Dell Windows 2K Installation CD-ROM

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VirtualSamana

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Do I need to buy Windows 2000 again?

I have a Dell Laptop with Windows 2000. I would like to install Win 2K on my home-assembled desktop pc that I use for recording. My question is can I use the recovery/installation cd that came bundled with my laptop to install Windows 2k on my non-Dell PC?
 
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Re: Do I need to buy Windows 2000 again?

I would recommend very highly against it. Most of the bundled software that you receive with branded computers (especially laptops) are actually recovery discs that are built to automatically configure the hardware settings of that particular computer. Loading this disc onto any other machine would be a nightmare, trying to manually reconfigure all of the different hardware setting (if you can even get it to boot). With a lot of computer smarts it can be done, but whoa! It’s hardly worth the effort.

At this point WIN 2K really doesn't offer a lot for the audio enthusiasts. It does not support audio over USB, and many of the hardware venders are being a bit slow in producing W2K drivers for some of their older products. Granted, it's a much more stable OS, but a Win 98 SE machine dedicated to audio won't give you many problems at all. (The next version of windows that's scheduled to ship this fall will run on NT technology but is rumored to contain backward compatibility with Win 95 drivers. You may want to wait and see how that turns out. That’s my plan).

Steve
 
Generally, Dell CDs only work with Dell PCs. Unfortunatley. :(

But you can pop it in and try. Otherwise you'll need to buy a retail version of Win 2000.
 
It will probably error when it sees a non-dell setup in the bios. Even if it clears that, there will be driver issues.
Now the USB audio not being supported, that's a new one on me. I saw several new USB dvices being run at NAMM touting Win2000, and being demoed on it.

H2H
 
You can control audio hardware via USB as long as the audio follows a different route.

I've got some Altec Lancing digital speakers that send audio through USB. I can't use them in W2K, and the manufacturer says they can't support them with new drivers because of the USB audio issue. I may have been steered wrong, but I don't think so.
 
The "problem" with USB audio on Windows 2000 as I understand it, is that Win2k doesn't allow low level hardware access to the USB controller. Likewise, it doesn't allow low level hardware access to ANYTHING. I've also heard complaints that since you can't change IRQ's in Win2k, you can't change the IRQ of the onboard USB controller. This is true, unless your BIOS supports the change, but can often be worked around via proper card placement.

I wouldn't necessarily call these problems, and Windows 2000 drivers exist for a lot of USB audio hardware. Yes, Windows 2000 driver support has been rather lacking, MOST of which is due to lazy manufacturers. Ok ok, lazy is a bad term....they concentrate driver support on the most used platforms, e.g. Win9x.

I have a Win2k DAW setup with m-audio hardware, and the advantages of Win2k FAR outweight the drawbacks. You could not pay me to go back to 9x, and you'd have a hard time convincing me to go back to NT4.

Windows XP is due out in October, but don't soil your britches over it just yet. If your manufacturer is having trouble with WDM support now, they'll probably still be having trouble in October. And no, Windows XP does not support windows 9x vxd device drivers. It does tout legacy application compatibility tools, but Windows 2000 shipped with similar tools (quite handy too I might add).

Personally I can't wait for XP, and will move to it as soon as I get all the necessary drivers. For typical hardware, see the current HCL: http://www.microsoft.com/hcl/default.asp

Anyhow, about the Dell Laptop windows 2000 stuff. Microsoft is now selling licenses seperate from media. For instance, I was recently getting some quotes on Office XP, and I was quoted on 20 or so paper licenses, and ONE Office XP media pack (e.g. Installation CDROM's). It might be possible for you to buy the Windows 2000 media without buying a license, and it will probably cost about $20-30. But, since you've got a Dell, the Windows 2000 license that came with it might be proprietary. You know, you can always call Microsoft and ask (seriously)! I also think that you might be able to call Dell and purchase media. I order Systemax machines somewhat regularly, and they never come with Windows media (just a recovery disc), but I was informed that I could purchase the media from the Systemax reseller.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Purchase a 2000 disk from Microsoft without purchasing a license????!! You must be smoking crack... or more likely I just misunderstood your post. I would expect to see Bill Gates dancing on TV in a dress before they would ever do that.

I agree with everyone, installing from Dell recovery CD is a BAD idea. It is almost certainly an "image" of your system as shipped rather than a true Win 2000 install cd, I doubt it would work if you tried it.

