Dream97

Same everything. I ran the tests twice. One from a fresh install and one "optimised", ie, all unneeded services disabled. Comparing both fresh install scores and optimised, there is a difference of ~300 points in both cases favoring XP.

I actually benchmarked both 2k and XP the other day because I was wondering the same thing. With 3dMark2001 SE, XP scored 312 points higher than Win2k. That's with a Radeon 8500LE 128MB. Not sure if Nvidia scores would alter that much although I bet they'd show roughly the same thing. It's up to you if that's significant or not to switch OSes. XP will get you better performance in games but on my system the difference isn't too much.

I'm much rather use ACDSee for photo viewing, printing, and resizing. I installed it but the integrated photo viewer still opens up when I double click on an image file dispite all associations linking to ACDSee. What the hell?

Mine's only .99GB too. I've had it installed for over a month also.

AFAIK, the difference between Remote Desktop and Remote Assistance is that XP Home can only be a client but XP Pro can be a server or a client.

I don't have a link unfortunately but I came across a site that benchmarked both XP Home and XP Pro. Both had basically the exact performance with apps and games. The major difference between the two isn't services but really additional features like SMP support, remote desktop, NTFS file system, etc. As far as performance goes, you're not better off with one or the other unless you have multiple processors. Ignoring those included features, you will have the exact same performance with Pro and Home. And the reason behind the performance difference between Win2k/XP/NT and Win9x with games is exactly what Carbine said. Games and 3D card device drivers have always been designed with the old 9x OS core in mind because those were the home OSes. Games and drivers will probably be like that for another year *after* XP is released too but after that you'll start to see performance begin to even out. This has very little to do with services bringing down your system since WinME actually has just as much bloat to go with it. Just because it doesn't have "services" doesn't mean it doesn't have multiple operations running in the background. Heck, System Restore and PC Health probably take up more CPU cycles and memory than any networking services in Win2k or XP. Ultimately, if a few services taking up 400k of your memory really bother you and you honestly feel like they'll bring your Quake Arena framerate down .8 or something, you could do what Sandaasu suggested and turn off what you don't need anyway. It's not like they're always running wether you want them or not. You *can* turn them off and run a very streamlined NT-based OS. </rant>

From what I understand, and I'm not sure if this is correct or not, but there is a Devilsown crack and then there is a devilsown release iso. The iso is unaltered, the crack is if you have an evaluation or Home version of XP and don't want to reinstall. Either way, I did the same thing with two ISOs, one that was a corporate version and one that was an OEM version. The only difference between files was that the OEM version had files that were 1 hour more recent than the corporate version. Same number of files, same version, same size, ect.

I get the same problem with the newest version of ZA Pro or the Free version. Both of them start up fine on the initial install but will give a big X when they start automatically on the next boot-up.

winnt.exe=Dos XP/2000 install winnt32.exe=Win9x install/upgrade

That's weird. I have a "Windows Audio" service that starts up automatically. I tweaked the services already but I never touched that one. I figured it was pretty important. Windows Audio: Manages audio devices for Windows-based programs. If this service is stopped, audio devices and effects will not function properly. If this service is disabled, any services that explicitly depend on it will fail to start.

I got Norton Antivirus 2001 to work under XP. It gives you a link to the fixed file that you need.

Did you by chance turn off a bunch of services? One of them is related to the Audio drivers.

I have a problem with NTI CD Maker Pro 3. Even after installing the newest ASPI drivers like others suggested, I can't get this program to run properly under Windows 2000. I've used the ASPI driver check and it shows that they are indeed in the right directories as well. Also, I know it's program specific since I can install and run NTI CD Maker Pro 2000 and it works fine. The only problem is that it's trialware and I don't want to pay $69 dollars for CD-R software that's only a slight upgrade just so I can have compatibility. Anyone know how I can fix this?

Anyone know how to get this CDW-ROM writing utility to work in Windows 2000? I updated the ASPI drivers that was suggested elsewhere in this forum but I'm still having problems running it. It worked perfectly with Win95/98 so I know it must be Windows 2000. Anyone know how to convince this program that Win2000 is ok? It says right on the box that it's compatible with WinNT 3.5 and up. Any help will be appreciated. ------------------ Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience.

Thanks for the update KalleAnka. Right now I have a quasi-fix for the problem. I had upgraded Win2000 from a previous Win98 install. To get the Packet Writing utility included in NTI CD Maker Pro to work properly, I basically reformatted my disk, installed Win98 and then installed Win2000 on a dual boot system. A work around but it does work. Unfortunately, I only have Win98 on my system for NTI CD Maker Pro and Norton Systemworks, both of which don't work with Win2000. Btw, did you notice someone posted that NTI CD Maker Pro works on the Applications list? I tried the ASPI fix that they posted four times on two different systems and it never worked. I'll repost that NTI does not work with Win2000 I guess.