Getting Started With Windows 2000 Say hello to Windows 2000, also referred to as Win2K or W2K (ok, I admit: I'm a lazy typist). Actually, say hello to Windows 2000 Professional, basically for work stations, and Windows 2000 Server, for network servers, and Windows 2000 Advanced Server, for high-end network and web servers. In this article, we'll focus on Windows 2000 Professional and show you how to get started, what to do before installation, give you a few tips for installation to help make it a smooth one, and help you take your first steps with Win2K. Before you get started The very first thing to think about is whether W2K is for you. Why do you want to upgrade? Is it worth $300 to you (for the full professional version)? Do you already have a perfectly working Windows 98 install? Are you sure it will work with all your hardware? Consider these next few points to decide whether you need it: System Requirements To run W2K at an absolute minimum, you need a Pentium 133, 64 MB of RAM, and a 2 GB hard drive with at least 650 MB free. It won't be exactly a speed demon, but it will run fine. To make it run smoothly, a 300 MHz or faster CPU, 128 MB of RAM, and 1 GB free hard drive space are recommended. I'm running it currently on a Slot 1 Celeron 450 with 128 MB PC-100 SDRAM and a 13 GB IBM Deskstar 7200 RPM UDMA66 drive, and W2K performance is very swift. Incompatibility Issues Not all programs will work on W2K. Some of them just can't handle it, others just won't install because they can't detect a valid version of Windows because they were written only for Windows 95/98/NT, and refuse to install on anything else. You should first make a list of all the software you want to install on W2K and check with the manufacturer to confirm that the application will work in W2K, or that they have a W2K compliant version available (if you are so inclined to spend money on an upgrade). Drivers W2K comes with a plethora of drivers for all kinds of hardware. But the list is not necessarily complete. If you have a really old and outdated piece of equipment, or something brand-spanking new that came on the market right around the same time or after W2K was released, W2K will not have drivers for it and you need to supply your own. Make a list of devices and hardware used in or with your PC, and visit first of all the Microsoft Windows 2000 Compatiblity web site to check the hardware compatibility list and/or download the W2K Readiness Analyzer Tool to scan your system for compatibility. After that, visit each manufacturer's web site to make sure that W2K drivers are available. But don't expect everybody to have drivers ready right away. Chances are that most manufacturers won't release drivers until a few weeks or even months after W2K becomes available. Tip: For some devices, Windows NT 4.0 drivers might work as a temporary solution. Preparing for Installation Alright, you read through all the warnings and good advice I gave you on the previous page, and you decided that W2K is for you. You bought a copy of W2K Pro, raced home, tore the shrink wrap off the box, and with trembling hands pulled the shimmering CD out of the box, and are now sitting in front of your PC with sweaty palms and your heart going faster and faster with anticipation (hmm, maybe I should try writing romance novels ...). But not so fast, buddy! Before you stick that CD anywhere, you should think about what type of installation you want to perform. Here are some options: Upgrading your existing Windows 95/98 installation Bad idea! Even though I've not tried this myself (I prefer clean installs), I strongly recommend staying away from this option as I have heard of a lot of problems with this. In the best case, it will leave you with a system that needs major work to update drivers, reinstall programs, etc. to make everything work as intended. In the worst case it will hose your system so badly you wish you had done a clean install to begin with. Upgrading your existing Windows NT 4 installation Since Windows 2000 is based on the NT technology, your chances of performing a successful upgrade are a lot bigger. Dual-Booting This is a great way to start with W2K. It allows you to retain your existing Windows 95/98 installation to fall back on and to boot to in order to run applications that might not work in W2K. Setting up a dual-boot is surprisingly easy. W2K setup will take care of the dual-boot option for you, it's very simple. Clean Install This is my recommended course of action. Start with a nice clean hard drive and install from scratch. Starting with a clean slate is the best way to a healthy operating system, because you don't carry over any existing problems or possible conflicts as you would with an upgrade installation. For more information on upgrading to W2K, don't forget to stop by the Microsoft Windows 2000 Upgrade web site. A few more things to do before upgrading Be patient, you're almost there. There are a few more really important