Windows 2000 Professional Microsoft released this new Windows version 5.0, Build 2195 in February 2000. It is the desktop operating system of the new Windows 2000 platform for x86 architecture and be completed by the versions Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Windows 2000 Datacenter Server. As a minimum requierement for the installation a Pentium processor, 32 mbyte main memory and 650 mbyte of free hard disk storage are needed. Microsoft had planned to develop also a operating system version for the Alpha architecture, the plans were stopped after an announcement of Compaq. Compaq restricted the support to Windows NT 4.0 with service pack 6 and not higher at 1999-08-25. Microsoft stopped the development plans for the Windows 2000 32- bit of Alpha version after that. Windows 2000 unites defined roughly the user-friendliness, pug & play and USB device support of Windows 98 and the safety and stability of the Windows NT family. The update to this new operating system is possible from Windows 95, 98 and Windows NT 3.51, 4.0. It is a multitasking, multiprocessing operating system and supports up to 2 processors of the x86 32- bit and 64 bit architecture with SMP. Threads or processes can choose between the available processors. Beside the complete revision new features and many improvements are integrated. The result is high compatibility, simplified administration, increased hardware support with over 7,000 devices, file administration and extended security functions. Applications for Windows 9x are only supported restrictedly. The installation is possible from CD-ROM or over the network from a file server. The virtual addressable storage is 4 gbyte and is managed by the Virtual Memory manager (VMM). VMM assigns the addressable storage on the actually available physical memory and the memory page file (pagefile.sys) on hard disk. The field of application of this operating system is suitable as a single user computer or as a client in company networks. The operating system is enhanced with the game interface DirectX 7.0, the Internet Explorer 5.0 made access to the Internet possible. Windows 2000 authenticates the user first at the access to files, printers or other computers. Networks are supported with the protocols TCP/IP, NWLink and AppleTalk. Windows 2000 supports the data interchange in decentralised working groups and central domains. Furthermore the Registry consists as in Windows NT 4.0 before of the system files SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE and SYSTEM. The hierarchical database saves information of the hardware and applications as well as configuration settings. The following basic services are in Windows 2000 Prof. installed. The SFC (System File Protection) offers protection from overwrite of Windows system files. It is possible to create hardware profiles for different hardware configurations with the settings of all devices and services. NTFS is used as file system in the new version 5. The specification of user rights is possible for files and directories on file system level, file compression in real time, disk storage quotas (Quotas) and encrypting with EFS (Encrypting File System) can also be used. At the specification of rights the Access Control List (ACL) is stored with every file and every directory. The compression and encoding exclude each other, only one of the options on the same object can be used. Furthermore the FAT/FAT32 file system is supported. Windows 2000 Prof. is also suitable for mobile use on notebook computers. With the complete support of the technologies APM and ACPI an effective energy management and thus lower electricity consumption is possible. With the Suspend to Disk function the computer can be put into a power saving mode and is in the same condition as before after short reactivation time. An assistant supports the user at the administration of the network connections, with use of VPN (Virtual Private Network) and IPSec (Internet Protocol Security) secure mobile access to company networks is possible. The printer administration was simplified with an assistant. 2004-02-13 announced Microsoft that parts of the source code of Windows 2000 has leaked on the Internet. The source code appeared illegally in peer-to-peer file sharing networks, Microsoft said to use the full law to protect the stolen property. 2003-06-25 the Service Pack 4 eliminates 675 bugs appeared since the last service pack. New is the support for USB 2.0 device connections. - unattended installation of the operating system via script possible - different options for Windows start like "safe mode" and "last as good known configuration" - booting from the Windows 2000 CD-ROM offers repair of the operating system or recovery console - supports the display of the desktop on up to 10 monitors - task planner for time controlled executing of programmes - utilities for hard disk like defragmentation and check on disk errors - event viewer for protocolling of application, security and system events - backup tool for data safety and recovery - Microsoft Management Console (MMC), administration of the local or remote computer, expandable by SnapIns - support for local and predefined user accounts, domain user accounts - ActiveDirectory directory service available if client is member in Windows 2000 domain - New protocols for a secure authentication in the network are EAP, RADIUS, IPSec, L2TP and BAP

Step 17 - Finally you need to check if all your hardware has been detected correctly. You can do so by checking your device manager. To access device manager click Start menu -> Control panel -> System -> Device manager. You will see all your hardware listed as shown below. You need to check if you have any yellow exclamtion marks next to the name of the device similar to "USB 10/100 LAN" on image below. This indicates the driver has not been installed for this device.
At this stage you need to install Windows Vista drivers by double clicking on "USB 10/100 LAN" or your device. The properties dialog box will appear. Click on Reinstall Driver. Then you can choose wether you want to install the driver from the internet (if available) or install manually from a CD or other media
Once you have removed all the yellow exclamtion marks from the device manager your Windows Vista configuration would be fully complete.

Step 16 - Soon as you logon you will be presented with welcome centre. You can use the welcome centre to configure, customise, and update Windows vista.

Step 15 - Finally you have the logon screen. Just type your password and press enter or click on the arrow to logon to Windows Vista for the first time.

Next - How to install Windows Vista Page 3

Step 14 - Windows now runs a benchmark type of application which checks the performance of your system. You will see a status bar at bottom which shows the progress. Once the process is complete you will be presented with the logon screen.

