I was an "unofficial" Windows 2000 beta tester in 1999. W2K was excellent, especially for the time.

The day I upgraded from Windows 98SE to Windows 2000 was the birth of the modern computing era for me. Suddenly I went from rebooting Windows 98 every couple of hours when trying to get work done to literally weeks of uptime on Windows 2000. Ran beautifully on my bottom-end Pentium III at the time.

Windows 2000 was the OS I NEVER wanted to leave... so clean, so solid! Glad it's still around.

I loved Windows 2000. It was so simple and clean before the Fisher Price XP took over. I knew EVERYTHING about 2000 from all the issues I had with it, but was able to fix them. It was like that old beater car that only you know how to get started.

Man, when I got my hands on Win2000 at my office back in the day I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. I grabbed one of the OEM licenses and put it on my home machine and was as happy as a clam.

I used Windows 2000 until its retirement forced me to move on in 2009. I loved Win2k so much. My favorite version of Windows.

Windows 2000 is one of my favorite versions of Windows! I still keep an old Lenovo Thinkpad laptop running with Windows 2000 and Vista dual booted on it so I can run legacy software a lot better. With the unofficial SP5 for Windows 2000, I can actually run somewhat modern software on Windows 2000 and browse the modern web as well.

Windows 2000 is the only version of Windows I actually enjoyed using. Rock solid stability and speed.

good old windows 2000, such a great 0S that came packed with one of the best games ever made, SPACE PINBALL!

Why can’t we have modern windows this clean. No bloat, it works, and it doesn’t phone home. I spend a lot of time stripping down windows 10 systems just to make them unbloated and light, I shouldn’t have to use Group Policy to make my Pc work. JUST MAKE A BARE BONES SOLID EXPERIENCE THAT DOESNT PHONE HOME AND WE ALL WOULD BE HAPPY. Also none of this creators update garbage, I HATE that it forces its way into the computer when all you are trying to do is update office and the like. Hours wasted, broken updates again and again. This needs to stop.

I've installed my windows 2000 so often, that I accidentally memorized the 25 character CD-Key :/ Still my favorite Operating system.

"a measly 2.5 GHz" looks at laptop

Through my own programming I was able to use Windows 2000 for many years, people noticed it and I tried to explain but they never understood. It wasn't until recently when I bought an entirely new system that I stopped using it, just due to the fact of simplicity and newer software not being supported. It's very much like linux if you can program for it, you are good as gold.

Me: *hears windows 2000* Me: *thinks boring* Hamish: *actually makes it interesting* This is the whole reason I originally subbed to you, everyone you make is engaging and entertaining

*_when your computer is so powerful it can't run windows 2000_*

Awwww I miss my old PC where i had Windows 2000 and XP dual boot Thank you for this video

I used to run Win 2000 on a Pentium 3 way back as my first Desktop PC. It was as stable and fast as windows installs get. I loved the simplicity of it all. I even have a original Windows 2000 installation CD with an unused Product Key! Good old times...

The best windows to date. No bloat, simple and one of the first NT based Windows. Stability was top notch.

Wow! OpenTTD music!? Fun fact: there is a Windows 2000 version of the latest OpenTTD update.

a time when Microsoft knew how to make operating systems...

Windows 2000 have two major advantages over XP for retro machine gaming/testing. First is they do support non PNP ISA devices. Do you have ISA network card or non PNP sound card? Well, no luck on XP, but they do work on 2000. This makes it ideal dualboot OS together with win98 for the long DOS to 2002-4 era retro machine as you need those ISA devices for good DOS gaming and at the same time you want win2000 for modern networking and NT5 era software. Second point is that unlike XP, it boots anywhere. If XP does not have the drive controller driver it will not boot, nor it will boot if you throw it already installed to completely different computer. 2000 still have the legacy 16-bit PIO over bios HDD compatibility mode, so they pretty much always boot. Slowly , but they do, which allows you to install new drivers and boom there you go on new machine without reinstall. This is extra useful for testing and benchmarking purposes.

I used to mess around with Windows 2000 some years ago and it's one of the most stable Windows versions I've tried, running on all kinds of hardware. And it also looks a whole lot like Windows 98 which is one of my favourites so that's another plus from me ;D

Windows 2000 was great. It was also the NT release that really started to encourage hardware and software vendors to make sure they had proper NT support since enthusiasts adopted it pretty well on home machines. Was still some problems with some software and hardware compatibility back then but nothing like the NT4 days.

The day I replaced Windows ME with Windows 2000 was a great day indeed. The whole 9x codebase should have been burned to the ground.

I used very much windows 2000, it was awesome, a lightweight windows xp, with a classical look.

Holy crap, that stock video editing footage that you show off in this video is SO MID 2000'S!

