Installing Windows 2000 Professional, A Windows 2000 technology showcase
Faster, smarter, simpler: Each release of Windows trumpets its
prowess to the world, and eager buyer snatch up millions of copies
every single month. It's a seemingly never-ending cavalcade of upgrades
and we've become so used to it that it's hard, sometimes, to
remember a system that didn't need to be upgraded so often. Windows
2000, specifically the end-user oriented Professional Edition, seeks
to end all that. And this first step toward an eventual nerdvana of
automatic upgrades is, quite possibly, the last version of NT you'll
ever need to buy in a retail store and install with a CD-ROM.
We'll see how quickly the future Windows delivery systems arrive.
But in the meantime, we're pretty much stuck with manual
installation of the operating system. And with Windows 2000, the
past (NT 4.0) is married with the future (Neptune) in
ways that are sometimes pleasing, sometimes aggravating. The
installation process is a wonderful example of this dichotomy.
There are three basic ways to install Windows 2000 Professional:
- "Fresh
install" - Windows 2000 is installed as the only operating
system on a formatted or empty hard drive.
- Dual boot -
Windows 2000 is installed alongside another operating system
(typically Windows 98 or Windows NT 4.0) in a dual-boot scenario
where the user is given a menu of OSes to choose from when the
system boots up. Applications will need to be installed
separately for Windows 2000, and the OS must be installed on a
separate hard drive or partition from the existing OS.
- Upgrade -
Windows 95, 98, or NT 4.0 is upgraded to Windows 2000,
effectively swapping the old operating system for the new one,
but leaving most applications intact.
In this showcase, I
will be focusing on a clean install of Windows 2000 Professional.
However, I have already examined the Windows 2000 upgrade in my
review, "Upgrading
Windows 98 SE to Windows 2000 RC1." And I will be covering
the dual boot process in a future technology showcase.
Preparing the hard drive for Windows 2000
To install Windows 2000, you'll need to first prepare the hard
drive for Windows 2000. There are two ways to do this: Using the
four setup floppies supplied by Microsoft, or using a Windows 9x
boot floppy. If you have any version of Windows 9x lying around, I
recommend this approach because its faster. And make sure you've got
a copy of SMARTDRV.EXE ("SmartDrive") on the
boot floppy: It's a must.
The first step, then, involves booting the system with the boot
floppy. If you're using a Windows 98 floppy, do not enable CD-ROM
support. When the command prompt comes up, use FDISK to
create one or more partitions on the hard drive. Then, reboot the
system, choose CD-ROM support if you are using a Windows 98 boot
floppy, and format the hard drive (at least the C: drive) from the
command line. When
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