RIP Windows 2000: 17 February 2000 - 13 July 2010

[cwathen]

OK, geeky post...

Not that many people will care, but techie geeks may care to note that today is the final day of Windows 2000 support (oh, and XP SP2 aswell - you now need to have SP3 installed to keep getting updates for XP). From tomorrow, 13 July, it will officially become an obsolete product with no more security updates issued. Whilst at the moment most new hardware and (non-Microsoft) software continues to support Windows 2000, it is inevitable that before long this support will be withdrawn and it will be as useful in a modern computing environment as Windows 95.

2000 arguably represented the biggest step forward from a previous version which Windows has ever made, it was the first version to combine the performance and ease of use from the Windows 9x versions with the rock-solid stability from Windows NT. In my view, this is the point at which the 'consumer' and 'professional' versions of Windows *should* have merged.

Almost all of the technical advancements attributed to XP were actually introduced in 2000 first.

Sadly, what should have been the most significant version of Windows ever turned out to lead a somewhat short and uneventful mainstream life, with a marketing decision made to sell it only as a corporate operating system landing consumers with the dreaded Windows ME, and a severe lack of drivers at launch leaving it incompatible with a lot of hardware for several months after release.

Then, just 18 months after release it was replaced with Windows XP, which (in RTM form at least) was essentially the same operating system but marketed differently and with a new fisher price interface which drew people in.

A few years after XP's tenure started, Microsoft did the same thing with 2000/XP as they did with 95/98 and made 2000 incompatible with significant new Microsoft software and updates, even though there was no technical reason to do so - forcibly sending it to an early grave even though it was technically just as capable as XP.

Incidentally, Microsoft's support life-cycle policy for Internet Explorer commits them to supporting not only the latest version, but also the version which originally came with all currently supported operating systems. This means that until now, the ancient IE 5.01 (!) was technically still a supported browser receiving monthly security updates, despite being incapable of opening almost all modern websites.

So, goodbye to the simpler times of a Windows 95-derived interface then.

[Sput]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that screenshot is Windows ME. Win2k had a shadowed mouse cursor by default

[Sput]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that screenshot is Windows ME. Win2k had a shadowed mouse cursor by default

I'm probably wrong...

[cwathen]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that screenshot is Windows ME. Win2k had a shadowed mouse cursor by default

I'm probably wrong...

It's definately 2000. You can tell because in the 'see also' list you have 'Network and Dial-Up Connections' (same as XP), but in ME you still had 'Dial-up Networking' (the term used in 95/98). And yes it IS worrying that I know that

Incidentally, it's not actually my screenshot (I'd never turn off the pretty shadowed moust pointer), it's from http://www.toastytech.com/guis, and excellent walk-through of pretty much every version of Windows and lots of other operating systems too.

[Alexia]

Screenshots* don't traditionally include cursors... I imagine it's either been superimposed or the shadow was turned off.

*Print Screen

[Neil Jones]

OK, geeky post...

Not that many people will care, but techie geeks may care to note that today is the final day of Windows 2000 support (oh, and XP SP2 aswell - you now need to have SP3 installed to keep getting updates for XP). From tomorrow, 13 July, it will officially become an obsolete product with no more security updates issued. Whilst at the moment most new hardware and (non-Microsoft) software continues to support Windows 2000, it is inevitable that before long this support will be withdrawn and it will be as useful in a modern computing environment as Windows 95.

In theory, however, because XP was built off of Windows 2000, some hardware that doesn't carry Win2k support may be able to work if you feed it XP drivers instead. The same principle works with Windows 7, sometimes you can feed a piece of hardware a Vista driver and have it work. It also used to work for getting devices to work under Windows ME by feeding them Win98 SE drivers, because the driver support for ME was so patchy as the OS was a piece of garbage with a major memory leak. It's only saving grace was a lot of hardware that didn't have official ME support would work with Win98 drivers available by the bucketful.

At this point in time, Win2k is the longest supported version of Windows from Microsoft. Windows XP is supported until 2014, which will be a record of 13 years. The shortest would appear to be Windows ME, but you'd be wrong. Released in late 2000, support wise lasted five and a half years for ME. At this point in time, unless Vista Service Pack 3 happens, support for Vista will be withdrawn April 12th, 2012, after only five and a quarter years. In comparison, Windows 7 is supported until 2015, not withstanding the forthcoming Service Pack.

