Dell Precision M4400 compatible with Win2k Pro?

This thread makes me laugh. Xp being bloated and bragging about 1min 20 sec boot times. I can make XP run better then 2000 and my slower tablet boots vista (not even a clean install) in 1min or less (30sec from hibernate). Now boot times on my dell are significantly faster but still I think its time to upgrade.

 

Well I guess your Xp system is booting as fast as you say, but how fast would it be if you had to run it on a P4-2GHz 400MHz, 768Mb Ram, and 40Gb 7200 HD. My 1:20 win2k booting time is with such a system.

Most Xp systems I've seen take well over 2 or 3 minutes to completely boot, some even get close to 4 minutes before the endless HD light flickering starts to slow down and you can actually start doing anything useful with it. And I'm taking about way better machines then mine. Example a couple of Dell laptops, P4 2.8Ghz, 768Mb, 80Gb 5400. I unfortunately have to deal with them almost on a daily basis because they are used by coworkers and sometimes by me too. One of them had just Xp reinstalled from scratch to clean up the system gunk after only a year, and even so it still takes about 2 minutes and change to completely boot. That in my opinion, and in comparison with win2k (or win2k3) is what I call a bloated OS full of useless and needless stuff (for technically knowledgeable persons anyway) because in the end its only a mainstream consumer oriented OS -period.

It's easy to make Xp run fast by trowing top hardware at it. To make it run efficiently is another very different thing which I doubt can be equaled to a properly tuned win2k system. And that is after all the purpose of this tread.

If you like Xp, great, be happy with it. I think we're all entitled to our opinion. But I think we also need to respect each other's opinions and laughing at them is not exactly a good start.

 

To tell you the true, I am not really sure. It's supposed to speed up HD access, but come to think of it I never used it before on a system with the old 4.3GB hd I'm using for this test. I just got used to installing it on my win2k pro system because it was on the Intel MB driver CD, and it seemed not to hurt. But this time it really messed up things, at least it appeared to be the cause of the problem.

Here's the Intel description:

The Intel(R) Ultra ATA Storage Driver automatically enables
fast Ultra ATA transfers for a variety of ATA/ATAPI mass
storage devices such as hard disk drives and CD-ROMs. This
driver has been architected to take advantage of the latest
Intel Ultra ATA controller features to improve both storage
subsystem performance and overall system performance. Driver
installation is fully automated for Microsoft* Windows* 98,
Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows Millennium Edition,
Windows NT* 4.0, and Windows 2000.

Of course it does not mention W2k3, because of the time it obviously wasn't out yet. Just in case I'm going to format the HD and retry the installation of w2k3 without that driver.

BTW, is it possible there are some programs that cannot be installed in w2k3 and run perfectly well under w2k pro? For example, before the problem arose, I tried to install my usual apps like Norton AV, Spybot, and Ad-Aware, and every single time I got an error message that the app did not initialize properly, or something to that effect. I did not have a chance to try others, like zonealarm, Eudora pro, CuteFTP, Winzip, etc. The only one that I managed to install was Firefox, plus the two MB drivers. Will try again in a while and report back.

Thanks for your continued input. Appreciated.

 

I thought I explained it to you already. You need the server editions for all software, or at least compatibility with it. That goes for programs and drivers. W2K is not the same as W2K3. W2K is classed as a WinNT and W2K3 is a ServerNT OS.

 

Hi Enduct I'm back on Win2k3.

Yes, I realized you had explained that to me in an earlier post the moment I sent in my post. Sorry about that.

OK I can report that I was able to successfully install most of my apps, but notably EXCEPT Norton AV, and ZoneAlarm. Both are very important to me, because there are obvious security implications on a system without them. Can you recommend an AV program that will work on this server OS, and what Firewall are you using? I checked out the Windows included firewall, but it seems very basic next to the Zonealarm Pro that I was using on Win2k.

Also... after cleaning up a bit the system and tweaking a couple of settings, I can report that even tough I'm using this 8-year old SLOW Conner 4.3Gb HD, I'm already seeing slightly faster boot times then with my Win2k system. Apps also seem to be loading faster and feel a bit snappier, but that might mainly be due to a fresh OS install. I haven't yet installed all my usual apps because I'm already running low on HD space, but all my startup config has been duplicated, so those shorter boot times should be for real. I'm very happy with the speed results so far, can't wait to install this on a nice new 7200 rpm HD and see how fast it will be.

BTW, is it just me having trouble getting into the forum? In the past 2 days every time I try to get into this tread, have to retry several times as I keep getting a "Connecting to forum.notebookreviews.com..." and almost always it end up timing out and then I get an error message from the browser. If I do enough reloads maybe I get lucky and the forum will load, but only after seeing the "Waiting for..." message on the browser bar for some time. It appears like the server is under attack, or just plain not being able to handle the load of so many users. And it's definitively not my connection as other pages load normally. Strange....

Hope to catch you later.

 

I am currently using Symantec AntiVirus Corporate... It's basically a barebones industry/business version of the Norton Antivirus that consumers get, without all the flowers and pretty things that come with it, but hard to obtain for general use. As for firewall, I find the Windows firewall does enough for me. You can supplement the Windows Firewall by using IPsec. Here's how to configure it. http://www.petri.co.il/block_ping_traffic_with_ipsec.htm. Yes, it probably isn't as easy to use as zonealarm, but it works for me. The only free Server AV I've come across is Clam AV http://w32.clamav.net/index.htm. I've never had a problem looking for my own server AV so I wouldn't know much on that.

 

Just installed Symantec AV Corporate Edition 10.1.7000.7. Had the choice to install the 32-bit or 64-bit version. Guess the 32-bit was the right choice? It's currently updating itself through Liveupdate, getting about 30Megs worth of virus defs and updates.

OK updated everything to latest.

BTW, like the no-nonsense interface. Is this the same you have?

 

Yes that's the one. The other in major use in the business sector is sophos. It however can put out a lot of false positives, so that hurts it. Nevertheless because of it's highly sensitive engine it can also be better than Symantec Antivirus at detecting pre emptive attacks, especially viruses that have not been discovered yet.

 

I wanted to ask you: in the w2k3 explorer window I see that all the folders in the left side pane behave similar to internet links: when I hover the mouse pointer over any of them, they show an underline link and open with just one click. Is there a way to get back to the traditional/classic w2k scheme? (no underline link shown on MouseOver, and a DOUBLE click is needed to open any folder).

The right side pane where folder contents are displayed seems to behave in a normal ("classic") fashion as I like it to be.

I've already selected on the "Double-click to open" option at the "Tools > Folder Options > General" folder menu, but that did not change the behavior of the left-side explorer pane.

 

Not really sure what you mean, but try this: Tools --> Folder Options --> View Tab --> Uncheck "Display simple folder view in Explorer's Folders list" (3rd checkbox down)