sakkijarvi's Full Review: Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional Full Version f...
Oh DOS, where art thou! I am in the process of 'upgrading' from Windows 98 to Windows 2000. I say "process" because with two multi-hour calls into Microsoft Tech Support, lots of web surfing, including MS's 'Knowledge Base', this is far from over.
OK, details. Me, I'm a small business owner and self-described 'power user'. For the last 10 years I serve as the IT, IS, (whatever you choose to call it) department of my firm. What that means is when the computers break, they call me to fix them. My everyday box is an Athlon 1800 running a Soyo KT333 Dragon Ultra Platinum motherboard. Nvidia AGP 8 with 256 megs of ram. PCI audio. USB 2.0. 512 megs PC2700 333mhz DDR RAM. The usual modern machine circa late 2003.
I've been using Windows 98 to do professional desktop publishing using the Adobe suite (i.e., Illustrator; Photoshop; Pagemaker). I also have been getting into video and digital photography. This describes my livelihood, not a hobby. It's how I make my living, feed the three kids, one wife, dog, cat and hamster. And pay the mortgage.
The reason I chose to 'upgrade' was the RAM limit in Windows 98 - no more than 512 megs of RAM can be recognized. That and the OS had been on my computer a while, reinstalled a couple of times, and was running out of 'steam' as only a Windows OS can. The MS techie I spoke with yesterday even said the 98 OS "doesn't like it" when you throw large graphics at it - and I work with 400 meg Photoshop psd files, and TIFFs of similar sizes - the work we send out for direct-to-plate 4- and 6-color printing at our vendors.
So here I was living with the daily 1+ Windows 98 General Protection Faults, having to save large files more often than I desired, dealing with the 512 meg RAM ceiling that forced large graphics to get spooled out to the hard drive instead of remaining resident in RAM (Photoshop calls for 2-3 times the RAM than the file size or your image spools out; Illustrator is ridiculously slow when it spools images out to the hard drive). But I was getting the job done, including shooting video, burning video CDs, and making promos.
And then came the "upgrade". First stop was Epinions and a read of a bunch of the Windows 2000 reviews. Didn't seem TOO bad after some of the hair-raising experiences I've been put through dealing with Windows OS "upgrades" in the past.
I did my due diligence and downloaded the program that examined my system for compatibility for a Windows 2000 "upgrade". Printed out the three page "Upgrade Report" provided by the program provided at www.Microsoft.com. Noted the Nvida display adapter issue and assumed correctly I'd have to reinstall my AGP video card drivers. Saw the Lexmark Z53 printer driver was no good and have since reinstalled that too. Saw I'd have to reinstall my Canon LiDE 30 scanner driver again. Same with my PCI Audio driver.
Did my thing by getting updated drivers from all the manufacturers. Primed and ready. Slip the Microsoft 2000 Professional CD I purchased at STAPLES for $199.99 into my drive.
The first problem soon cropped up. My old computer was named, innocently enough, with my NAME. "Ray J." Seems Windows 2000 can't have a computer named with a SPACE or a "." (a period). Was never a problem with Windows 98 or earlier.
So as this 2000 install routine takes over my box it simply slips this little message in that the "settings" for "Ray J." are going to be ignored.
ZAP! It turns out that little message (I think; the two MS techies are clueless on this score) apparently killed off all my E-mail, Explorer Favorites, passwords, anything to do with surfing and E-mail. In fact, my Windows 98 install of Explorer 6 simply DISAPPEARED, and was replaced by Windows 2000's choice of broswer, Explorer 5. And Outlook Express 5.
And to make things fun, apparently this "bad" ID (that Ray J. guy) continued to live on the computer. So every time I input my password Windows 2000 would go into an endless crash-reboot-crash routine complete with the usual cryptic error messages.
So off to tech support I go. They came on soon enough and I had what turned out to be a 2 1/2 hour session. We'll call that 'Round 1'. During Round 1 the fellow I'll hereafter refer to as "Tech 1" and I got the OS up and running using Safe Mode, booting from the CD, that kind of time consuming reboot, try this, reboot, try that routine. The "Repair" routine finally got the OS to boot, but Tech 1 said "it's not supposed to do that" after the repair routine failed to initialize the way he said it was supposed to. Nevertheless, the thing would get me to a "Normal" desktop (not Safe mode). At this point, exhausted and down almost an entire workday, I bid Tech 1 farewell. That is AFTER trying to get Tech 1 to solve the non-running 16-bit Windows program problem. Tech 1 was simply stumped.