thing you need to do before you can install W2K. Back up your data! It doesn't matter whether you are performing an upgrade, or planning to reformat your hard drive and starting from scratch - don't proceed until all your data is in a safe place. Another good idea would be to use a disk imaging program to take a snapshot of your drive so that you can quickly restore your existing Windows 95/98/NT installation in case something goes terribly wrong. Load up on drivers! As mentioned earlier, make a list of all your devices and hardware, and visit the manufacturer's web sites and get all W2K drivers you can. But the most important driver you need to get is the one for your SCSI and/or DMA66 controller. If your hard drive is hooked up to one of those puppies and you don't have the driver disk, setup will not be able to see your hard drive! Don't even bother to start the installation until you have that driver. If your hard drive is connected to a regular IDE controller on the motherboard, then you don't have to worry about this though. Make yourself some setup disks. They are not necessarily needed, but they can come in very handy in case something goes haywire and you can't boot W2K anymore. Making a set of setup disks is really easy. All you need is four formatted floppy disks. Insert the first disk into your floppy drive. Then insert the W2K CD into your CD-ROM drive. Now type the command x: \bootdisk\makeboot.exe a: where x is the drive letter for your CD-ROM drive and a: the drive letter for your floppy drive. You can do this either from within Windows by clicking Start/Run, or from a command prompt, both ways work. All that said, let's get to the good part: The installation! Upgrading your existing Windows installation If you want to upgrade your existing Windows installation, start your PC and boot to your existing Windows version, insert the W2K CD, and wait for the splash screen to appear, then select Install Windows 2000. If the splash screen does not appear because you don't have auto insert notification turned on, run setup.exe from the root of the CD. Click Install Windows 2000, then select Upgrade to Windows 2000. Now follow the instructions on the screen. The installation is very straight forward and doesn't really require any explanations. Creating a dual-boot configuration with W2K and your existing Windows installation Setting up a dual-boot is surprisingly easy. Start your PC and boot to your existing Windows version, insert the W2K CD, and wait for the splash screen to appear, then select Install Windows 2000. If the splash screen does not appear because you don't have auto insert notification turned on, run setup.exe from the root of the CD. Click Install Windows 2000, then select Install a new copy of Windows 2000 (Clean Install). When you get to the screen to Select Special Options, make sure you click the Advanced button which offers a few very important options. For the Windows installation folder, specify a new folder name, e.g. Win2K. Be sure not to install into your existing Windows directory and to install into a different partition. If you have plenty of disk space, you can then check the box to Copy all Setup files from the Setup CD to the hard drive to have the files reside on your hard drive. This is a nice feature that saves you having to dig out the CD every time you want to make a change. The most important checkbox is to Choose the installation partition during setup. This will allow you to place your W2K installation on a separate partition or drive, which is mandatory. If you put it on the same partition as your existing Windows 95 or 98 installation, it can create conflicts with existing Microsoft programs, e.g. Outlook Express and Netmeeting. Now follow the instructions on the screen. Once the installation is complete and you reboot the system, you will see a boot menu with your different operating systems listed, one of them being the default which it boots to after a set amount of seconds. W2K setup will take care of the dual-boot option for you, it's very simple and doesn't require any brain surgery. Clean installing W2K/Install from Setup floppies Two ways to start a clean install: boot from the setup disks you created earlier, or from the CD-ROM directly, and setup will start automatically. Floppy Insert the first setup disk that you made using the makeboot.exe command, boot up your PC and watch setup start. CD-ROM Most PCs that were built in the last 2 or 3 years support booting from the CD-ROM drive directly. Insert your W2K CD, then turn on your PC. Watch you on the first screen for a line telling you to "Press Del to enter Setup" or something similar. This will let you change your BIOS settings. Look for the Boot Sequence option and change it so that it boots from the CD-ROM first. Save the settings, exit and reboot. Now your PC will boot from the W2K CD and start setup automatically. Both ways will bring you to a pretty ugly screen. If you ever have