Need some advice, please read

[Behemoth 0]

For along time now I've been debating about formatting my hard drive and using Windows 2000 as my primary operating system. I'm currently running Windows 98 SE, and although I have dual booted and used Windows 2000 and liked it I always found that Iouldn't run some of my game too well. after a while however I found that my hard drive got ery messy

 

At the moment this is what I'm using system for

 

Games - these very from Quake 3 to Need For Speed 4

Internet

College Work

Programming in C

Web design.

 

My only real worry here is the games, but I'd really like to know if its worth me ditiching Win 98 all together, I won't use Win Me because I hate it, for some reason I find that it slows down my hard drive.

 

Here is my systems specs

 

AMD Athlon 550 (Slot)

Gigabyte 71XE Main Board

192 Megs of Ram

20 Gig hard drive

32 Meg GeForce 2 MX

Sound Blaster Live 256

50 Speed Cd Rom Drive

4x4x32 Phillips Cd Re-Writer.

 

Thanks

 

Behemoth

[Guest]

Go Win2k. It will run nearly all games out there. I've yet to find a game that won't work... and the ones that don't most likely have a patch out for them now. There is also a compatibility update for Win2k that allows you to run anything in Win2k that can run in Win9x (welp, that's the idea anyways... it's not 100% though). You can download that here:

 

http://146.186.231.41/COMPATIBILITYappupd.exe

 

Take a look on NTCompatible for the games you want to play and it will tell you if they work or not. Most likely they will. YOu will be surprised.

 

 

As far as everything else you do: Internet, College Work, Programming in C, Web Design... Win2k was designed specifically to do all this stuff and provide you with the fastest, most stable environment possible. Keep in mind, it's not Windows that crashes, but software running on Windows. And as you use it more and more, it gets faster and faster... unlike Win9x. Go with NT (Win2k). It's sweet.

 

ONe suggestion I have for you though, is to put it on a FAT32 partition.... ONLY because if you decide you want to put Win9x back on you can do so easily. If you put it on NTFS, you'll have to format.

 

Make the switch, you'll wish you did a year ago.

[Guest]

Oh, by the way....

 

Three of my puters are running Win2k Advanced Server... one is a Web server, one is an SQL server, and one is just a simple file server. All three have not been restarted in nearly a month... and are still going strong.

 

They just keep on purring.

 

You'll also find that using Windows 2k (NT), you will begin to learn A LOT of valuable things that will make you very marketable when you are ready to get a job. I'm graduating college this year and got an incredible job with State Farm. It's all because I took the time to learn all MS Enterprise software and about 9 coding languages.

 

You will only benefit from running Win2k.

[Behemoth 0]

Thanks sandoval, I'm not a complete novice like some people are its just that before I made the change, which I think I will be tomrrow I needed to know ifWin2k was for me.

 

When I've trie dit before I have always been impressed with its sped and stability and its memory management has always impressed me.

 

The reason I've been thinking about changing is because I had to change my ISP to AOL and well its software seems to suck up alot of recources from Win 98 so I'm sat there smeotimes with 2% system recources free and I've got 192 megs of Ram!!

 

Behemoth

[Guest]

Out of curiosity, why on God's great earth would you change to AOL? What happened!?

[ThC 129 0]

judging from his location i would say he chose AOL because it is cheaper in the UK than most ISPs, and they allow you i think either longer connect time or unlimited non-metered connect times in the UK. At least that is my deduction there.

[Guest]

Ahhh ok, that would make sense. Does AOL have high speed service by any chance? Just curious. Or is it all dial-up?

[Behemoth 0]

AOL? Hmmm well its a very long story but it does boil down to the fact that there unmetred net access deal is one of the best around and that's why I'm with them.

 

I hate the software and I've heard you can hack round thast with Dial Up Networking, but I haven't seen any such hacks yet. As for the speed well I'm ot complaining at a regular download speed of 5kb a sec.

 

Behemoth

[Brian Frank 0]

I cant say this always works, but Ive found software (games or apps) that run under both 9x AND NT 4 will run under 2k.

As for Quake 3, I thought that ran fine w/o having to fool around with it to get it to run.

[Cardinal 0]

Need for speed 4 won't work with W2k. I tried everything and it just refused to load up. Half life does, and it runs smooth as hell. Windows 2000 is a dream compared to any 9x version. But the change will no doubt bring problems. Relying solely on W2k for a gamer is sometimes a frustrating thing. The people will tell you in here that a gamer should not be using it. That argument is water, especially if you have tried Win ME (total sh1te) The problem is, you have this game, you install it and no matter what you do it does not work. In my opinion I'd rather dump the game then dump the OS. But it can mean a whole day of formatting and cd throwing just because of one game.

Just be weary when taking that single OS leap.

[Behemoth 0]

Thanks guys, decied I'm going to dual boot after all, the next time I format both my partitions now will probably be when I get my new system, with any luck should be with in 3 weeks, depending on how much the Athlon 850 is going to cost. I would go for the 1.2 GHz, but thats going to blow my budget Stil an 850 is gonna be plenty fast enough, and this crock of **** has just about had it.

 

Oh yeah as for Need For Speed 4, I know some people who have got it working on Win2k, so I haven't given up on it quite yet. And yeah Win Me, its shite, Dad has it on his sytem and he swares blind its stable. Funny how every time he access control panel that it crashes!!

 

Behemoth