Customer Reviews

Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server (25-Client) [Old Version]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Windows 2000 Advanced Server has been such an excellent platform, and I have no plans for its retirement from my network. It plays well in the Active Directory environment of my Windows 2003 Servers and also handles the execution of some of my legacy applications. As for other platforms, Linux (especially my favorite, SuSE) offers an environment that opens you up to the open source world (especially important if you are involved in research, as so many applications from the research community evolve from the open source arena). Open source is where the action and fun is! Im looking forward to a pet project of integrating my SuSE Linux & Windows servers, perhaps along LDAP lines, later this year. Its all about opening up possibilities, not cat fighting, and Windows 2000 Advanced Server is cordially invited.

By the way, keep in mind that Windows 2000 does not support 48-bit LBA out of the box, nor does it after applying all the updates and service packs. 48-bit LBA must be enabled manually, at HKLM\system\currentcontrolset\services\atapi\parameters:
Add the following value: EnableBigLba.
Datatype: REG_DWORD
Value data: 0x1

This is mandatory for running with harddrives greater than 137GigaBytes. The consequences for not implementing this switch are data corruption and complete loss of your NT2000 partition. See Microsoft's service article Q305098 for authoritative details as we stretch our legacy systems to the limits:)

5 stars, for the revolutionary advances that set the course for NT, and made it possible at last to manage systems and still have enough time afterwards to actually do something with them:))

If you need a server OS then this is what you want.

I purchased a copy of Advanced Server 2000 about 6 months ago just to keep on the shelf. I had no need for it at the time whatsoever as my servers running vanilla Server 2000 were already maxed out with dual core Pentium D and 4GB memory. However I had the foresight to know I would upgrade hardware at some point past what Server 2000 would support so wanted to be sure I was able to get Advanced Server 2000 before it became extinct.

Over the past month I began acquiring the components for the miniature supercomputer I wanted to build. At the center of the machine is an Intel Xeon E3-1230 (quad core + hyperthreading = 8 logical CPUs) with 8GB DDR3 memory, and 2 SATA3 SSD drives - all on a mini-ITX board in a 150W mini case.

One of the challenges installing Advanced Server at this time, is that IDE connectors are beginning to disappear - and Advanced Server doesn't know about SATA out of the box. So it took a little ingenuity to get things to install and then manually install each driver needed since the operating system could not automatically detect and find drivers - the components are too new. But, so long as you have or can find Windows XP drivers, Server 2000 generally will be able to use them.

Once the software is installed, like all Microsoft products now, it does "phone home" and will grab all patches and updates - pulled down over 100 over them and had no problems installing any of them.

One thing to note, IE version 5 is the web browser installed with this - so first thing you need to do after installing is to upgrade to IE 6 - that is the highest version that will run on Server 2000. If you don't upgrade to IE 6, then Windows Update will not work.

In any case, once things are installed, on current hardware, this OS flies. Further, since this is a product from the folks Microsoft grabbed from DEC, it is rock solid and is not loaded with bloatware. My entire install is under 3GB and that is with the 100+ updates installed.

I've used Windows 95 and 98 for the past 5 years. Both crashed relatively frequently - of course, I thought ALL operating systems did that.

Until now.

I bought Windows 2000 Advanced Server and installed it. Differences were immediately apparent - quick, painless startups, much better memory allocation, more virtual memory, and much more. But I didn't understand how good Win2K is until, about 2 weeks later, I realized that the computer hadn't frozen at all during those weeks!

Whenever I use Windows 98 now, I'm amazed that I managed to get anything done. I've had less crashes using Windows 2000 in a month than I used to have in a day of Windows 98.

Windows 2000 Advanced Server is the paramount of today's operating systems. Performance, stability, and ease of use are all included in what I believe to be Microsoft's best product to date. Forget about Linux and Solaris. With Windows 2000, you will leave your competition in the dust.

Although windows 2000 server is still a good choice today, this version packs far more onto it's frame than needed. Stay with the other versions of 2000 server if you like good performance, only buy this one if it's what you really need.

This rating system requires that I choose from 1-5 stars. I actually selected the "-", but it would not publish the review.

If you are use to MicroSoft products, this is an improvement over the norm. However, to get a full functional server (security, e-mail, HTML, ...) with MicroSoft technology the cost is in the thousands and when you try to run all the services on a single server ... well, its not pretty. Go with UNIX - it works.