[Somnus]

I love the idea of this contribution as Windows 2000 was my favorite operating system before MS discontinued support for it, and released Windows XP to supercede it.

My question is this really need though?

How many users are still working with this O/S in the home market where this type contribution is going to be mainly spread through?

It is realistic to think that Windows 2000 is still a secure and viable operating system today when security bugs are being found almost daily in Windows, and no software manufactures are adding support for Win2K?

I will be trying this out for sure, and will track this quite eagerly.

Here's to hoping MS doesn't stomp on you

[Crash&Burn]

*chuckle* Most businesses run win2k, any software and drivers released still support, and will continue to support win2k due to demand. Many continue to even support 98 like ATI.
Whether or not all these hotfixes are needed perhaps is debateable, its entirely plausible that many have been superceded.

And using this caused me no end of grief, as it wasn't kept up to date... containing update rollup v1, when I was unaware v2 had been released, and could not figure out why suddenly I had no harddrives.
Hopefully upkeep of this project will be better going forward,
And unfortunately all the hotfixes have been renamed from their official Microsoft downloaded filename.

This post has been edited by Crash&Burn: 26 October 2005 - 07:30 AM

[Gurgelmeyer]

Hi

Microsoft platforms are usually supported for much longer by ISV's than they are supported by Microsoft. I know a company which only last year discontinued support for NT 3.x and Windows 95. Another huge (!!) company I know of upgraded (?) from OS/2 to NT 4 just two years ago. But home users are the real losers in this game - we often upgrade simply to get rid of "all the bugs". But personally I've paid good money for my Windows 2000 licenses, and this time I've chosen not to give in that easily.

/G

This post has been edited by Gurgelmeyer: 27 October 2005 - 05:41 AM

[saugatak]

Gurglemeyer:

First, congratulations on performing a monumental task.

Second, if you want to slipstream your service pack, you might want to check out the HFSLIP forum (click logo on bottom), contact TommyP.

TommyP's HFSLIP program is a phenomenal slipstreamer of hotfixes. If you could get HFSLIP to slipstream your service pack, that would make it even better.

[Gurgelmeyer]

Thanks

Does HFSLIP compress better than LZX 21?

You already SAVE 6MB CD space by integrating USP5 compared to SP4

Best regards,
Gurgelmeyer

[erpdude8]

like with the unofficial windows 98se service pack I commented on a different part of the MSFN.org forum site, the USP 5.0 for Win2k isnt for every Win2000 user out there. but it is sure a big help for many home users who still use Win2000. business users may want to steer clear of USP 5.0 if they feel that way.

[Oleg_II]

Gurgelmeyer, on Oct 27 2005, 04:09 PM, said:

Does HFSLIP compress better than LZX 21?

You already SAVE 6MB CD space by integrating USP5 compared to SP4

Only merging DRIVER.CAB and SP4.CAB HFSLIP saves about 7MB

And it has selectable compression rates: high, medium and low. Choose according to your needs

This post has been edited by Oleg_II: 30 October 2005 - 10:36 AM

[RyanVM]

Yeah, merging driver cabs has been standard practice for me since like the 2nd or 3rd release of my pack.

Of course, Gurgelmeyer's got a bit of a different situation. He really couldn't merge the driver cabs during integration (at least I would think update.exe doesn't have any kind of function like that). And I think he'd be in murky legal water pre-merging the two and including a merged driver.cab with the download (not to mention the fact that it would add 50+MB to the size of the file).

I would still think that the burden would be on the HFSLIP makers to support USP5 since all Gurgelmeyer has done is create a modified hotfix for Win2K (correct me if I'm wrong). Shouldn't be too hard for them to support it.

[Oleg_II]

As for slipstreaming I'm not sure. Can try it.

By default HFSLIP is designed to slipstream geniune M$ binaries and doesn't support any other customized packs.

But it can slipstream additional user's files and tweaks to the source

This post has been edited by Oleg_II: 30 October 2005 - 10:42 AM

[Crash&Burn]

One could slipstream these with HFSLIP, but they would have to be renamed to something that at least looks like an official download.
Any decent fileRenamer, or even TotalCommander could rename them all in one swoop.
The last time I had this SP5, think all the files were reduced to KBxxxxxx.exe
changing them to:
Windows2000-KBxxxxxx-x86-enu.exe, would likely allow HFSLIP to process them.

I just question the logic behind patching your system so "thoroughly". Not that one ought to trust MS implicitly...but there must be some reason various hotfixes are not included from one major SP to another. The usual reason being that the older hotfixes have just become redundant and replaced by a newer file version or a complete different fix elsewhere that was deemed more stable.
Gurglemeyer probably knows he's been at it long enough.

Personally the way I see it, the more you patch something the less stable and more inclined it is to break. Thus I will stick with SP4 & later hotfixes, plus the handful that are somewhat important prior to SP4.
And it appears since I cleaned up my "to install" hotfixes, there are none prior to SP4, now that I deleted ones that have gotten supplanted.

[Gurgelmeyer]

Crash&Burn, on Oct 30 2005, 03:06 PM, said:

I just question the logic behind patching your system so "thoroughly". Not that one ought to trust MS implicitly...but there must be some reason various hotfixes are not included from one major SP to another. The usual reason being that the older hotfixes have just become redundant and replaced by a newer file version or a complete different fix elsewhere that was deemed more stable.
Gurglemeyer probably knows he's been at it long enough.

Trust me - I know what I'm doing. I've worked closely with Microsoft PSS for many years in the past, and I think it's fair to say that I know at least as much - if not more - than many of those guys. Don't get me wrong - they do a great job, and they are very nice ppl. But I'm still fixing their bugs.

Crash&Burn, on Oct 30 2005, 03:06 PM, said:

Personally the way I see it, the more you patch something the less stable and more inclined it is to break. Thus I will stick with SP4 & later hotfixes, plus the handful that are somewhat important prior to SP4.
And it appears since I cleaned up my "to install" hotfixes, there are none prior to SP4, now that I deleted ones that have gotten supplanted.

I'm sorry, but I disagree. Check out pubforum.net - this guy applies hundres of hotfixes to dozens of Terminal Servers, and never experienced any problems at all. USP 5 has fixed many BSOD's and other issues on many production servers. There are a few pre-sp4 hotfixes that still apply, but those have been rebuilt, and I'm including the rebuilt versions. (Those are not security updates availble for public download).

Best regards,
Gurgelmeyer

[Crash&Burn]

Just to be clear, no slight was intended in any of my posts. This aspect of Windows, especially win2K is new(er) to me.
Thanks for the response.
Seems a lot of people here at MSFN fix Microsoft faux pas

[Gurgelmeyer]

It's cool

[johnnyb]

I hate XP, nothing but a bloated piece of crap. Windows 2000 isn't boring and it doesn't lack necassary features. The features it lacks are unimportant resource hogs that make me avoid XP. Give me 5 reasons why I should switch from XP? My 2000 machine is rock solid. It stays up as long as *nix boxes. I will go with the more efficient Windows 2000 until the lack of support makes it insecure.