I did as Tech 1 if "anyone ever cries when they are on the phone with you?" Tech 1 paused, and then answered, "yes, sometimes people have burst into tears of frustration when they realize they've lost important files." I advised Tech 1 I wasn't the crying type but could feel their pain.
Their collective anguish. A product that makes people cry. Great! Been there, done that, got the jersey.
I worked until Midnight to finish a report I had planned for the afternoon of the morning I plunged into the "upgrade". Such is business ownership.
So after having a phone relationship with Tech 1, I had a machine that would run Adobe software. All archived E-mail removed (Tech 1 said that should NOT have happened). Outlook Express failing to recognize the backed-up E-mail .dbx files to reinstall them. No 16-bit Windows programs capable or running. Sound card working by WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER only playing VIDEO, no sound. My old Windows Cardfile (yes, I added so many cards over the years I was one of those folks that simply migrated Cardfile.exe forward with me when Microsoft dropped this handy little no-frills applet).
Back to the "handy" "Upgrade Report" provided by Microsoft BEFORE I installed Windows 2000. See, one of these handy-dandy NOW INOPERABLE pieces of "Windows" software (as in 3rd Party) is Formwin, sure another not-so-new Windows program. But one that has all our invoices from this year and the past ten years or so. Once again, these were backed up to go on another computer in the office, once still running Windows 98 (it only runs Office and word processing aplications; not graphics stuff).
So I dove back in and soon another new person entered my life via Microsoft: "Tech 2". And with that began "Round 2".
In Round 2 my goal was to get my older 16-bit Windows apps running again. I surfed the net, including Microsoft's Knowledge Base, chat rooms (where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth and pathetic cries for help from humans that sound so hopeless and lost) and did not find an answer.
Round 2 started off with Tech 2 telling me that "some programs just won't run in Windows 2000". No way I was planning to accept that pessimistic appraisal, and I advised Tech 2 it was not ONE program that refused to start. It was the SAME error message, about Dosx.exe not being in my Autoexec.nt Path blah-blah.
Tech 2 said he has 4+ years of Windows 2000 support experience YET this problem was no slam dunk for him. I suspected a corrupted Dosx.exe file was the culprit and after a lot of test this, test that, he came around to this point-of-view and we replaced some mysteriously DOS sounding files, including Himem.sys, DosX.exe, and voila, SOME of the 16-bit programs worked. Others, including Cardfile.exe, start, and run, but exiting causes an OS crashing "General Protection Fault" (yes!).
As this experience plays out I'll come back and update this review. I am waiting on a call-back from Microsoft today, for what will be "Round 3". The goal of this round is to get the multimedia elements working on my computer again.
Stay tuned.
Round 3 began with an afternoon call back from "Tech 3", the third Microsoft techie that has now entered my life. I must add they've all been very polite and, I feel, sincere, in their desire to render assistance.
The goal of my contact with Tech 3 was to get my multimedia applications working again, meaning, WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER. I figured if we could get their own media program working, other multimedia software on my machine would follow AND BEGIN WORKING. As it stood, a series of nasty dsoound.dll, dplay.dll and the like error messages kept popping up. The best I could do was get Media Player working so that I could see video, but no audio would play. I went to Microsoft.com and tried their AVI link, the 'test' link that is supposed to be a "good" AVI, with sound and video.
No go.
And after an hour of phone time, sad to say, the kind and personable Tech 3 was unable to get me any closer to the goal. He thought the on-board 6 channel PCI sound on my Soyo KT333 Platinum Edition motherboard might have a "conflict" and after exhausting everything in his arsenal, he suggested I go out and buy a new sound card.
In the face of an oncoming Noreaster (snow storm that dumped 18 inches of the white stuff on us; I drive a Z71 Tahoe so people like me look for reasons to slap it into 4-wheel drive) I headed out to get a Santa Cruz PCI sound card by Turtle Beach at Circuit City. I checked their website (circuitcity.com) and found the Soundblaster cards were a nightmare for AMD/Via chipset motherboard owners. The Turtle Beach product was acclaimed by owners for AMD set-ups. Phoned ahead, they had them in stock. Last day of a $40.00 mail-in rebate on the $79.95 card.
Enjoyed rolling the metal through the storm (with my 7-year old son riding shotgun, enjoying the ride). Got home and installed the Santa Cruz, apparently successfully. And....
No better. Same error messages, dsound.dll, dplay.dll, running dxdiag.exe (from the Run menu) caused faults. All the test tricks I learned from the three MS techies tried again to no avail.
Only one thing left to do. And this was notably NOT a step suggested by any of the three tech-types. That's right - - reinstall the OS.
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