Windows 2000 | A Forgotten Marvel

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So, what should be considered the greatest operating system of all time? There is a lot of ongoing debate surrounding this question, and you’ll get different answers from every person. But arguably the most popular consensus is that it was Windows XP, the version of Windows released by Microsoft in 2001. It was flexible, versatile, and..just nostalgic. And then you have another vocal crowd saying it was Windows 7, with its slick design, fast and stable environment, and its popularization of the “search bar,” a tool most of us take for granted today. And then you have those *really* bold people who will claim it was Windows 8.1, which further built on to all these things: The last Windows that “valued privacy.”

And these are all valid opinions to have: but what if it goes deeper than that? What about the OS that directly made all their respective great achievements possible? The OS that everyone seems to forget about? Of course, I am talking about Windows 2000. Although primarily marketed as the “business” version of Windows, it was also a clear indicator that things were changing, and that Microsoft was ready for the future. A new millennium, a new Windows. The OS was quite well received and experienced some success during the first two years of its reign, eventually even holding majority market share. And as great and ambitious as this all sounds, the tale of Windows 2000 is a bit tragic in that another similarly named, Windows Millennium Edition, was released at around the same time. Having the “greatest OS of all time” juxtaposed with the “worst OS of all time” certainly hasn’t helped its presence in the spotlight. Although this distinction may not have confused as many people at the time, it certainly does now in retrospect. This has caused Windows 2000’s achievements to be overshadowed, which was further accelerated by the release of Windows XP two years later. But today, we are going to make this distinction crystal clear by highlighting its development, the incredible features it introduced and influenced, and give Windows 2000 the reputation it deserves.

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[nationsquid]

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[moki]

Some corrections:
- Windows 2000 was not underappreciated because it was overshadowed by the quick release of XP or the bad reputation of Me. The major cause was that it was not sold with consumer PCs at that time. If Microsoft would have let OEMs ship Windows 2000 in a consumer friendly variant (perhaps instead of Me) back then, appreciation and recognition would probably have been higher.
- The slogan "Built on NT-Technology" was not chosen to differentiate it from the failure that was Me - In fact Me did release 7 months after 2000.
- The backwards compatibility was not an emulation. It changed some variables visible to the targeted program which would make it less likely to crash or refuse to run. You could call it a "simulation" instead perhaps.

[otherssingpuree]

YES! Windows 2000- my favourite operating system. I used it until Vista came around. My parents bought a PC from a bank upgrading their systems for $10. It was uniform and smooth. Just like Windows 7.

[capolaya]

Man I LOVED Windows 2000 at work. No BSODS, no hangs, nothing. My coworkers were stuck on Win 98 and it was a headache for both users and the IT people. I was a veteran user since NT 3.51 so I was very insistent in Win2000 for the IT dept when they renewed PCs.

[Aranimda]

Windows 2000 felt like a liberation after the unstable-by-design Windows 9x series. I was an early adopter and loved every bit of it. On my home server, I ran Windows 2000 until the end of support in 2010 and on my workstation I skipped XP and went directly from 2000 to Vista.
Win2K and Win7 are my favorite Windows editions of all time.

[xDownSetx]

My favorite part of Windows 2000 was the unique progress bar splash screen. I just loved watching it as a kid.

[Morhamms]

About time finally people realize how underrated Windows 2000 is. I can literally watch this video on Windows 2000, that's just a testament to how well it aged!

[hablom]

Windows 2000 was an excellent OS. It made my life so much easier after Win98. I had it installed on a bunch of computers, as a matter of fact I still use one computer with Win2000. Works perfectly.

[eupher]

I went from 98 to ME, used it for 2 days and said no, went back to 98 for a week, then a dad's friend gave me a copy of 2000, went to that and was very very happy.
About 2000 being the most stable version of Windows, i think it still holds that crown. I used 2000 until 2003 and never had a crash or blue screen.
2000 really deserves more love and credit then it receives. Really I believe Vista deserves that too, for the features it introduced. But that's not the point.
2000 was a fantastic OS for it's time.

[MonochromeWench]

Most of the things that people liked about XP were already there in 2000. 2000 even had a release of DirectX9c, showing it had some serious gaming credentials. XP was NT 5.1so wasn't a big step from 2000's NT 5.0. Most people just never used 2000.

[visionplusdrive]

Windows XP takes the cake. I grew up with 95, then 98… then I’ll never forget the first time I used XP. It was revolutionary.

[DeathBaseTURBO]

As a kid, I always thought windows 2000 was ME given what ME stands for, So i always preferred XP, mainly because I got to help install it on the school computers, That was awesome haha

[timothywells]

I don't know why 2000 Wasn't loved more, I used this all the way to Win 7.

[nfinzer]

Man, I loved the 2k/Me UI. That blue, and the new icons. Gradients everywhere. And 2k was pretty solid. This was also the era that I was switching to Linux, but I have nostalgic soft spot for Win98, Me, and 2k. And even XP to some extent, although mostly I remember that one for the viruses that infected laptops across my college campus in 2004.

[zrtkuli]

Windows 2000 was the best version of Windows during its time and beyond. Very stable, elegant, and stood the test of time until Windows 7 came out. Forget ME, XP, and Vista, Windows 2000 was the gold standard of the first decade of the 2000s.

[PanteraPolnocy]

I used Win2k for a long time and I didn't need to format it once despite everything that was thrown at it by me. Unlike the 98 SE or 95 OSR2 which needed a refresh every half a year... so yes, it was a great OS. So much, that I completely ignored XP and Vista, upgrading directly to Win7 when 2k started to show its age and incompatibility issues with newer applications after all these years.

[laz]

NT 4 and Windoss 2000 were my two favorite OS's. Great video!

[MaksBrochu]

Yes, 2000 was, and is still, my favorite Windows !

[gothikia]

I bought my retail version of Windows 2000 in April 2000. The only issue early on, like you mentioned with plug and play, was that Windows 9x and NT used completely different driver models. Hardware manufacturers weren't overly concerned with NT support, especially on PCMCIA devices until XP showed up and everyone scrambled to get their drivers ready. Service Pack 1 in August 2000 helped with this in a big way, Service Pack 2 was a nice big leap forward and by the time SP3 and SP4 were on the scene, all the issues had been ironed out. Then people started going for Win2003 and XP. I still have a machine that runs Win2K to this day, though the hardware was upgraded a good long time ago to a Pentium 4.

In a lot of ways back then, Windows 2000 was "NT for the rest of us". That only got magnified with XP later in its life once the NT codebases were once again unified. (Souce: Dave Cutler)

[TRexMorgan]

Great video brother. That 20 minutes flew by. I love tech history!