installed NT before, you'll recognize the screen. First, your hardware configuration will be checked. Go and have a smoke, a piece of pie, or whatever your vice is, this might take a few minutes. When this is done, you need to pay close attention. Is your hard drive hooked up to a regular on-board IDE controller? Then you're cool and go right ahead. If your hard drive is hooked up to a SCSI controller or a UDMA 66 controller, you NEED TO PUSH F6 to install a third- party SCSI or RAID driver. If you don't do this, W2K setup cannot access your hard drive and will give you a Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD) with the error INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE and instruct you to reboot your computer. After pushing F6, you need to push S to specify an additional SCSI, UDMA66 or RAID controller driver. This is where you insert the floppy you hopefully made earlier to supply the proper driver to W2K. If you do not have the driver at this point, you will not be able to install W2K. Assuming you have the driver, setup will continue, and you will eventually get to a screen where you can select which drive and partition to install W2K into. You can either install Windows into an existing partition, or first delete a partition, create a partition, format a partition, whatever is necessary. Preferably you would install W2K into its own partition as discussed earlier. Please pay attention to the file system you use. Especially when setting up a dual-boot situation, you have to take into consideration that W2K can read all FAT, FAT32 and NTFS partitions, however, other operating systems such as NT 4 or Windows 95 cannot read FAT32 or NTFS partitions. Therefore you will not have access to those partitions. If you're in doubt, don't convert to NTFS yet. Leave it at FAT or FAT32, you can always convert the partitions to NTFS later with a simple command line switch. Use FAT for best compatibility between W2K and NT 3.51/4.0/Windows 95, use FAT32 for compatibility between W2K and Windows 98, use NTFS if you don't care about compatibility and just want the best file system period. The rest of the setup procedure is pretty straight forward. You choose your regional settings, enter your name and organization (if applicable). Then you set up a name for your PC and an administrator password. The administrator is the big cheese, god-like, boss user of the machine. The administrator has total control over the setup, creates and deletes user accounts, installs and removes software, creates shares, and much more. Therefore it is highly recommended that you choose a secure password and store it in a safe place in case you forget. Without this password, you'll find yourself in a bad situation eventually to put it mildly. Then you can set up your date and time settings, network settings (if applicable), etc. Again, this is pretty straight forward. Once these choices are made, the rest consists of watching Windows detect hardware, copy files, reboot, etc. If you're fascinated by status bars, this part of the installation will be a real treat for you. If not, this would be a good time to have another smoke, piece of pie, cup of coffee or whatever. After the last reboot, you'll see the W2K splash screen and are prompted to press Ctrl-Alt-Del to log on. Don't worry, this will not reboot your PC, but bring up a log in screen with the administrator already filled in as the user name. Type in the password you set up earlier (you still remember, don't you?) and admire your brand-spanking new W2K desktop! Updates and patches Now it's time to customize, tweak and fine-tune your W2K installation. First, let's head over to the Windows 2000 update site by opening Internet Explorer and clicking Tools/Windows Update. This is where you'll download and install any available service packs, updates and patches. Alternatively, if you want to download and save these updates for later installation, you can also head over to http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/downloads/default.asp. Installing drivers Go to Start/Settings/Control Panel/System/Hardware/Device Manager to see a list of all the devices that Windows installed automatically. Check to see if there is anything missing from this list. If so, click on the hardware wizard in the System Properties to install additional hardware. If you find some devices in the device manager that are marked as not properly working and/or missing the driver, double-click on those devices, go to the Driver tab and click Update Driver. This will launch a wizard that guides you through the process. Point it to the disk where you have the driver for that device and Windows will do the rest for you. Be sure to use only Windows 2000 certified drivers if at all possible, you don't want to mess up your clean installation. The device manager offers some nice options under the Action and View menu, allowing you to customize the view, printing a list of the devices, and