Recent Security Updates Hose Windows 2000?

Microsoft ^ | 2010-02 | Microsoft

[Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo]

I just sat down at an old workhorse of a Windows 2000 computer that we've had here - it's actually a very nice rig, which used to be just super stable - and it looks like Microsoft must have issued some security updates which have completely hosed much of the functionality of the user desktop.
 
Some examples: IE6 is hanging badly on what looks to be a change to the Javascript engine - and while this new bug will bring the system to its knees [and even cause the motherboard's CPU heater signal to start beeping], you can't really see the excess CPU cycles in Task Manager, which suggests to me that the problem is deep, DEEP inside of Windows 2000 [deeper even than Task Manager is able to see].
 
And we've completely lost the functionality of the "Print Screen" key - if we try to print screen shots and paste them into Paint or Photoshop, then all we get is black images.
 
Ugh.
 
Windows 2000 has been such a workhorse platform for us over the years - it's a real shame that Microsoft is no longer devoting the $$$s to regression testing their W2K patches.
 
And I was forced to download Firefox 3.6 to get some web functionality restored [did you hear that Steve Ballmer?!? Firefox?!?].

[Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo]

Boy I don't want to have to upgrade what has been such an awesome platform.

[Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo]

Bump.

[nagdt]

Windows 2000? What year did that come out? 11 years ago?? I know it was shortly after Windows 98 came out because 98 was a disaster.
It’s time to upgrade.
As far as the over heating, I’d go ahead and open up your box and do a little cleaning. It’s probably loaded with dirt.

[rahbert]

Time marches on.

[Truth29]

If you have a restore point before the download, go back to the earlier configuration and see if the problem goes away.

[jonno]

If you liked 2000 - you’ll love XP - try it...

[kosciusko51]

Agreed. The only Blue Screen of Death I’ve gotten with XP has been due to hardware failure.

[fatnotlazy]

I have XP. I can vouch for it...works really well.

My tech-savvy brother tried Vista...had oodles of problems with it. Not sure if he still has Vista, or if he went back to XP.

[bigbob]

Agree W2K is a stable OS, also the last one you can clone w/o tripping the WPA. I wouldn’t bemoan the use of Firefox, which is superior in every way I know of to IE, and there’s Chrome and other choices. If you don’t need Windows specific capability, Puppy linux will run rings around any MS product on 1/4 the hardware.

[UCANSEE2]

I had a fairly modern IBM ThinkCentre with XP Pro on it.

I let the SP3 updates load and BOOM!

It will not reboot, no matter what I do.

I had to get an an older computer from a friend to use.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

If you liked 2000 - you’ll love XP - try it...

And if you love XP, you'll most likely love Windows 7 even more - Vista was a mess, but Windows 7 is flat out better than XP or 2000 (and I've been sticking with MS's NT line since the days of NT4).

[Myrddin]

I still have a Windows 2000 machine running as well. It has been off recently as I'm doing some porting work in Linux. Having two heaters (Windows 2000 and Fedora 12 on a quad core) is too much heat in the room. Sorry to hear MS has further broken things with their "updates". I'm going to have to migrate the data off that machine eventually. The tools collected over the years are outstanding. I'll lose many of them as the vendors are gone. No support for XP.

[illiac]

I’ve been running Vista 7 since it was new on a new computer. Had some IE8 security updates the other night, and, now, IE8 has become unstable....

[Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo]

Well Firefox 3.6 seems to be running pretty well on Windows 2000 right now [knock on wood] - especially after I installed the "No Tabs" plugin to get rid of those hideous tabs which are the default in FF.
 
But I think that the days of IE6 on W2K are numbered - this new bug [like I say, probably in the Javascript engine] is a deal-killer.
 
And I'll look around to see whether I can find a freeware "Print Screen" utility which is capable of restoring my "Print Screen" functionality - it would be terrible if I could no longer "Print Screen".

[nagdt]

hmmm... Boom? Did you blue screen? I’ve heard of some trouble with SP3, but I didn’t experience any difficulty.
Can you boot up in Safe Mode? (hit F8 before the Windows welcome screen attempts to load - while you’re still seeing Black and white DOS loads.) I just looked in the Msft knowledge base and download area
Microsoft has a SP3 patch that may solve your problems.
Search microsoft.com/downloads for this Update for XP KB953979

[Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo]

IE8 is a steaming pile of swine manure.
 
One of the reasons that I loved IE6 on W2K was because it was such sleak, slim, pretty little browser [that just worked, dadgummit].
 
But I don't see how IE8 [on both XP & Vista] ever made it out of regression testing.

[Justa]

Supposedly IE is independent of the OS. Sounds like it could be something like a bad API port or something like that. I recommend to remove IE, reboot and install Firefox or something similar that won’t port into the OS that far.

[illiac]

I’m tending to agree with you. If I did not have so many favorites stored with my user id and passwords for my clients....I’d switch to another browser immediately.

[Eagles2003]

Microsh*t upgrade to Vista for my laptop bombed my system and required a restore from the 10GB D: that HP maintains in the event of a screwup like this.

I avoided the MSFT updates for a few weeks, figure it takes that long for those dumb bunnies to find their mistake.

Toyota is in the same position. It’s very obvious all those acceleration problems aren’t stuck gas pedals, they just haven’t figured it out.

When they do will they admit it, will NHTSA make them recall everything or just let it slide and allow Toyota to fix the problem when the vehicles come in for service, the way NHTSA usually does when dealing with Japanese problems that should trigger a recall.

[Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo]

One of the things that I hate most about IE8 is that if a window hangs, and if you go into Task Manger to kill it, then IE8 kills ALL of your open windows.
 
In IE6, if you killed a hung window, it killed only the other windows within that instance of the process [child windows and parent windows and whatnot] - but any windows which had been started as a different instance of the process were spared.
 
Or the IE8 bug in the TEXTAREA tag which causes the text [in the TEXTAREA] to jump up and down all over the screen as you are trying to edit the text.
 
Or the IE8 bug in the "View Source" window, which, when the source is copied to Notepad, fails to copy the carriage returns.
 
Or the "IE8" bug on XP which totally hoses your Outlook Express 6 functionality [I spent a LOT of time on that one last week, and almost pulled my hair out].
 
It's little things like that which make me scratch my head and wonder how in Hades the stupid thing ever made it out of R&D, much less regression testing.