Win2K for PCIE graphics

[Robert Baer]

Is there a PCIE HDMI/DVI card that has Win2K support?

[Paul]

Robert Baer wrote:
> Is there a PCIE HDMI/DVI card that has Win2K support?

My 7900GT uses the 175.19 driver for Win2K/WinXP.

Year of introduction = 2006

http://www.gpureview.com/GeForce-7900-GT-card-384.html

I bought mine, just as BFG was going out of business,
and they were releasing batches of older cards from
their warranty program or something. I might have
bought mine around 2010 or so, and for only $65.
I should have bought two of them.

I think at the current time, there is no Windows 10
driver for the card. I think it was OK with my
Win8 OS disk (which I don't use much). It's pretty
difficult to span all the modern OSes with a card now.

My card, according to Wikipedia, uses VP1, and they
say this about that version of PureVideo.

"VP1 offers markedly inferior acceleration compared
to newer GPUs, placing a much greater burden on
the host CPU"

So even if you had my Win2K compatible card, it
would suck from other points of view.

Paul

[Paul]

Robert Baer wrote:
> Is there a PCIE HDMI/DVI card that has Win2K support?

OK, so how would you shop for such a thing ?

Start with the Win2K archive.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp-2k_archive.html

The most recent driver is

Version: 182.65 Release date: May 1, 2009
Quadro driver. Some cheap ones might be
available second hand.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_182.65

So we need to go further down the list.

*******

Well, I gave up, and went back to the driver I used.
They're not all indexed in the archive, including
a 178 driver that is more recent than mine.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_175.19_whql.html

GeForce 9 series:
9800 GX2, 9800 GTX/GTX+, 9800 GT, 9600 GT, 9600 GSO,
9600 GS, 9500 GT, 9500 GS, 9400, 9300 GS, 9300 GE, 9300, 9200

GeForce 8 series:
8800 Ultra, 8800 GTX, 8800 GTS 512, 8800 GTS, 8800 GT,
8800 GS, 8600 GTS, 8600 GT, 8600 GS, 8400 SE, 8400 GS,
8400, 8300 GS, 8300, 8200, 8100 / nForce 720a

GeForce 7 series:
7950 GX2, 7950 GT, 7900 GTX, 7900 GT/GTO, 7900 GS,
7800 SLI, 7800 GTX, 7800 GS, 7650 GS, 7600 LE, 7600 GT,
7600 GS, 7550 LE, 7500 LE, 7350 LE, 7300 SE / 7200 GS,
7300 LE, 7300 GT, 7300 GS, 7150 / NVIDIA nForce 630i,
7100 GS, 7100 / NVIDIA nForce 630i,
7100 / NVIDIA nForce 620i,
7050 / NVIDIA nForce 630i,
7050 / NVIDIA nForce 610i

GeForce 6 series:
6800 XT, 6800 XE, 6800 Ultra, 6800 LE, 6800 GT, 6800 GS/XT,
6800 GS, 6800, 6700 XL, 6610 XL, 6600 VE, 6600 LE, 6600 GT,
6600, 6500, 6250, 6200 TurboCache, 6200SE TurboCache,
6200 LE, 6200 A-LE, 6200, 6150SE nForce 430,
6150LE / Quadro NVS 210S, 6150 LE, 6150, 6100 nForce 420,
6100 nForce 405, 6100 nForce 400, 6100

GeForce 5 FX series:
PCX 5900, PCX 5750, PCX 5300, FX 5950 Ultra, FX 5900ZT,
FX 5900XT, FX 5900 Ultra, FX 5900, FX 5800 Ultra, FX 5800,
FX 5700VE, FX 5700 Ultra, FX 5700LE, FX 5700, FX 5600XT,
FX 5600 Ultra, FX 5600, FX 5500, FX 5200 Ultra, FX 5200LE,
FX 5200, FX 5100

Now, if I cross-ref to the Purevideo article...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_PureVideo

9300 GS, 9300 GE G98 VP3

And using a reference from the bottom of the page,
an 8400 GS might be similar.

https://web.archive.org/web/20090209213606/http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=1870332&postcount=3

Unfortunately, the 8400 GS comes in three revisions.
And you just know, an item you might find now
will be the crappy one. This is what comes of
rebranding and shenanigans. No fun for customers.

OK, they're pretty cheap. This one has a fan and
is $31.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130592

http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=512-P3-1300-LR

Operating System Support

Windows 7 32/64bit
Windows Vista 32/64bit
Windows XP 32/64bit

Win2K is not in the list.

And if I go to their download page, even selecting
an older card does not cause Win2K to appear.