Although I am using Win 98SE quite happily on my DAW I agree Win 2000 would be the best choice provided you have located all the drivers you need beforehand.

I'll reserve my opinion on XP, but if Microsoft really tries to go ahead with their copy protection scheme on this OS I think it will be a HUGE flop. No one is going to stand for a OS that stops working if you change the motherboard in your PC (for example).
 
RWhite,

The XP copy protection scheme isn't quite *that* nasty. It does allow for many reinstallations and hardware configuration changes. I remeber reading an article about this on tomshardware, because guys who do benchmarking of course reinstall operating systems onto tons of different machines. Apparently, Microsoft is only targeting large corporate users...or so they say. Personally I'm not comfortable with it either, but we may not have a choice.

And yes, I did say purchase a 2000 disc without purchasing a license. I know that there is a seperate part number for Win2k media in the open license program. However, you might have to purchase a license at the same time, or prove that you've already got a license. Regardless, I'm sure there's a way to get media, unless the Dell licenses are some kind of special deal, which wouldn't suprise me I guess.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Windows NT and 2000 has a similar feature now, though I don't know if it was designed that way intentionally. And of course I found out the hard way.

I picked up a new motherboard and moved all my components over to it. Low and behold I couldn't boot from the NTFS drive. Luckily I had set the machine up for dual boot so I could get to my Fat 32 partition where I keep all of my data files. After futzing with it for a couple of hours I logged on to the Microsoft Knowledge Base (Great source for tech support), and discovered that with an NTFS boot drive the O/S stores the hardware ID of the hard-drive interface and won't boot unless it sees the identical ID. This is not a problem with a SCSI card because you just move the same card over into the new motherboard. With an IDE interface built into the motherboard it's a whole different ball game. The only way I'd be able to access any files on that drive was to move everything back onto the original motherboard then back up what I needed. Like I said before... all my data files were on a Fat 32 drive so I just reinstalled everything after I reformatted the NTFS drive. A little off topic here but this might save a few people some headaches down the line so what hell...

Oh... another point to consider when installing W2K on a dual boot system is always install your Windows 95/98 before W2K. Make sure your happy with the performance before installing W2K because you can't install or reinstall Win 95/98 on a duel boot W2K system without having the 95 install overwrite registry entries for the W2K OS. It’s possible to save your registry settings before this process and edit them afterwards... but it's definitely for the faint of heart.

Steve
 
NT and 95 will not share the same registry in a dual boot configuration. It is of course recommended that you install each OS to its own partition though.

If you install 9x after installing NT, then you need to start the NT setup and choose the "repair" option, which will give the boot sector back to NT. After this procedure, you'll be able to boot NT, but you MIGHT not be able to boot into 95. In this case you'll have to modify the boot.ini file that rests in the primary FAT32 partition (the primary must always be FAT/FAT32 and should contain your 9x install), for which instructions can be found on either microsoft's knowledgebase (as MOFO mentioned) or on deja.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Wow...Wish I knew that before. Would have saved me a ton of work. I thought the info I got on the problem was off of the microsoft site. Guess not... thanks for setting the record straight ( I don't want to be spreading disinformation).

Really...Thanks
 
I was unaware of the issue with the ID# of the IDE controller. I think this must be something new to 2000. Where I work I am frequently appliying new software "images" to PCs. To do this I use Symatec (Norton) Ghost. It is smart enough to modify pdisk partition sizes on the fly, so you can move images between different size drives so long as the destination is big enough to hold all the data.
With 95/98 moving an images between different systems is not hard. When you reboot the system the plug and play will go "tilt", find all the new hardware, and ask to be fed drivers for it. NT4 is quite a bit harder. Since there is no plug and play it's difficult to pull off cleanly unless the new system is very similar to the old one one. However I have done it a few times and have not encountered anything like your drive ID issue.
Another thing to be aware of is that NT (and 2000) use a security ID (called a SID) which is generated when you install. If you clone one PC to another you would wind up with two identical SIDs. Having two identical SIDs on the same NT network is a BIG sorry, you can take down the whole network. The way arround this is with a Ghost accessory program called Ghost Walker, which will generate a new SID number on your cloned drive. Note that I have yet to try cloning a Win 2000 system, we are only using it in a few test systems so far.
Anyway I mention all this because it is possible that there is a program similar to Ghost Walker out there for patching (i.e. hacking) this drive ID number. I would be interested in finding out....
 
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