scan for hardware changes. Installing the Recovery Console W2K comes with a tool called Recovery Console that is designed to help you out when something goes wrong. To install the Recovery console, log on as administrator, insert the W2K CD, then go to Start/Run and type in x:\i386 \winnt32.exe /cmdcons where x is the drive letter to your CD-ROM drive, and follow the instructions. The next time you reboot your PC, pay attention to the screen. If you do not have a dual-boot setup, you'll see a new screen with a boot menu, giving you the option to either boot to Windows 2000 or to go to the Recovery Console. You'd choose the console if you cannot boot into W2K anymore. If you choose console, it will dump you out at a pseudo command prompt. Type Help and hit Enter to see what commands are available to you in this mode. If you already have the start menu every time you boot due to a dual-boot configuration, you'll see Recovery Console as a new option in the boot menu. Create an Emergency Repair Disk Another helpful tool in case of a disaster is the Emergency Repair Disk (ERD). It will help you with deleted or corrupted system files, or the partition boot sector problems. To create the ERD, go to Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Backup. Under the General (or Welcome) tab, select Emergency Repair Disk, insert a blank disk and follow the instructions to create the disk. To use the disk, you boot with the setup disks created before installation, then choose R at the initial setup screen to repair W2K. Select either Fast or Manual Repair, depending whether you just want it to do the job without your input, or if you want to select which items to repair. Insert the ERD when prompted to complete the repair process. Important: The ERD does not back up your registry or data or program files. If you restore the registry with the ERD, you end up with the very first registry after W2K was completed and have to reinstall most of your applications. Use this option only to repair the boot sector or system files. Changing the Boot Menu After setting up a dual-boot configuration or installing the Recovery Console, you'll see a boot menu before Windows starts loading, giving you the opportunity to choose to boot normally, to a different operating system, or to the Recovery Console. By default, this boot menu will wait for 30 seconds before booting to the default operating system. Of course this can get old real quick. Here's how to change it: Go to Start/Settings/Control Panel/System/Advanced/Startup and Recovery. In the System Startup option at the top, you can select which operating system you wish to be the default, and change the delay for how many seconds Windows waits before booting to the default OS. Customizing your Start menu In previous versions of Windows it was necessary to use a tweak program such as TweakUI or X-Setup, or hack the registry yourself to customize certain things. Microsoft has made some of these things easier by including them in W2K by default. Go to Start/Settings/Taskbar and Start Menu, and click the Advanced tab. Check out the Start Menu Settings at the bottom. Here you can select to expand a lot of the sub menus on the start menu for quicker access, decide whether you'd like the Programs menu to scroll or not when it's larger than the screen height, and deselect some of the items showing on the Start menu. Get quick access to all your files Take the My Computer icon on your desktop and drag it with your left mouse botton onto the Start button and drop it there. This will create an expandable menu on your Start menu from where you can get to any file on your PC by simply drilling down this menu. Manage your computer with a double-click W2K comes with a great management console that allows access to all important system utilities from one central place. This tool is called Computer Management and can be accessed from Start/Settings/Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management. Since you'll probably be using this a lot, create a shortcut on your desktop by dragging this item with your right mouse button to the desktop or quicklaunch bar, release, and select Create Shortcut here. Turn on NumLock Even if you have your BIOS set to turn on NumLock, the setting that allows you to use your numeric keypad on your keyboard to type numbers, W2K will ignore that setting and boot up with NumLock disabled. This is very annoying, especially if your log in password contains numbers. Here's the registry hack to turn this feature on. Go to Start/Run, type regedt32 and click OK to open the registry editor. Now select the HKEY_USERS window. Double-click the .Default folder, then the Control Panel folder, then select the Keyboard folder. Double-click the "InitialKeyboardIndicators" key in the right window pane, then change the zero to 2. Click OK and close the Registry Editor and you're done. The next time you boot W2K, NumLock will be enabled. http://www.pcnineoneone.com