So that would be a "take-a-chance card" with VP2
or VP3, with "maybe Win2K" using a Nvidia.com
driver download. You cannot expect any sort of
precision with legacy research.

Paul

[Robert Baer]

As long as one one wants to use WinXP "or newer",there seems to be a
rather large number of PCIE x16 cards.
That Vamery PCIE 2.0x16 card did not work out (have older PCIE slot).
Software "installation" burped a few places w/ IE complaining it
could not find a file on the net (looking for a non-existant file IN the
computer), and loaded only 2 of the 4 NVIDIA modules (was able to fix that.
Video port worked OK, some signal(?) missing on the DVI and HDMI
ports as no known working device would recognize the output (if any).
Software did indicate the make and model of the device..

SO.

Here seems to be where the rubber hits the road.
Is there a way to make XP SP3 look and act just like Win2K?

I would like it to be (virtually) an exact match or better.
"Better" would be that for an auto-login install (no query for user
name, etc), that everything recognizes and/or acts as if one is the
administrator. NO demands for "higher" or "elevated" authority (which i
see on rare occasion in win2K).

[Paul]

Well, it can't act *exactly* like Win2K. The ACPI subsystme
likely works better on WinXP. And the CPU licensing is by
sockets instead of cores, so you can have a fancy processor.
My copy of Win2K only supported two cores, so if you used
a quad core processor, two cores would be ignored. WinXP is
rated by sockets, so you could have WinXP Home with a 6C 12T
single processor (one socket). Or if you had a server
motherboard, you could use WinXP Pro with dual 6C 12T processors.
You can have a lot more horsepower on the desktop as a
result (with a single socket really being sufficient
for most anything). A 4790K for $300 is pretty powerful,
and no problem for either WinXP version.

An account on WinXP can belong to the administrator group.

There is a copy of "whoami.exe" in this package. Inside
the support.cab, and accessible with 7ZIP without installing
anything. Using "whoami /all" you can get a dump on your
"powers" as a member of the WinXP administrator group.
You don't have to use the actual administrator account.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=18546

The only thing I objected to about WinXP, was paying extra money
for something which was very similar to the Win2K I'd already paid
$300+ for. If you can get a genuine disc at a reasonable price,
I'd say go for it.

Note that, WinXP can be installed on a FAT32 partition.

1) Prepare an empty FAT32 partition.

2) Use Ridgecrop FAT32 formatter, if your OS refuses to
format a large FAT32 partition. I made a 70GB FAT32
partition for my WinXP.

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm

3) Now, install into your new FAT32 partition.

One of the few things that will fail, by using FAT32
instead of the Microsoft-recommended NTFS, is the
"vhdmount" utility will not work. It insists on an
NTFS-based C: drive to function. I haven't found
anything else that particularly cares about this choice.

FAT32 permissions will more likely fit your lifestyle :-)
Just be careful when downloading >4GB files (it will fail) :-)

I do my movie-related stuff on much larger NTFS partitions.

Note that WinXP still supports F6 at install time.
You can offer a floppy with AHCI drivers for your
storage ports if you want (for example, if multibooting
like on my new computer, and wanting to leave the
BIOS settings on AHCI for all of them). WinXP does not
have native AHCI support. You can use NLite to
slipstream an installer CD, and put the drivers
in that way if you find the floppy requirement
too arduous. Modern motherboards lack floppy
interfaces, and USB floppy drives may be hard
to find, as the controller chips went out of
production some time ago.

OSes later than WinXP, are more flexible about
this sort of initial driver issue.

Paul

[Robert Baer]

* Yes, a goodly number of those you cited can be had for under $50 even
with shipping and have the output ports i want to use.
As far as i can tell, none have support for Win2K; WinXP "and up" is
the tour de force.

* I have Win2K SP2 as initial disk, and the SP4 disk as the upgrade.
My CPU changed a few times from when i first got Win2K SP2, and i
noticed that it supported a dual core CPU (my CPU at the time was an
Intel with only one core).
Presently i have the AMD Athlon 64x2 dual core processor 5200+, so i
am assuming that both cores are being used by Win2K but do not know how
to find that out.
I have WinXP Pro SP3 which (from your discussion) should definitely
use both cores and might run faster than what runs now.

>
> An account on WinXP can belong to the administrator group.

* Well, since i (very rarely) have a problem with my Win2K OS bitching
about need of authority "above" whatever i have in fact - when my
installation scheme (no username or password at logon), i will try a
scratch HD and install XP PS3 the same way and search around in the
nominally hidden areas to see if i get the same sass.

