Unofficial SP 5.2 for Microsoft Windows 2000 (WIP)

[tomasz86 61]

Archive

I have prepared an archive of Windows 2000 related files. All official and unofficial updates, current/old/test versions of Update Rollup 2 and Unofficial Updates Rollup and many other packages are available there. In case of the official updates, they normally can be downloaded directly from Microsoft. However, recently MS has started to remove some of the older content from their servers, including many Windows 2000 packages. Just in case I have uploaded everything to an alternative location. The official updates can be downloaded in all supported language versions. Hotfixes by request are available there too.

Windows 2000 Archive

 

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Test versions

Test versions are available in Archive. PLEASE be very careful when installing them. I strongly recommend testing them on a virtual machine first.

At the moment there are no test versions of USP5.2 available yet. The only test versions available are a merged installer for .NET Framework (all versions) and test versions of UURollup. Test versions are divided into two categories:

1) Daily - these are versions containing all latest changes. They are uploaded as soon as the changes have been added which means that they have been not very thoroughly tested and may be buggy. You should be very cautious when using them. The purpose of them is testing, not installing and using on your real system! "Daily" does not mean that they are always released every day. They may be released very often but may not if there is nothing to change at the moment.

2) Weekly - these versions are released once a week, usually on Saturday/Sunday. They contain all changes from previous daily versions which have been proved non-buggy and stable. They still require additional testing so you should take this into account when using them but are much safer to use than daily versions. As in case of the former, if there have been no changes done during the week then no new weekly version will be released on that weekend.

When a weekly version has been rigorously tested and no problems occurred during the process it becomes the next stable release. Stable versions are going to be released on every last weekend of each month which means that unless there are critical issues discovered there will be no more than one stable version released each month. As already stated before, if there have been no changes done then no new stable version will be released.

 

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About USP5.2

Everyone probably knows about the USP5 made by Gurgelmeyer at the turn of years 2005 and 2006. He managed to merge hundreds of updates and hotfixes and add them to the existing official SP4, therefore creating USP5. Gurgelmeyer was devoted to the project and kept updating it regularly but he also suffered from health problems and eventually disappeared around summer 2006 (it is unknown what exactly happened to him...). No one was able to take up the project as Gurgelmeyer did not share the tools he was using for merging SFXCAB archives (M$ updates & hotfixes). Around 2008 there was an attempt by Kelsenellenelvian to create a new version of the USP5 but unfortunately it had to be abandoned. No other person tried to anything with the USP after that.

Up to now I have managed to create many different packages including unofficial single updates, update rollups and others. The biggest problem with Windows 2000 updates is that there are too many of them. I tried to reduce the number of required files as much as possible but even after merging so many updates there are still many others left. There is a borderline that cannot be crossed without preparing a Service Pack which offers more freedom in including and integrating files than update rollups. This is the reason I decided to try go on with the USP5 and prepare a new updated version of it. It is the only way to merge absolutely everything into one package which could be either installed manually or integrated into Windows 2000 source simply using the "/integrate" switch.

By everything I mean the following components:

• all official security updates
• all official hotfixes (HBRs)
• all unofficial updates
• MS Visual C++ (2005, 2008, 2010)
• MSXML
• MDAC 2.8 SP2
• DirectX 9.0c (June 2010)
• WMP10
• .NET Frameworks (from 1.0 to 4.0)
• other tools like msconfig, TweakUI, etc

As you can see there are quite a few components that need to be integrated but I believe that with help of a few kind people it will be possible to finish the project. The last version of Gurgelmeyer's USP5 was 5.1.2195.24. I want to start from the number 5.2.2195.1. At the moment it is still a long way to go for the final version of the USP5.2 to be ready but the project has been started and there are already people testing early builds of it. I hope that this new version of USP5 will be a tribute to the hard work done by Gurgelmeyer and thanks to it this project will not be forgotten.

Until USP5.2 is finished I recommend using UURollup, Update Rollup 2, addons and single updates which are listed on my website.

Edited March 21, 2016 by Tommy
Made topic a sticky

[tain 16]

I love these projects

[Kelsenellenelvian 84]

Can all the .net be optional somehow?

It would kinda KILL the installation time...

[Tommy 88]

Are you going to include any kernel extensions in it? If you do, Silverlight 5 works fine as far as I know.

[tomasz86 61]

@Kel

I'll take it into consideration I was thinking about .NET 1.0 being optional (=installed only when an older version of .NET 1.0 is present in the system) and the rest being installed by default. Are you talking about the manual installation? I'm going to base the .NET installation on the true addons made by OnePiece so the whole installation process is super fast compared to a "standard" MSI installation.

