation code exits and in fact, it comes with a simple defragmenter program that, from the users’ point of view, operates much like the one in Win98.
We strongly recommend that you do not use system utilities designed for Windows 95, 98 or Windows NT4 unless you’re prepared for them to damage your file system! Raxco's PerfectDisk 2000 and Executive Software's Diskeeper 5.0 support Win2000, and Symantec plans new utilities and a new SpeedDisk program specifically designed for Win2000 by early Summer, at the latest. And remember, Win2000 comes with its own built-in defragmentation software, which while not as advanced as some of the specialty products, works just fine.
Anti-virus programs are always operating system specific, but versions of all the major anti-virus packages are planned or already available for Windows 2000.and as of this writing, Symantec’s Norton Antivirus software runs OK and has properly detected viruses on my test machines, even though it pops up a warning stating that it may not run successfully.
Win2000 has its own file compression system and doesn't inter-operate with any other compression system including Win9x's DriveSpace. If you’re planning to upgrade a Win9x system that has a DriveSpace drive, you’ll have to copy the data someplace else and then uninstall the DriveSpace drive before the upgrade.
Advanced Features
Win2000 is loaded with new features, many new to any version of Windows.
The Installer may finally put an end to application installation problems where certain crucial DLL files get accidentally replaced, causing all kinds of problems from simple application failure to a complete system failure. This new capability monitors and protects certain files from being replaced and in other cases, allows a damaged software application to be repaired rather than reinstalled from scratch.
Dynamic Partition and Dynamic Disk let you add space to an existing partition on the fly. You simply run a utility and can “connect” one or more partitions on one or more volumes together to form a single logical partition, and except for some possible performance issues (for badly placed chunks of the partition) the system never misses a beat. In fact, you don’t even have to reboot!
Much like Windows 98, Windows 2000 can be booted into "Safe Mode" to allow diagnostics and repair. In addition, Windows 2000 can now be booted into a command-line-only mode, just like Win9x, in case there’s real trouble.
IntelliMirror, a beefed-up version of “roaming profiles,” now allows a user's data, application settings and documents to follow them no matter where they are when they login to a Windows 2000 domain.
Active Directory is a significant new server feature. It allows you to consolidate Internet-standards-based directory information into one DNS-driven database. Entries include filenames, services, databases, Web pages, and Windows 2000 domain resources such as machines and printers. For new installations, Active Directory, while fairly complex, will likely provide significant ease-of-use benefit. For existing NT Domains, planning and testing are the keywords because it’s possible to end up with a can of worms if Active Directory is deployed without careful regard for existing resources, systems and DNS servers.
Distributed File System, more often known as DFS, allows Windows 2000 servers to take disparate directories in multiple machines and present them to users as a directory tree on a single virtual volume.
Terminal Services is now a standard feature in Windows 2000. Terminal Services enables remote users to login through a networked client (an older, slower PC that’s not quite outlived its usefulness, perhaps) and get access to a normal graphical desktop just as if they were logged in locally.
Win2000 networking is much more flexible and easier to use than any other Windows system – ever! In WinNT4, your network connection was nearly cast in stone . . . in fact, if you just looked at your settings, WinNT4 forced you to reboot the system. Now, however, any of the resources (modems, VPNs, NICs) in the networking subsystem can be edited, disconnected, switched around, and plugged back in at will without having to reboot – except in a very few special circumstances.
Setup Experience
We’ve had no significant problems with Win2000 upgrades of NT 4.0 systems. Microsoft recommends that the WinNT4 upgrade to Windows 2000 is the smoothest path, and our experience confirms it. Win2000 correctly flags drivers that don't have replacements, like scanners, printers, and certain mouse drivers while everything else works correctly just as you’d expect.
On Win95 or Win98 PCs, the upgrades also completed without incident, although some of the machines seem to be “sluggish.”
Win2000 cannot upgrade a Win3.x system. Win2000 Server or Advanced Server can upgrade NT Server 3.51 or 4.0. When installing over Terminal Server, the features are migrated cleanly into the new “out-of-the-box” Win2000 Terminal Services.
It’s very important that you upgrade your system’s BIOS before you begin the Windows 2000 installation, for without it, it’s possible to run into all kinds of problems . . . from hung systems, to installations that finish, but cannot recognize parts of their hardware.
Clean Install or Upgrade?
After installing Win2000 on a lot of test machines in many different settings, it seems that clean installations are the better way to go. Clean installs complete a lot faster and seem to run better afterwards. Note that a clean install is not the same thing as formatting the hard disk and starting from scratch, although that’s OK too!
An advantage of clean installing Win2000 is that it automatically configures multiple-boot systems with Win9x and/or WinNT4. It’s probably best if you have enough disk space to clean install to separate partitions. Win2000 cannot configure multiboot on upgrade installations, so plan accordingly.
So, should you upgrade or clean install Windows 2000? Although there are mixed opinions about this within the University as well as in the industry, it seems as though it makes the most sense to perform a clean install. That way, you’re guaranteed to start out fresh with the correct files and no extra “junk” DLLs left over from who knows when . . . although it is a little more work to reinstall all of your applications. (In case you haven’t figured it out – I’d rather upgrade than clean install ;-)
There are “Gotcha’s”
At the risk of beating a dead horse: It’s very important that you upgrade your system’s BIOS before you begin the Windows 2000 installation, for without it, it’s possible to run into all kinds of problems . . . from hung systems, to installations that finish, but cannot recognize parts of their hardware.
You can't undo a Win9x or WinNT4 upgrade. Nor can you “unconvert” the new Win2000 NTFS file system if you convert your drive or partition to NTFS during installation. And just a reminder, Win9x doesn't recognize NTFS.
Windows 2000 is the only system that recognizes FAT, FAT32, and the NTFS file systems. And although the Win2000 “ReadMe” files explain about the NTFS file system issues when multibooting with Win9x, the upgrade screens themselves don’t give you much warning. We recommend that if you're clean installing, and you're confident that you’re going to only be running Windows 2000, then NTFS is the best file system to use. Not only does it provide additional file system permissions security, but because it’s a transaction based system, it is also much more resistant to file system corruption due to system crashes or hangs.
Because all versions of Win9x since Win95B and Win2000 recognize the FAT32 file system, this makes it the best file system for Win9x and Win2000 multiboot environments. Remember though, if you're planning to keep an installation of WinNT4 on your system, the FAT file system is your best bet, because WinNT4 doesn't recognize FAT32.
Rough Edges
Despite the fact that Windows 2000 is over a year “late” from the early timelines, it’s a new system, and as such there are rough edges, mostly in the area of cutting-edge device driver support – much the same way it’s predecessor, WinNT4 had similar problems. Even so, the drivers will come, and the difference this time is that Microsoft learned its lesson the last time around . . . so now, Win2000 offers support for an enormous variety of hardware, and where it lacks deeper driver-level support for certain specific functions, such as DVD playback support, it provides basic support.
As another example, most video cards with TV-tuner, video-capture or other special video capacities must wait for vendor-written drivers before they can really shine . . . but still, this is lots better than the months of frustration we endured while we waited for nonexistent drivers – and thus non-functioning devices – when WinNT4 was first released.
Bottom Line
I’ve been running Windows 2000 ever since it was called Windows NT 5 and I love it! This is the most exciting system since the original Windows 95. Especially for those who’ve been waiting to run NT on a laptop. It’s without a doubt the most capable and stable Windows system to-date.