>
> There is a copy of "whoami.exe" in this package. Inside
> the support.cab, and accessible with 7ZIP without installing
> anything. Using "whoami /all" you can get a dump on your
> "powers" as a member of the WinXP administrator group.
> You don't have to use the actual administrator account.

* One would think. But it seems that my Win2K install does not give
administrator powers to everything never mind i am supposedly the
administrator.
* I guess that i should expect the same garbage with XP.
And if so, that means i would have to re-install and _use_ a username
and password to have real access to that (default) administrator account.
I hate that because my computer will not boot to the desktop
un-attended; it will be slowed down by a large amount.

>
> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=18546
>
> The only thing I objected to about WinXP, was paying extra money
> for something which was very similar to the Win2K I'd already paid
> $300+ for. If you can get a genuine disc at a reasonable price,
> I'd say go for it.
>
> Note that, WinXP can be installed on a FAT32 partition.

* I see no particular advantage to use FAT32.
Most of my hard drives use a NTFS partition for the OS and a FAT32
partition for data (don't ask; think that rolled out of the woodwork way
back when moving from Win98SE which i loved, as absolutely everything
was available with ZERO fuss).
So, i intend to have both partitions NTFS if my DOS utilities work on
NTSF partition files (at least one critical one does work - just tried it).

* Yes,i noticed. _BAD_ news, zero excuse as the firmware for floppies
changed from 2 chips to one chip and then ported to the "do almost
everything" ASIC on the MB.
Being on the ASIC took very little space, and the transistors for
implementation got smaller as time went on. Support for 4 floppies was
reduced to two,and then one, and finally, like you said, zero.
The removal of that function was a very stupid and short-sighted
decision.
So if i upgrade my computer from this ASUS M2N-MX SE PLUS, i will be
hosed in a number of ways.
This MB was "obsolete" when I got it in Oct 2008 and forced me to
change my CD/DVD RW drive to a SATA as the MB has 2 SATA ports and 2 IDE
ports.
All new MBs kill the floppy and kill the IDE; i have many IDE hard
drives with multiple OSes (mainly to support multiple versions of (may i
swear) Internet Explorer.
So you can see why i have been so resistant to get a new, nice fast
computer.
Porting is a hassle, taking around 2 daze mainly because of the
hardware disparity; i should know as i did exactly that for a good
friend in Ethiopia.
May 2014, a Biostar H6 I MGV3 with Intel Core i3 3240 (socket 1155)
(2x3.4GHz CPU+150MHz Graphics GPU) etc.
Supports 4 SATA (maybe up to 6), ZERO IDE,ZERO floppy, jump in the
lake for them.
AS you can see,it was a LOT faster and reasonably modern at the time.

>
> OSes later than WinXP, are more flexible about
> this sort of initial driver issue.

* In spades; i noticed.

>
> Paul
What would be the procedure to make XP SP3 look to a user like (or
very much) like Win2K?
Can i un-hide all of the system stuff like i did in Win2K?
I note there is at least one folder in Win2K that seems to be totally
inaccessible, and knowing M$ to be ?secretive? that there may be others.
I like to see what i have.

Thanks.

[Paul]

Robert Baer wrote:

> * I have Win2K SP2 as initial disk, and the SP4 disk as the upgrade.
> My CPU changed a few times from when i first got Win2K SP2, and i
> noticed that it supported a dual core CPU (my CPU at the time was an
> Intel with only one core).
> Presently i have the AMD Athlon 64x2 dual core processor 5200+, so i
> am assuming that both cores are being used by Win2K but do not know how
> to find that out.
> I have WinXP Pro SP3 which (from your discussion) should definitely
> use both cores and might run faster than what runs now.

In Task Manager, while the Performance window is showing, there
may be a View option to show "one CPU per graph". If you have two
cores and they're enabled, there should be two graphs showing.

You will get the same execution speed from your 5200+ (like when
movie editing), as both Win2K and WinXP can run two cores without
a problem.

Win2K has pathetically slow startup and shutdown. WinXP can have
a slow shutdown, if an ATI video driver is installed, but this can
be fixed with the UPHClean utility.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=6676

What that does, is close open hives in the Registry, allowing
the OS to shut down without a fuss. The functions in that
are native in later OSes. UPHClean is probably invoked near
shutdown.

Win2K has better file caching than WinXP. WinXP accesses the disk
more often, pretending it never read some files on the disk before.
Whereas Win2K performs as well as Solaris or MacOSX on file
caching (and using all system RAM to do it). This kind of
file caching is transparent, and uses RAM not currently
in use for any other purpose. As soon as you attempt to use
system RAM, the (cache) memory is freed up and given to the programs
immediately. So this style of file caching is considered
"free", as in a free lunch. WinXP still has this, only the
lunch is smaller.