@SearanoX

Everything currently included in UURollup will be included in USP5.2 so yes, unofficial kernel files (a combination of WildBill & BlackWingCat's files) will be there too Unfortunately there seem to be some issues with Silverlight 5 in Windows 2000 :/

By the way, I've reordered the list a little bit so now it shows a real order in which I want to include all these things.

Edited April 27, 2012 by tomasz86

[tomasz86 61]

I should mention that I'll also replace the three buggy files with their older version.

EDIT: I've just done it B)

Is there anyone knowledgeable about about the System File Protection (SFC)? I don't really know that much about it but I've just found a quite interesting thing that XP files, when installed in Windows 2000, are also protected by it! File Signature Verification utility accepts them as long as their catalog files are also installed in the system. Of course this does not apply to the modified files which are not digitally signed. Only files which are "transplanted" as it is can be accepted.

Edited April 29, 2012 by tomasz86

[tomasz86 61]

Just a short update:

I've removed the buggy files (see #6 for details) and also managed to reduce the total number of files in the USP by removing a few duplicates. It would be the best if each file was present in the package only once but it's kind of difficult to achieve "thanks" to the MS hotfix installer which has got many limitations.

What I mean by duplicate files is that some files are shared by all editions of W2K (Professional, Server, Advanced Server, Datacenter Server, Embedded) and the same one file was present five times in the USP. I managed to reduce such files to only one. Unfortunately there is only a small number of such files shared by all editions but there are some others shared by only some of them, ex. only by Servers or only by Pro & Server, etc. I'm going to have a look at them and check if there's any possiblity to reduce the number of such files too.

I've also removed some duplicate lines from the USP's update.inf file which were overlooked by Gurgelmeyer but these don't really matter - it's just a cosmetic fix

[tomasz86 61]

I managed to overcome the installer limitations mentioned above

The installer used in USP 5.1 was just too old! I replaced it with a new version which seems to support more functions. It should be possible to get rid of all unnecessary duplicates now.

[PROBLEMCHYLD 36]

I managed to overcome the installer limitations mentioned above

The installer used in USP 5.1 was just too old! I replaced it with a new version which seems to support more functions. It should be possible to get rid of all unnecessary duplicates now.

Great job Can't wait to test it

[tomasz86 61]

Great job Can't wait to test it

As usually I was a little bit overoptimistic about it Yes, everything I want related to these duplicates can probably be done but it's quite complicated. I'm not sure if spending hours on it just to reduce the size by ~5 MB is worth it.

I've been analysing Windows Server 2003 SP2's update.inf where such things are present (one folder for two editions, etc.). The file is just a horror

The biggest problem is that the only existing "official" INF documentation somewhat related to those update.inf files is this very old one and many of the newer features are just not described anywhere so it's kind of a trial and error guessing game. I think I shall focus on integrating the actual updates because that's what I know how to do and can do pretty easily

Edited May 1, 2012 by tomasz86

[Tommy 88]

I'm not sure if spending hours on it just to reduce the size by ~5 MB is worth it.

I think most of us who use Windows 2000 use them on newer computers with bigger capacity hard drives and in today's world of storage, 5MB just really isn't worth it, but that's just me. If I'm reading correctly, .NET framework 4.0 will be included? Is that something that's already been ported or is that one of your projects specifically related to this service pack? I have a couple of applications that require .NET Framework 4.0 and I can't use them on Windows 2000 because of that limitation.

[tomasz86 61]

I've already "ported" .NET Framework 4.0 some time ago... but it's available only as a true addon. You can find it here.

Even though it's an addon you can still install it manually:

1) Unpack the CAB file.

2) Copy the five DLL files to %systemroot%\system32.

2) Unpack "netfx40.in_" to "netfx40.inf"

3) Right click on it and choose "Install".

4) Choose the "NETFX40.cab" as source.

5) Installation will begin.

I must say that it's not perfect and not all applications will work but you may try to run this tiny tool to see if .NET 4.0 is properly installed or not.

By the way, the ~5 MB mentioned above was not about the size after the installation but was related to the size of the USP5.2's installer itself, like 345 MB instead of 350 MB

Edited May 2, 2012 by tomasz86

[tomasz86 61]

@SearanoX

You already said in the other topic that you were using UURollup but I forgot to mention that this .NET Framework 4.0 also requires the newest version of it, i.e.UURollup-v8 (ENU).

[tomasz86 61]

I'd like to ask everyone interested in the USP 5.2:

What do you think about .NET Framework 1.1 SP1? Should it be installed by default or only on request?

[PROBLEMCHYLD 36]

I'd like to ask everyone interested in the USP 5.2:

What do you think about .NET Framework 1.1 SP1? Should it be installed by default or only on request?

Only on request. I left this out of U98SESP3 because its a big package, and some people might not even need. I have

limited software on my computer. I don't need a program that requires 10 other programs to run.

The software I use doesn't even require me to have any version of NET Framework.