The few games that ran on NT 4.0 at the time did so much faster than on Win 9x. When 2k came out, it was the (almost) perfect blend of both worlds. I was working for an IT consulting company at the time and even the pre-release versions were a revelation for Windows users. When SP-1 came out and weighed 100 MB, we all thought it was absurd and were glad of our dedicated T1 line. Today, 100 MB is a small patch.

Windows 2000 was a great system. I've been using it for a long time on my pentium 60MHz. Soooo stable and reliable!!!

Windows 2000 was my favorite for a long time. I got a free OEM copy when I bought a $40 box of PC parts off eBay back in the day. It was a burned copy still sitting in a CD ROM drive. I laughed out loud when I powered the drive up and opened the tray and saw a disk with hand writing on it, 'Windows 2000 Professional'. Still have that disk along with my copies of Windows 98 SE, Windows XP and a bunch old versions of Linux.

2000 was great its xp without the ui look i used it for a number of years and never ever crashed.

I have some fond memories of using Windows 2000 in high school and at my first summer job. A very clean and capable OS. It has really held up well.

Honestly that lowered spec Pentium 4 would have been pretty high end for a Windows 2000 machine.

I really like the GN style timeline you put on the left side. It really helps on long videos. Love the effort you put into your videos.

What an amazing OS win2k was, had that running on a late 90s vintage Toshiba satellite I used back in 2005 with only 64MB of ram installed. Light weight, stable, and a clean interface. Especially after having then recently leaving the windows 9x era for good; Good times !

I installed win2k on a 486 at one point. That was a funny project, but it did work. HDD wouldn't shut up due to paging, and I had to mount a box fan on the chassis to keep it cool enough to keep running. Those were the days...

The amount of hard work in this video is just mind blowing!..........awesome video mate better than some so called "Big KZfaqrs". Wish you the bestest of luck for the futur and hit the million subs milestone asap........✌ peace!

I stuck with 2000 well after XP came out. I liked the lower resource usage and simpler design, which all made it feel faster. But I had to switch to XP when I got a dual CPU Athlon system. 2000 had a noticeable lag when moving threads between CPUs, while XP did it smoothly. Very noticeable when playing music or DVDs.

That was fun :) I've only used 2000 a handful of times. I see it stuck between 98 SE and XP, struggling to run software from both periods without mucking around. I do wonder when XP will make it the winworld site...

Norton Ghost may help with these legacy videos. I really enjoy going back in time and appreciate that you are using older hardware to do it. Thanks for these videos!

I am writing this comment in WIN2000

Another masterpiece as always. This man has risen through the ranks up there next to green ham gaming as one of the best tech channels on KZfaq

I really enjoyed this video. I actually never used Win 2000. I went from 98 SE right to XP back in the day. So I appreciate the look in to this OS.

Love that subtle showing of the serial number.

You know I am a bit of a Windows 2000 connoisseur myself 😎💯😱💦

Man, I still have my install disk. I remember buying this when it was released and installing it on my HP. Used it for over 8 years until 7 came out

Windows pro 2000 was my all time favorite ! seemed nartural , nice wallpaper & everything worked Super Easy !

This is an out standing video you have done. Well done and it was a great one.

Funny you mention OpenTTD as that works very well on a wide range of devices. I even played 1.2.0 back in high school on a 100 Mhz Pentium laptop I found which only had 16MB of ram and it ran smoothly at 640x480 resolution. I still play the game these days and I even figured out how to make my own suit of North American styled GRF's/MODs (like the NARS Add-on Set 2cc, NA Track Set, North American Industy set and I'm currently working on the North American road vehicle set)

Windows 2000 was insanely good, thank god

Very cool video! I was in love with 2000 and especially the NT platform around then. First time commenting, will be checking out more vids!

Budget builds, I started watching you're videos back when you have 20k subs. You have grown so much! Good luck.

I must say, I've really enjoyed this video, for years now I've been recommending lightweight Linux for low end PCs, so they can still get modern software support and a modern operating system for free, I never knew Windows 2000 was a real alternative, I still think lightweight linux makes more sense because of security, and even for gaming as wine and Steamplay can make many old windows games run, but I'm really glad there's a real free alternative to that and overall it was a really interesting video. I'd love to see you testing out very lightweight linux and trying to make older windows games run on it.

Are you okay, Budget-Builds Official? There's a nasty bug going around. Windows 10 makes everyone cough.

Been a few years since I last saw this video so feels good to watch it again. I'm an XP fan but I have the opportunity to grab Windows 2000 from someone so I liked the refresher

That OpenTTD Music in the Background...just perfect.

