WTF is Microsoft doing here?? Are they trying to force people to "upgrade" to Windows XP?? This is double bad because XP will soon become obsolete since MS will be releasing Vista in the near future. Are they trying to make people do an unnecessary "upgrade" of Windows just so they can play a game? Windows XP is complete crap!!! It requires at least double the resources from every application and there is no benefit... For example, When I install Windows XP Pro as a custom install totally stripped of all network and unecessary components, it uses 84MB of RAM. When I install my video card and sound card, it is up to 134MB of RAM (no other software and just drivers, no video/sound software). For Windows 2000, when I do a full install, it uses 53MB of RAM. When I install my sound card and video card, it uses 64MB of RAM. That is a difference of about 70MB of RAM!!! OK, I am sure you are thinking wow, 70MB of RAM, that is nothing since I have 2GB of Ram..., but try running some resource intensive software like anti virus or a Game, or 3D app like Maya or Cinema 4D. In Windows XP Pro, Maya need over 400MB of RAM just to launch!!! In Windows 2000 it only needs about 175MB. Cinema 4D needs over 200MB for Windows XP Pro and about 120 for Windows 2000. Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition 10.0 needs 24MB of RAM to run on Windows 2000, on Windows XP, I never got it to run properly. It used up 100% of my CPU and the RAM usage climbed to over 250MB!!!! I had to downgrade to version 9.02 which uses about 32MB of RAM on Windows XP (and only 12MB of RAM on Windows 2000). I never check how much games take up in either, but I would imagine the same to be true. However, when I run games on my old PC (700MHz, 384MB RAM), I can run games that require 1.2GHz & 512MB of RAM very smoothly with Windows 2000, but they crash or do not even install on Windows XP... What this suggests is that games will require less RAM and CPU power to be able to run at similar settings on a Windows XP system!! I think this is complete BS!!! Windows 2000 is in my opinion the best Windows OS released and the most stable. Sure, it does not come packed with thousands of drivers, millions of useless components, and tons of eye candy, but it is as simple to use as XP and has, as far as I can see, the exact same features/power. For those of you that want to play this game that do not have Windows XP and do not want to shell out $200, you can try installing using command prompt. Navigate to your CD/DVD drive and type in "setup /a" and press enter. This should launch the installer and you will be able to install the game in Windows 2000. This type of installation does not care about your OS. All you need is to make sure that your DirectX is upto date and that you have the latest MSXML. Here is how to access command prompt: -Go to Start=>Run -Type "cmd" and press enter. This opens command prompt -Now navigate to your CD/DVD by typing "x:" and pressing enter. "x" is the letter of your drive, for example "d:", "e:", etc... -Type in "setup /a". This will launch the installer. -Now follow the wizard!!! If you already have Windows XP, then this will not matter to you, but for those that have Windows 2000, this will save lots of money and frustration of formatting, installing Windows, getting drivers, installing software, etc... Also, Windows 2000 Pro can be found for around $60, so it is a better upgrade from 95/98/ME than Windows XP since you get pretty much an equal product at 1/3 the price. This way, you can save money for getting a better Video Card, RAM, etc... so that you actaully get a benefit from your money.
I have read on another forum where you can install it on an XP machine then copy the folder to a Windows 2000 PC and it will run ok. They said it was the installer checking the OS, not the program itself. I am not surprised that they are trying to force upgrades since they have used that tactic many times in the past, but then again Windows 2000 is a 6 year old operating system. I remember when Windows 95 came out Windows 3.11 was only 4 years old and many programs required you to upgrade to 95 to work. There has to be a point where you drop support for older stuff and Microsoft actually has a better track record than most in that respect. Redhat and Mandrake only support releases a few years old, and I remember Debian Linux giving a whole 2 weeks notice a few years ago that support for version 2.1 was being dropped, not nearly enough time to test production servers with a new version.
You are correct that windows 2000 is 6 years old, but windows XP (4 years old) is the exact same OS with lots of eye candy. Windows 2000 is still better than windows XP in everything except support, eye candy, and extra components. Also, when windows Vista is released (very soon), MS will drop support for windows XP, so a forced upgrade to XP is wasted cash!!! Also, for the copying of files, I cannot see why that would not work. You may need to export the windows xp registry files and then import them into windows 2000 though.
It may appear to be the same OS and several components are the same, but there are a lot of changes under the hood, especially to the kernel from 2000 to XP. http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/kernel/XP_kernel.mspx I have found XP to be much more compatible with games than 2000. I play a lot of older games and surprisingly enough XP plays many that 2000 does not. I think if you look through some of the compatibility lists on www.ntcompatible.com you will find a much larger proportion working under XP rather than 2000. I agree it's rather pointless at this time to upgrade to XP since a Vista release is coming maybe this year. Windows 2000 does consume fewer resources so if you are on older hardware it will perform much better. They will not be dropping support for XP when Vista comes out, after all NT 4.0 online support is not being dropped until Jan 2007, over 10 years after it's initial release in 1996. However you may run into the same situation, a product might still be supported, but that doesn't mean that new software is going to run on that platform. I hate it when installers do a check like AOE3 does though, they should pop up a warning about possible incompatibilities then let you install it anyway and see for yourself. I ran into an old game recently, can't remember what it was off the top of my head, that refused to install because it checked for the presence of DirectX 6, and of course I have 9 currently.
