To upgrade, or not to upgrade...

[jnd3]

So here's the scoop. I use Windows98SE at home. Everything works reasonably well. The networking is a bit of a dog, but games run fine (the really important thing). My question: would it be worth my time and effort to upgrade to Window 2000 Pro? (By upgrade, I of course mean format and clean install...) I know the networking is a bit improved over 98SE, but what about game support? Right now it's about 95% Medieval: Total War, with some JK2 and FF thrown in the mix. I do have a few older games that I'll probably hit again (Throne of Darkness, Rune, Homeworld/Cataclysm, Half-Life, Undying, etc.) Any experiences, pro or contra, would be greatly appreciated.

System specs:
AMD Tbird 700 MHz
Abit KT-7
256 MB PC133
Creative Labs Annihilator 2 (GF2 GTS)
Sound Blaster Live! Value

Cheers,
JND

[mr_oh_so_ice]

Windows 2000 is a decent enough OS and would be awesome if it ran older games well enough. Here are a few I ran into trouble with:

NFS High Stakes - requires much pain to install and usually won't work.
NFS Porsche Unleashed - has memory problems.
Rune - sometimes the graphics get messed up, everything looks white.
Quake 2 - save games won't load.


Its usually the older games that give it a fit, new stuff will work fine since they were designed for 2000 support. Networking is good for 2 or more machines together but for general net use there isn't much difference. Getting a 98 computer to share files with a 2000 machine is hell.

[Starscream]

Originally posted by mr_oh_so_ice
Quake 2 - save games won't load.


That's kinda strange, I've never seen any problems with it in 2k on multiple systems.

[mr_oh_so_ice]

Won't work for me, I get function pointers have moved errors all the time.

[[Corporal Dan]]

Originally posted by jnd3
Would it be worth my time and effort to upgrade to Windows 2000 Pro?

YES

God YES.

Do it now. Just stay away from XP

You'll be glad you did.

Once you go NT, you never go back.

[[Corporal Dan]]

Originally posted by mr_oh_so_ice
Windows 2000 is a decent enough OS and would be awesome if it ran older games well enough. Here are a few I ran into trouble with:

NFS High Stakes - requires much pain to install and usually won't work.
NFS Porsche Unleashed - has memory problems.
Rune - sometimes the graphics get messed up, everything looks white.
Quake 2 - save games won't load.


Its usually the older games that give it a fit, new stuff will work fine since they were designed for 2000 support. Networking is good for 2 or more machines together but for general net use there isn't much difference. Getting a 98 computer to share files with a 2000 machine is hell.

What?

That's bull

NFS HS is a pain to install but it runs fine.

NFSPU is perfect. just delete gimme.dll, all problems disappear for me

Rune takes a bit of work/tweaking to make it function. Game tweaking, not os tweaking, btw

Quake2, Ive never experienced nor heard of this at all.


Older games are actually pretty ok with latest compatibility updates.

As for filesharing between 98 and 2k... yeah. It really is as horrible as it sounds. Thet's why there is www.helmig.com

[mr_oh_so_ice]

Originally posted by [Corporal Dan]


What?

That's bull

NFS HS is a pain to install but it runs fine.

NFSPU is perfect. just delete gimme.dll, all problems disappear for me

Rune takes a bit of work/tweaking to make it function. Game tweaking, not os tweaking, btw

Quake2, Ive never experienced nor heard of this at all.


Older games are actually pretty ok with latest compatibility updates.

As for filesharing between 98 and 2k... yeah. It really is as horrible as it sounds. Thet's why there is www.helmig.com

NFS HS is probably the most painful piece of software to install on 2000 and there are people out there who still can't install it, or when they install it they can't save their configurations and settings after they exit the program. Check the NTCompatible and NFS Cheats forums and you'll find people still with High Stakes problems.

NFS PU, deleting gimme.dll is only 1 solution to the problem, for some it doesn't work, some people need to modify the page files and even then for some it doesn't work. By deleting gimme.dll I believe the multiplayer games do not run properly. Again the NTCompatible, Rage3D, and NFSCheats forums have users with these issues.