Great video! Many fond memories using Win2K on my AMD K6-2 500MHz with 256Mb for 4 years,I jumped from win98 to winxp, then I made a rollback to win2k (because my specs system was low) rock solid OS, especially for work, I prefer win98 for gaming, the only problem was the lack of drivers in many "new" hardware, then I got a Pentium III 1GHz with 512MB of ram, then I tried winxp and I never went back.

openttd music damn it's taken over

Great video. I loved Windows 2000. It was nice to work on back in the day. We loved it cause it was like XP but without the fisher price theme.

I absolutely love that OpenTTD music !

Yet another top notch video from The Big Wheel himself

Installing Windows 2000 on a SSD? What's this? Druaga1?

Windows 2000 has always been my favourite operating system from Microsoft and it's the operating system I've used the longest. Right after installing it for the first time I immediately fell in love with it and kept on using it while other people were already running Windows XP for many years. To me Windows XP has always been Windows 2000 with a lot of additional garbage to make it more attractive to home users. There was this time when Microsoft was making operating systems for home users and operating systems for corporate use. The last one of these were Windows 2000 for corporate use with the Windows ME counterpart for home users. Starting with Windows XP they never released any more Windows versions for corporate users and to me the Windows versions for home users are too bloated. Windows 2000 was such a clean operating system and then released Windows XP with this ugly Luna theme (which I consider the ugliest theme ever to be used in an operating system and I don't even understand how anyone can stand it and people don't just use the Windows Classic theme), the stupid dog that shows up when looking for files, the new Start-menu, the useless cleaning up of unused items on the Desktop, the annoying hiding of unused icons in the System Tray, the annoying grouping of items in the Task Bar, the annoying categories in Control Panel, the annoying layouts used in the Explorer depending on what files are in the folder you're viewing. The list just goes on and on and on. I just hated every single new feature of Windows XP. Of course, I could've installed Windows XP and disable all of the new features and make it look and act exactly like Windows 2000, but why would I if I could just keep on running Windows 2000? So, that's what I did. Everything always worked absolutely great. Later there were some games that checked what operating system you were running and refused to install on anything older than Windows XP (like Age of Empires III), but that was easily solved by just copying all of the files from the CD to the hard disk manually and then creating a shortcut on the Desktop to the .exe manually to run the game. Nowadays Windows is so bloated, I can't understand how people are able to use it. I also don't want to know what efforts companies have to go through to set-up a PC with Windows for office use. Why doesn't Microsoft just create a corporate version of Windows with just the barebones needed for use in an office and everything else stripped out and then have Microsoft Office pre-installed, instead of having things like Xbox, Movies & TV, Solitaire Collection, Bing Sports, Food & Drink, Health & Fitness, Travel, Music, et cetera? These kind of apps are completely useless in a corporate environment and system administrators have to spend a lot of time uninstalling or disabling these kind of things and then installing Microsoft Office. Disabling access to the Command Prompt and PowerShell is another thing. Just make an operating system that's ready to use in an office set-up or in a school and then have a separate operating system for home users with all of the nonsense people want to use at home. To me Windows 2000 was the last clean operating system that could just be implemented in an office or school without any (or at least not too much) tinkering. To me it's still the best operating system Microsoft has ever created and together with Age of Empires II (although it's a different subsidiary (or whatever to call it in English) of Microsoft) one of the best products they've ever released.

Love that OpenTTD music mate.

i have a server at work in a production environment that still runs windows 2000 server. never crashes and runs great. i think it was last rebooted 4 years ago. it was a amazing os and still is.

i loved this os back in the day! it was a beast, rock solid stability and ran games

Win200 and Windows for WorkGroups were always my favorite Windows versions. I often wish we could go back.

Oh hell yeah! As soon as I heard the OpenTTD music I was happy.

I loved Win2000, was one of my favorite OS's.

Budget builds best OS Windows XP Windows 7 Windows 2000

"TTD - Juke Box Music" - This won me over

great that Transport Tycoon Deluxe soundtrack at the background!

i still have a original Windows 2000 Professional Installation CD and Product Key

My favorite Windows of all times. No-nonsens operating system.. :-)

Thanks for the Product Key!

This is a good video for those that might be building a windows based arcade machine using old hardware

Being an IT guy for a local school up until 2007, I used Win2000 regularly, and it was generally pretty predictable. The server version always worked well, and the advances in more modern networking and actual working and configurable domain control made it perfect for business/school related installations. I still have copies of everything from Win2K Professional all the way through Enterprise Server (which would handle up to 32 gb. of RAM). Stability was the main feature and that stability was because you could only install certain programs and drivers by default, so as not to disrupt the integrity of the OS. You could bypass this with various results, so it was always a good idea to test any new software on a sand-boxed machine to make sure it was stable before putting it on the domain. (Ran into a lot of this with education-based software that was usually created in early versions of VB6 and ActiveX). Overall, I sort of miss the simplicity and speed of it when it was working properly.. and at the time it WAS pretty fast, even on a machine with a single core P-IV and 512mb. of RAM.😉 The best way to gain speed on a Win2K machine was to setup multiple U-320 SCSI drives in a RAiD 0 array, as the read speeds were increased exponentially. I would think the system would be hard on SSD's just by design. Great video! I may have to dig out one of my older IBM rack-mount servers and play with it again at some point.😁👍

My childhood OS. Many hours of half life played on that OS.

good old days. My first pc came with windows ME. cool video sir.

