I''ve installed w2k a few days ago and it works fine, I''m using VC6.0 for mainly game-development. But there is a small problem with w2k. It is, as you all know, a NT-clone and there are many many games out there that will not run under NT. So what did those game-developers do, they check the OS the game is running on and if they find out it is NT you get a nice message like ''Sorry this isn''t going to work under NT'', that realy sucks !!! The second problemen accures when the game does run under w2k. The sound and video is choppy. This has nothing to do with the hardware acceleration settings (trust me I''ve tried). But my overall opinion about w2k, it''s a must have for developers !!! Ferdinand

Have you tried checking the MS compatibility page? Several hundred games now have W2k compatability patches. The NT Gaming Palace (can''t remember the URL off the top of my head - its easy to find) also has lots of info on how to make games work with Win2000.

Also, make sure you update your drivers ASAP. Old NT drivers tend to have the same choppyness/latency as was present in NT - this isn''t true of properly written native drivers.

You also need a lot of RAM to run Win2k well. Less than 128 is pretty dumb, if you ask me - it swaps, and whenever machines are swapping they become slower and less reliable.

Finally, Win2k does tend to expose problems with machines significantly more than older 16/32 bit operating systems (Win9x, DOS, etc.). Overclocking seems to fail more, probably because Win2k makes consistently higher use of CPU time. Trivial hardware problems, particularly those involving older devices, tend to have more of an effect. My ASUS P2B-LS motherboard required a BIOS patch before Win2k was truly stable - and I''ve also updated by video card''s BIOS, and performed a soundcard firmware update.

Bottom line is: if you have the hardware for it, Win2k is a wonderful OS. Stable, very fast, and it runs most of the things people want to run (yes, some things don''t work.... but thats when you dual boot, if you really must have some of these titles). If your hardware is in any way suspect (or just old), Win2k - just like NT - will be a little too punishing.

Well, I checked the hw-compatibility with the tools from microsoft (you can download it from www.windows2000.com, just follow the links) and everything seems to be fine...

I think the problem is with DirectX 7.0, I don''t know if there is an update available for w2k (for w9x there is DX7.0a).

But hw-compatible doesn''t solve the problem of those games/programs that check the OS for NT and when they detect NT they display a nice message like ''Doesn''t run under NT..''. Maybe there is a utility out there that solves this problem by simulating w98 when asked for the current OS ???