In the five years MS worked on W2K at least four of them MS was aiming at W2K being the successor of both NT4 and Win9x. Only the last year MS decided to wait another version with complete integration of NT and Win9x. As a result of this Win2K was meant to be a gaming system from the start. The proof that they originaly intended it to be a game platform is the DirectX 7 support. If it wasn't a game platform why include DirectX 7? Excel and Word won't need it. The reason why it doesn't run some games today has two reasons. First: -like lots of DOS-games didn't work when Win95 came out, lots of 16bit games don't work in Win2K, yet. Second: -during the last development year of Win2K MS didn't focus on game support. They focused on stability instead. They made up (a little) by releasing a patch to run a lot of games that don't run out-of-the-box. Look for the patch at: www.microsoft.com/windows2000/downloads/deployment/appcompat/default.asp If we could blame all the problems of games not running on Win2K why can some people run most games and can some people not get any game to work? It looks more like a drivers issue.

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I agree that the people that can't get ANY games to work, probably do have a driver issue. I was not aware that 2k had an update for games. Pretty good of them. HOWEVER, win2k is still BASED ON NT TECHNOLOGY and there will be many games THAT WILL NEVER WORK WITH WIN2K. ie NEED FOR SPEED PORSCHE. I am impressed that they're making an effort to make SOME games work.

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Hi Bob, If you weren't aware that there was an upgrade patch then you probably don't know of www.win2kgames.com as well. They have a tweak guide to make a lot of games work on Win2K. Furthermore they have a driver-section to resolve a lot of common driver issues. It's not as big as the driver section of www.win2kworld.com but it is especially designed for game drivers. 3D-videocards etc. Have a look. Good luck. P.S. Like ID released a winpatch for Quake I that made it run on NT too, lots of new games will be running on Win2K and some games might have patches available in a while. Because Win2K will be less a bussiness platform than NT (simply because more home-users will use it than was the case with NT) developers will _have_ to make their games-software run on Win2K. MS can say what they want about it being a bussiness platform, when it leaves the shops they have little influence on what people are using it for. If they would adress it as a games platform why would anyone buy Win ME? It's just a commercial point of view.

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Lennard... well said!!! :-) The whole idea of it being a single platform operating system for business AND home is completely right, and the fact that DirectX 7 was incorporated into the design does show properties required for gaming. Keep up the good work my friend!

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Lennard, very informative. Thanks for da info. I stand corrected. Now I must sit.

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The answer is simple. Win2000 Pro is for professional use. Hence the Pro. If you want a games platform, either wait for Windows Millenium, or by a games console. DirectX is not just for games, but is also used for certain effects in professional sequencing software for musicians. Because it is most often assocoated with games, don't assume that because it is there, it is a games platform. It is not, nor was it ever intended to be. Millenium is for that purpose. After all, NT4 has Directx 3 support from SP3 onwards, and you would hardly call that a games platform. It is however used by professional musicians.

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Hey, I haven't loaded any games, yet. What I would really like to know, though, is why does this have to happen? Now FYI IRQ's 3,4,5,7,10,and 11 are free. any thoughts? 9 Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System 9 RAGE FURY PRO AGP 4X (English) 9 VIA USB Universal Host Controller 9 Intel(R) PRO/100+ Server Adapter (PILA8470B) 9 Creative SB Live! Basic (WDM)

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Well, I upgraded to Win2k and am so far proud of it. It runns the games I like Quake 1,2 and 3, halflife, mechw3, unrealtournament, starcraft and so fourth (not broadwars, gta2 etc though) and for those games I'm dual booting with w98 which is as stable as SAAB's "JAS-39 Gripen" (yes I'm a swedish flight enthousiast) And win2k has never been anoying, excluding 3rd party software & drivers. WIN2000 RULEZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Hi John, I agree that DirectX has other uses besides games. I disagree with your with your statement Win2K was never meant to be a gaming platform. It was meant to be a gaming platform untill the fall of 1999. Then MS decided to make Win2K a business platform and decided to release another DOS platform (Win ME). If it was meant to be a business platform Microsoft would have named it NT5. They did for a while called it NT5. Then they named it Windows2000 because they decided not to release another new OS based on DOS anymore. When the release date of Win2K came near (november 1999) MS decided to push back the release date, build Win ME, suddenly call Win2K a business OS (which they never had before) and focus on stability. It is said that the reason for the focus on stability is the rise of Linux. MS wanted to be sure Win2K could compete with Linux where stability is concerned. This is a rumour which MS of course will never admit. Don't believe MS when they call it a business platform. Everyone with a memory that goes back more then six months will remember MS praising Win2K as the complete platform and the final integration of DOS and NT.

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Does anyone know how to get Duke3d to work with Windows 2000?

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Fun to see Swedish people here. But let's keep the topic, yes it's a fact that games will not run on Win2K. BUT, it's a matter of fact that the system was made for the integration of NT and 9x and therefore also games. Why MS did what they did is because of the market, the market wasn't ready and it will not so be in further 5 yrs I believe. Jonas Lundin CEO Exivation Computer and Technolgy Speculations Institute

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I am having some trouble with Quake 2 on Win2000. I freeze up and lose my connection (cable) 10 minutes into gameplay. I saw something about a problem with GameSpy and 2000. Is anyone aware of an answer? BTW, BOB, ALL OTHER GAMES ARE WORKING JUST FINE, THANK YOU VERY MUCH = )

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He he, I'm running NFS5 Porsche Unleashed unpatched in Win2k with no apcompat.exe. If there is one thing that would make games run better in Win2k it would be a large gamer installed base. Now, I know I'm stretching it here but if all gamers had originally been running winnt instead of win95 what do you think our games would have been programed for? Who knows, MacOS might be a better gaming OS,,, (shhhh I didn't say that ok):-).

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Windows 2000 is based on NT. Its a security oparating system that companys uses. The reson som games dont work is that they are bad programed. In win9X a game can do anything with the grafic card. In windows 2000 a game cant just say like in win9X do that and that it has to say i'm a game and i want to have permision to do that and that and so on. If a game in Windows 2000 says do that and that windows will stop it for safty reasons. There are both good amd bad things about that, for games is a bad thng and for security its a good thing. Windows 2000 is the hardest operating system to hack. To make a game that works on NT based operating systems, it will take double the amount of time as a simple win9X game will take. So companys take the short-cut instaid.

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