I think Windows 2000 remains my favorite version of Windows. I'm inspired to do a build.

I miss Windows 2000 so much. Especially the side-bad that lets you preview photos and videos, that shit is awesome!

When I was in middle school and like 2009, 2010 I had a Toshiba satellite from that time period that I bought at a garage sale for like 20 or $30. It had windows 2000 on it and at that time that handled everything just as well as modern operating systems. I had a good experience with that. Very good OS, too bad windows 10 isn’t as good. Looking back I might’ve even prefer that over XP.

Ran Windows 2000 on my first PC. I wanted 98 but my dad made me use 2000 because he had a lot of experience with NT4.0. I remember growing to love it, even if some games at the time didn't support it.

i see your use of the openttd music in the backround, i approve

Early from discord lol Btw make a vid on the r9 290x or r9 fury.

"Windows 2000, is it good in 2019." Not only is it good, it's less expensive. I recently used Word 2000 to type all of my B.S. Degree dissertations. I also use Windows 95 from time to time. The documents, whether Windows 2000 or Windows 95, look modern and similar when attached in an email or printed out.

Used Win2k for many years back in the day, arguably the most stable, reliable and slimlined OS microsoft have ever made, loved it for it's simplicity, functionality and, as you said, rock solid reliability.

I always marvel at the diagonal northbridge heatsink and how cool it was :)

Great vid! I'd have never considered using 2000, as I always thought it was this stable OS that no-one supported (leading to no users) and therefore basically useless for retro gaming purposes. How wrong I was! The one and only time I ever saw Windows 2000 in the wild, was about 2008/2009 back when I was in the army. It was installed on the computers that did all the data processing on vehicle mounted artillery hunting radars, of all things. I never saw it on a home PC, or even a business PC. I've got a fair old collection of late 90s/early to mid 2000s games gathering dust in my cupboard due to not being able to work well with a modern OS, so I might well get an old rig together and run windows 2000 on it for those.

The tutorial you showed is actually a semi-reupload from Terabyte Coyote who took it down for some unknown reason.

Good video. I would have added, considering you spoke of video-editing, that a benefit of win2000 over say win2003 is that drivers for some brooktree (e.g. hauppauge WinTV go bt878) PCI cards are available on the CD and work well with the software and XVid codecs and so does Ulead VideoStudio7se. However attempting WinXP to use them with Scaler can be hit and miss. Some for some flatbed scanners (e.g. if you scan your face into your BaldursGate2 avatar). As an aside, a benefit of win2003 for gaming networks on LAN is it can take (and deploy) system images of WinXP gaming machines connected to it. A fun thing to do on win2k with win98 is netmeeting video streaming (e.g. using a hauppauge card as a "webcam" when really its TV-In is connected to a TV-Out of another PC such as one that is gaming). Also, as a plus for win2k, soundcard and joystick drivers (e.g. MIDI gamepads or flightsticks) unvailable for win2003 can be available for win2k. That also helps for old games that use midi sounds. A benefit of win2k is it can connect well to a network of win98 machines even if they run on 16bit hardware such as a 486.

Thanks for the product key

Win2k is still my favorite version of windows.

I remember using Windows 98 and 2000 when I was in elementary school We used 19" crts and modem internet back then

Windows 2000 was absolutely great in its time -- not sure I'd go to this much trouble to run it today, but I'm glad that someone is... Nice video

When you started video editing... it reminded me of how Windows Movie Maker no longer exists for us on WIndows 10 :( I was actually a little sad when I found out about 2 years ago, because I had to make a certain project and I only knew how to use WMM... So I was forced to move on to Shotcut, which wasn't the worst thing ever but I had to learn how to use a different program.

My first OS :) Wow a Pentium 4 and 2GB ram I used Windows 2000 on a Pentium II 400 with 64mb of memory, it was still very good experience!

This is an amazing vid, as a note, if you want more than 3GB RAM, just use one of the server editions. supporting up to 64GB IIRC.

Great video; quite interesting. I am currently working on building a Windows 98 machine - mainly for old gaming and DOS. Using a Compaq Deskpro 590 with a 150 MHz Pentium and 96 MB RAM, just missing a PCI graphic card, then I am ready to install. So I really look forward to watch, if you make a video about Windows 98

neat that the colours of the title on the thumbnail match up with the windows logo