Incidentally, Microsoft's support life-cycle policy for Internet Explorer commits them to supporting not only the latest version, but also the version which originally came with all currently supported operating systems. This means that until now, the ancient IE 5.01 (!) was technically still a supported browser receiving monthly security updates, despite being incapable of opening almost all modern websites.

The latest browser share statistics seem to suggest anyway that the percentage of people actually using IE5 and IE5.5 is only about 5% of the Internet Explorer market share, which is about 50%. The other 50% is made up mostly of Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. So thinking like that, patching an obsolete browser now is realistically a complete waste of time, money and effort.

So, goodbye to the simpler times of a Windows 95-derived interface then.

On first glance, yes, it looks like Windows ME. But it is Windows 2000. Out of the box they both look identical. Except that WinME would probably have done a Peter Simon about three seconds after a screenshot was taken, and promptly fall over. And yes, it is possible to include the cursors in a screengrab with the right software - using Print Screen will remove the cursor, something like Paint Shop Pro and others can capture the cursor as well if you set it up like that.

[Dr Lobster*]

it might be dead in microsoft's eyes but it lives on in many organisations.... we still have a couple of windows 2000 file servers!

[cwathen]

it might be dead in microsoft's eyes but it lives on in many organisations.... we still have a couple of windows 2000 file servers!

It's still going strong at our work too - most of the workstation have been replaced with newer equiment running XP, but there are still 4 older workstations in use running Windows 2000 Professional, and the server continues to run 2000 Server. Although the workstations will inevitably be replaced in time, there is no plan at all to update the server. That said, the whole system exists only to run a DOS-based EPOS system so I doubt we're missing out on much!

[dosxuk]

Then, just 18 months after release it was replaced with Windows XP, which (in RTM form at least) was essentially the same operating system but marketed differently and with a new fisher price interface which drew people in.

Looking back, it's quite amusing how much vitriol that was targetted at the Luna theme in XP, especially as in hindsight, it's probably the most successful OS ever released.

[Dr Lobster*]

Then, just 18 months after release it was replaced with Windows XP, which (in RTM form at least) was essentially the same operating system but marketed differently and with a new fisher price interface which drew people in.

Looking back, it's quite amusing how much vitriol that was targetted at the Luna theme in XP, especially as in hindsight, it's probably the most successful OS ever released.

indeed, it's going to be years and years before it's gone and relegated to history.

you know, there are still people out there running windows 98 on their desktop. from memory there are *still* two windows 98 computers where i work (they are used to run a powerpoint presentation on a couple of big screens, not used as a conventional workstation).... i guess for as long as people are happy running what they're running these old legacy operating systems will cling on for life.

[cwathen]

Then, just 18 months after release it was replaced with Windows XP, which (in RTM form at least) was essentially the same operating system but marketed differently and with a new fisher price interface which drew people in.

Looking back, it's quite amusing how much vitriol that was targetted at the Luna theme in XP, especially as in hindsight, it's probably the most successful OS ever released.

indeed, it's going to be years and years before it's gone and relegated to history.

you know, there are still people out there running windows 98 on their desktop. from memory there are *still* two windows 98 computers where i work (they are used to run a powerpoint presentation on a couple of big screens, not used as a conventional workstation).... i guess for as long as people are happy running what they're running these old legacy operating systems will cling on for life.

Something which genuinely concerns me is where you will stand doing a new installation of XP after the end-of-life date passes. A fundamental difference here is that with every other version of Windows to be retired if you still have the installation media, the drivers you need and the hardware to run it then you can just install your obsolete version and off you go - the fact that it happens to be 2010 and you did a clean install of Windows 95 yesterday is irrelevant to the operating system.

XP of course though needs to be activated, and it is inevitable that there will come a point when they won't activate it any more (even if that date isn't the end of support date). As it stands, this will leave you high and dry if you need to reinstall after the point at which they stop doing new activations. Although they are perfectly within their rights to stop supporting an operating system, there is nothing I'm aware of in the EULA which allows them to prevent you from using it or doing new installs of it after the end of support date.

I would hope that they will release a patch which removes the activation system when XP goes unsupported in 2014, but I feel that there should be some sort of statement on what they plan to do here.

This of course will also be an issue for every version of Windows released from XP upwards - surely a policy on what to do with activations after end-of-life should be included in their support lifecycle policy by now?

If they do try and forcibly pull the plug by simply stopping new activations after a certain date (which I wouldn't put past them for a minute - I doubt the fact that it is likely to be against the law will stop them) then all those dodgy bootleg copies and CD Keys which start with 'K4HVD' which they seem to have succesfully banished away might well be back in a few years.