Prowl the forums on PlanetQuake and you will find tons of users with FUNCTION POINTERS HAVE MOVED problem on Q2 save game loading, this problem usually occurs on 2000/XP systems.

Some people can't even get Rune to work on XP, under 2000 a little bit of tweaking could get it going smooth, 2000 is supported for Rune so it should work ok, I had a few graphical glitches, turning on VSYNC sometimes fixed it, but usually rebooting the OS helped all the time.

[[Corporal Dan]]

I'll be the first to admit that NFS4 is one badly coded piece of software. it's truly horrible.

It won't detect my GeForce2 at all, for starters, i hafta modify registry keys myself to get it to function.

Also, it thinks i have a pirated version, so it will start 1 out of 2 times, even though i bought the game. The cd is not even scratched or anything.

Patching the game ****s everything up. The game executable wont work anymore. i can only accss it from the direct multiplayer executable.

Also, using custom card occasionally dumps me to the desktop.

Another thing is that the framerate is REAL low. Much lower than it should be.

The framerate DIES when you use a custom car with 2000 polygons or more.

Also the driving physics are bad! Ugh, it's so unrealistic! And the manual shifting is badly done as well. I wish there were an equivalent game to GT3 on the PS2 for the PC... :(


As for Rune, i had gotten it to work with XP. I just transplanted some files from my UT directory and played around with the .ini files. It worked quite well afterwards. The game kinda sucks though. It's disappointing not to have any RPG-like elements at all. It's the perfect game for that. This was my only complaint with heretic2.

[mr_oh_so_ice]

To speed up NFS High Stakes use NFS PU's d3da.dll file in place of High Stakes, DX7 acceleration is better than DX6, you'll see the amazing difference.

[jnd3]

Thanks for the responses, all. It looks like the general consensus is "go for it," so, as Sting once put it, consider me gone. Now to find a chunk of time to archive all accumulated kibble to some CDRs and actually DO the job. And download all the drivers. And so forth, and so on.

I may have to check some of the Medieval: Total War forums as well. Maybe an upgrade to 2000 will fix the annoying sound issues during battles (I want the crunch of mangonel stones hitting their targets, not the sound of breaking glass)...

Cheers,
JND

[Mike89]

XP all the way. Far superior to 98. No way could I ever go back to 98 after using XP. It just handles everything far more efficiently, especially resources/memory. Night and day.

I had never used 2000 before but did mess with one computer with it installed after I had XP for awhile. No way could I use 2000 after using XP.

I have XP Pro on 4 computers, no problems with any of them. 2 of them clean install, 2 of them upgrade. All stable as a rock.

BTW I am a gamer as you can see by my system below. XP has not slowed my gaming experience one bit. Only issue I have is the refresh rate issue. I edit my own driver infs so I'm good to go there also.

[Gator]

the specs you would run Win2k nicely, possibly WinXP too. I suggest you create a 2nd partition, put Win2k on that and see how everything runs. If it runs well, then simply ditch the 98se partition, and expand Win2k to the full extent of the disk.

You'll want a program like PQMAGIC for this of course

[SnakeEyes]

I'd recommend XP (Pro, with the extra GUI 'enhancements' turned off, for that true 2k look). I've used both, and both are a big improvement over the 9x series for most things, especially stability.

However, 2000 DOES have some issues with certain games (mainly performance). For instance, and I still haven't figured out why, in my prior 3 installs of this OS:

1st time, UT was perfect. Performance fine, gameplay smooth.
2nd time, UT stutters all the time.
3rd time, UT works great for maybe 10 minutes after starting the game, then begins stuttering (as if some background process were hogging CPU cycles), then clears up. Repeats..

Interestingly, the second and third installs of 2000 were basically restored from a disc image taken of the first one. I've never been able to figure out why it was so erratic.