>
>>
>> An account on WinXP can belong to the administrator group.
> * Well, since i (very rarely) have a problem with my Win2K OS bitching
> about need of authority "above" whatever i have in fact - when my
> installation scheme (no username or password at logon), i will try a
> scratch HD and install XP PS3 the same way and search around in the
> nominally hidden areas to see if i get the same sass.

As long as you're a member of the Administrator group,
I don't expect a problem for a Win98 style of operation.

>> You don't have to use the actual administrator account.
> * One would think. But it seems that my Win2K install does not give
> administrator powers to everything never mind i am supposedly the
> administrator.
> * I guess that i should expect the same garbage with XP.
> And if so, that means i would have to re-install and _use_ a username
> and password to have real access to that (default) administrator account.
> I hate that because my computer will not boot to the desktop
> un-attended; it will be slowed down by a large amount.
>

You may be able to set autolog using the extended version
of Users and Passwords. Try these commands as administrator.

control userpasswords2
netplwiz

>> Modern motherboards lack floppy interfaces.

> * Yes,i noticed. _BAD_ news, zero excuse as the firmware for floppies
> changed from 2 chips to one chip and then ported to the "do almost
> everything" ASIC on the MB.

> What would be the procedure to make XP SP3 look to a user like (or
> very much) like Win2K?

Usually, there is a "Classic" view option to make some
of the OSes look like older OSes. And if that doesn't
pan out, there are packages you can add to the modern
OSes, to make them look like the older ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Shell

> Can i un-hide all of the system stuff like i did in Win2K?

Yes. Tools : View should have a similar interface.
And allow extensions to be shown and so on.

> I note there is at least one folder in Win2K that seems to be totally
> inaccessible, and knowing M$ to be ?secretive? that there may be others.
> I like to see what i have.

C:\System Volume Information is where System Restore points hide.
You will likely be denied access in there. I suspect that
area isn't quite as sensitive as Windows 7. I entirely destroyed
a copy of Windows 7 while playing in there (had to restore from
a recently made backup). If you need to get in there, you can
use a Linux LiveCD, if you have an overpowering curiosity.
That's how I got in there in Windows 7, I didn't write to
any file, and yet C: was ruined (unrecoverable). I discovered
some files which seemed to be virtual, large in size, had
exactly zero for a sum.exe run, and yet those attempts at
read operations in the folder, ruined the partition.

The difference between WinXP and later OSes, is the VSS support
(for things like convenient backups) is pretty basic. WinXP cannot
keep a VSS session between reboots, as I understand it. Win7 can,
and then if you mess with the associated files, you can get
in a lot of trouble (as I discovered).

One trick I discovered, is using Task Scheduler, things
you schedule for execution there, run as SYSTEM account.
If something is inaccessible, you might try using
SYSTEM account instead. I think WinXP supports "interactive"
program launches, which later OSes consider a security issue
and they won't allow it. But I think WinXP may allows
cmd.exe to be launched from Task Scheduler and give
you interactive operation as user "SYSTEM". If you
really need to smash something (I did some registry keys
that way), that's an option.

Paul

[Robert Baer]

Paul wrote:
> Robert Baer wrote:
>
>> * I have Win2K SP2 as initial disk, and the SP4 disk as the upgrade.
>> My CPU changed a few times from when i first got Win2K SP2, and i
>> noticed that it supported a dual core CPU (my CPU at the time was an
>> Intel with only one core).
>> Presently i have the AMD Athlon 64x2 dual core processor 5200+, so i
>> am assuming that both cores are being used by Win2K but do not know
>> how to find that out.
>> I have WinXP Pro SP3 which (from your discussion) should definitely
>> use both cores and might run faster than what runs now.
>
> In Task Manager, while the Performance window is showing, there
> may be a View option to show "one CPU per graph". If you have two
> cores and they're enabled, there should be two graphs showing.

* Only one; and View option to show is "one CPU per graph" so something
is preventing Win2K from using two. Unless usage is dynamic according to
need.

>
> You will get the same execution speed from your 5200+ (like when
> movie editing), as both Win2K and WinXP can run two cores without
> a problem.
>
> Win2K has pathetically slow startup and shutdown. WinXP can have
> a slow shutdown, if an ATI video driver is installed, but this can
> be fixed with the UPHClean utility.
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=6676

* Useless; click on "download", select files, and then NADA: either
stare at a non-functioning screen or click the "X" which closes that
window --> back to previous screen.

* Thanks.

Thanks.
I think i have enough to try an initial experiment with a fresh XP SP3.