Using your personal computer

 

Hilton Head Island Computer Club

Windows 2000

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One of the features is not many crashes and I have had to date only a couple.  Loading the wrong driver for a  peripherals and in my case it was a modem caused the crash.  Although my computer is only a little more that a year old, the 3 Com modem does not have a Win2KP driver.  This stopped the loading of the OS right at the beginning and I was told to restart and use Safe mode by holding F8 as the OS started to load.  This provide a number of options and I selected the Last Known Good Configuration.  The bad driver was removed and I was OK.  Another interesting occurrences was in Windows Explorer I was copying data between Users in the Document and Settings folder and when I would Select All in the Edit menu the computer would hang and an error message indicating an improper operation and then in a short time it would close Windows Explorer.  It was a repeatable problem and I use the select first item and the select last item holding down Shift to select all with no problems.  The fact that the OS cleared itself without using a Task Manger-> End Task or getting the nice Blue screen was refreshing. 

 

It was a real eye opener to right click on My Computer and find the Manage entry.  It opens a dialog box called Computer Management.  This is the finest set of tools I have ever seen on a computer.  The major folders are System Tools, Storage and Services & Applications.  I believe enough could be written about this section for an entire article.  System Tools has six subfolders, Storage has four and Service & Applications has three.  There are additional sub folders on many of these folders.  Probably the two that impressed me most was the Disk Defragmenter and Services.  The Disk Defragmenter shows all drives and partitions on the computer and an ability to analyze each in color coded display and then recommending defragmenting or not.  It looks similar to what I have seen in Diskeeper which is a very good program for this type application.  Services show all programs that may be started and if they are running.  This combines all the items in Startup (shown in Configuration Utility in Windows 98 and later) and the ability to control a service automatically or manually.  The Task Manger (Crtl, Shift, and ESC held down together to show) is also improved.

 

Where are the problems?  This OS will not let you use some of you hardware and software. Win2KP has a HCL (Hardware Compatibility List) which is difficulty to use unless you have a manufacturer and part number.  This is because there are thousands of item in this list.  If you try to load a driver that is not registered for Win2KP a notice will indicate this status.  You also receive a warning if the OS does not recognize the software you are loading (this is a configuration option).  I had better luck with loading hardware at the Resource Center then at home.  The new 3Com modem (OEM) on the new computer there need a driver.  Win2KP recognized it but just indicate a PCI Communication device with a yellow exclamation next to it in the Device Manger.  When I was able to get a driver I had an interesting time loading it.  The Hardware Wizard will only look for a Plug & Play device.  No selection of a hardware device was available as in the other Windows OSs.  I had to remove the PCI item in Device Manger to start the driver load.    I had some problems with a Promise 100 ATA Controller that I needed to load as an Other Device approach.   Most of the problems came with my home computer as I have a number of items attached.   Because I have a Scanner, ZIP drive and a printer all using parallel ports, I have added a dual parallel port PCI adapter to my computer.  I look at the HCL and the manufacturer’s (Digital Research) web site and found no Win2KP driver.  I also have a Handspring Visor PDA using Palm Desktop 3.0.1 software.  It use a USB cradle and I cannot get the USB cradle recognized by Win2KP.  I went to Handspring’s web site and tried some program that they recommended and it did not work.  In the area of software I was surprised how much of my software I could load without problems.   I have Lotus Smart Suite 97 and had problems there. 

 

In summary the feature in Win2KP far outweigh any disadvantage.  I will probably wait until I purchase a new computer early next year and will either use Win2KP or the new Windows XP OS combining both previous type OSs .