In any case, those issues didn't occur in WindowsXP. But XP has a ton of added stuff that most of us can do without. Turn off all the GUI enhancements, disable error reporting, etc., and you've basically got Windows2000, but with better compatibility and performance with games, and especially better support for the type of hardware typically used in the average home (this was my final straw for 2k, when I had to dual-boot into Win98SE just to capture video, all because the card manufacturer went with MS's decision that 2k is a 'business OS', while their hardware was for home users..:rolleyes: ).

If you're cash limited, 2000 can be found for less than XP Pro, especially if you're willing to tweak things (OS services, game settings / files) to get it all working together properly, and also assuming you make sure that all your hardware has drivers for 2k.

[jnd3]

<Monty Python monk voice>XP is right out!</Monty Python monk voice>

I might upgrade to XP once I do the big hardware overhaul (since I'm pushing two years on this hardware). I'm trying to hold out for the NV30, since I haven't gotten anything yet that's unplayable. Plus it'd be nice for the OS to ... mature a little bit. Kind of like a good cheese or wine.

The 2000 upgrade is on the calendar. I just need to download all the drivers I might require, archive a bunch of docs and other stuff off to CDR, and wipe it out. And then -- the joyous reinstall.

Cheers,
JND

[[Corporal Dan]]

Originally posted by jnd3
<Monty Python monk voice>XP is right out!</Monty Python monk voice>

I might upgrade to XP once I do the big hardware overhaul (since I'm pushing two years on this hardware). I'm trying to hold out for the NV30, since I haven't gotten anything yet that's unplayable. Plus it'd be nice for the OS to ... mature a little bit. Kind of like a good cheese or wine.

The 2000 upgrade is on the calendar. I just need to download all the drivers I might require, archive a bunch of docs and other stuff off to CDR, and wipe it out. And then -- the joyous reinstall.

Cheers,
JND

Dont even bother with xp. I hate it.

The second release candidate was actually much better than the final release. Forget about xp. You'll be infinitely happier with 2k.

Ut, i had probs with earlier nvidia dets (21.xx), basically, no opengl. Latest dets work fine.

Just my opinion.

[jnd3]

Well isn't that interesting.

Apart from a small problem in which I had to use Linux to rescue my Win2000 installation, things went fine. Something about files not able to be copied from the CD, unimportant things like the win32 kernel. Nice.

I eventually got Win2000 up and it seems pretty stable. I stuck with the 30.82 Detonators since I'm not quite in the mood to wrestle with newer drivers, especially if their major increase is found in the pixel shader (which the GeForce2 is lacking). Seems OK so far, though. 3DMark2k1SE was about 100 points better than in 98SE (I know, not much of an increase on a synthetic benchmark, but still...) OpenGL (on the JK2 timedemo) was about 4fps slower, but I realized that I haven't installed the OpenGL Aniso patch with RivaTuner.

Oh, and then there was that other small problem with the CD archiving. Apparently one of the CDs silently failed to copy (even though all the messages said things were OK). I lost 200 years of English might, and have to once again subjugate the French in Medieval: Total War. Bother.

All in all, I'm pretty pleased with Win2000. The ol' PC seems a lot less rickety now, more apt to stay running for a greater length of time. I've still got loads and loads to re-install, but it works.

So thanks for the advice, except those who advised Windows XP! ;) Just kidding, your input is appreciated as well!

Cheers,
JND

[styles-T]

2k is the best..the only reason i hate it - is cause of my refresh rate >:|

[jnd3]

Originally posted by !plonk*
2k is the best..the only reason i hate it - is cause of my refresh rate >:|

I assume you've already tried RefreshForce or RefreshLock, or the RivaTuner fix? I used RefreshForce, and it seems like everything's OK. I don't play it at the max refresh, though, 'cause my geometry gets all screwed up (it's like the monitor only has a limited number of slots to save geometry information).

Anyway...that's all. Have fun! :)

Cheers,
JND

[saturnotaku]

Originally posted by jnd3
I lost 200 years of English might, and have to once again subjugate the French in Medieval: Total War. Bother.


Who doesn't love subjugating the French anyway? Hehehe. :D