Quote: "XP seems to load faster for me, but Win2k is faster once I'm in the OS."
Yeah, Windows 2003 boots even faster.. but when you inside it, runs slower unless you enable only the services you need.
This is simply because the services being used take up more processing power, and each incarnation of Windows need more RAM in order to run all of the services.
I currently have installed Windows Millennium Edition & Windows 2000 Professional on one hard disk, Windows XP Service Pack 2 on another hard disk and Windows 2003 Enterprise Server on the last Hard Disk. Those are on a Server machine that is constantly running Windows 2003 Enterprise Server.
Each of my systems has a network installation of all of the Operating Systems so basically I can choose the OS that suits what I need to do the most.
Millennium Edition is great for not only running ridiculously fast, but also checking backward Compatibility. It will also run alot of software aimed at Windows 9x that Windows NT 5.x won't.
2000 Professional isn't actually used, it's simply installed because I was curious to why everyone seems to prefer it to Windows XP. I've found that on a Standard Installation, 2000 runs alot quicker.. turn on Themes, Application Layer Gateway, and DHCP Services then they start to perform around the same speed.
What is even more interesting is if you have 512MB Ram in your machines (no more and no less), Windows XP / 2000 / 2003 almost identically and extremely fast.
I've discovered that if you add more than this, then until you hit 1GB it will actually cause the system to slow down. It is a pretty clear indication that Windows NT 5.x is designed to specifically to optimise when using 512MB multiples.
I think alot of people seem to forget that XP does actually run on the exact same Kernel, there is no difference in the background operations. The actual Operating System differences come from the service versions available to you.
You can literally take Windows XP DLL / SYS / OCX and put them with thier dependancies in Windows 2000 and they'll work on that Kernel exactly the same. It is the same OS, just the programs and services it uses are different. So this is why you edit them to use the same services and they'll sit there happily and work almost identically.
Windows XP is obviously used for the majority of stuff. It is to date Microsoft's most compatible, stable, and integrated OS there is. You can deny this all you want to, but quite simply put, when XP messes up it is because of hardware issues, issues that as I've told many in the past Linux ignores and continues to operate with causing more hardware damage (very pandemic really).
Unix, Irix, and Solaris are the same as Windows, they'll crash in order to protect and lengthen the life of your hardware... just because an Operating System chooses to continue functioning despite malfunctioning hardware doesn't make it more stable, just makes it more costly, or means you don't notice that errors are creeping into your programs because of these problems.
This is why on the rare occasions Linux does crash it generally takes out whatever hardware it is accessing at the time.
Windows 2003 is used well for as a Server mainly, but I thought it would also help me to use a .NET integrated OS. Unfortunately I was wrong because it is incompatible with one hell of alot of software not to mention doesn't like installing .NET 2.0 software. Considering that's what I prefer to use to developed with, left me up crap-creek without a paddle for a while. Was in the processes of backing up information in order to reinstall XP on my main system when it died earlier today
back to the joys of the good ol' Pentium2-266, god this thing has lasted well .. guess pure Intel & IBM hardware is a good combination