Next screen presents you to select your computers current location. You can choose between home, work, public location. Choose home to continue. You will finally get a "Thank you" screen which confirms the end of the interactive installation process. This is not the end of the setup process. There are still many after installation configuration to be done. Click next to continue.

Step 13 - Review your time and date settings. Select your time zone, correct the date and time and click next to continue.

Step 12 - Choose wether your want to Help protect Windows automatically. Select "Use recommened settings" to continue.

Step 11 - Now you need to choose your computer name and desktop background. Click next to continue.

Step 10 - After installation copy process is complete you are presented with the Setup Windows dialogue box as show below. At this stage you need to choose a user name, password and a picture for your user account. The account you create here is the Administrator account which is the main account for your Windows Vista that has all the privilages. Click next continue.

Step 9 - Windows starts the installation process and starts copying all the necessary files to your hard drive as shown on the image below. It will go through various stages of the setup and will reboot your system few times. When your PC reboots it attempts to boot from CD as its the first boot device. Do not press any key during the boot prompt so Windows Vista will continue with the installation by booting from your hard drive.

Step 8 - Choose where you would like to install Windows Vista. If you have a new upartitioned hard drive you would get your hard drive listed as shown on the image below. If have have an old hard drive with data or other partitions it will show up as logical drives. You can select the drive options (advaced) to format, delete, or create new partions. Because I am using a single new hard drive i will select next to continue. Windows will create a partition and format it using NTFS files system.

Step 7 - Choose the type of installation you want to perform. You will notice that upgrade option is disabled as we have booted from the DVD-R. Therefore we can only select Custom (advanced) option which basicly installs a clean copy of Windows from scratch.

Step 6 - Tick "I accept the licence terms" and press next.

Next - How to install Windows Vista Page 2

Step 5 - If you do not enter the product key you can still proceed with the installation in which case Windows will ask you which version of Vista you have purchased. Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate, Business etc. Select the version you have purchased and click next.
Please note, although you can select any version of Windows and proceed to next stage. It is not good idea to select a different version to the one you have purchased becuase you will not be able to activate Windows at a later stage. Windows Vista can detect which version you have purchased once you enter your product key.

Step 4 - You can now type the product key that came with your Windows vista.

Step 3 - The next screen allows you to install or repair Windows Vista. Since we are doing a fresh install we will click on "install now".

Step 2 - The next screen allows you to setup your language, time and currency format, keyboard or input method. Choose your required settings and click next to continue.

1.2 Screenshots on Windows Vista Installation

This step-by-step guide demonstrates how to install Windows Vista.
The best way to install Windows Vista is to do a clean install. It is not difficult to perform a clean installation. Before you perform the installation I recommend that you check Windows Vista System Requirments list to ensure that your hardware is supported by Vista. If you dont have Windows Vista drivers for all your hardware, it is a good idea to download all the drivers from the hardware manufacturers website and save all the necessary drivers on a CD-R before you start the installation.
Windows Vista DVD is bootable. In order to boot from the DVD you need to set the boot sequence. Look for the boot sequence under your BIOS setup and make sure that the first boot device is set to CD-ROM/DVD-ROM.

Step 1 - Place Windows Vista DVD in your dvd-rom drive and start your PC. Windows Vista will start to boot up and you will get the following progress bar.

Windows will now start formatting drive C: and start copying setup files as shown on the two images below :

Step 10 - Choose format the partition using NTFS file system.This is the recommended file system. If the hard drive has been formatted before then you can choose quick NTFS format. We chose NTFS because it offers many security features, supports larger drive size, and bigger size files.

Step 9 - Now you will see both partition listed. Partition 1 (C: Drive) 6000MB and Partition 2 (E: Drive) 2180MB. You will also have 8MB of unpartitioned space. Don't worry about that. Just leave it how its is. Windows normally has some unpartitioned space. You might wonder what happened to D: drive. Windows has automatically allocated D: drive to CD/DVD-ROM.Select Partition 1 (C: Drive) and press Enter.

Windows will show the total size of the hard drive and ask you how much you want to allocate for the partition you are about to create. I will choose 6000MB. You will then get the screen below. Notice it shows C: Partition 1 followed by the size 6000 MB. This indicates the partition has been created. We still have an unpartitioned space of 2189MB. Next heighlight the unpartitioned space by pressing down the arrow key. Then press C to create another partition. You will see the total space available for the new partition. Just choose all the space left over, in our case 2180MB.

Step 8 - This step is very important. Here we will create the partition where Windows will be installed. If you have a brand new unformatted drive you will get a screen similar to below. In our case the drive size is 8190MB. We can choose to install Windows in this drive without creating a partition, hence use the entire size of the drive. If you wish to do this you can just press enter and Windows will automatically partition and format the drive as one large drive.However for this demonstration I will create two partition. The first partition will be 6000MB (C: drive) and second partition would be 2180MB (E: drive). By creating two partition we can have one which stores Windows and Applications and the other which stores our data. So in the future if anything goes wrong with our Windows install such as virus or spyware we can re-install Windows on C: drive and our data on E: drive will not be touched. Please note you can choose whatever size partition your like. For example if you have 500GB hard drive you can have two partition of 250GB each.Press C to create a partition.

Step 7 - You will be presented with the End User Licensing Agreement. Press F8 to accept and continue

Step 6 - You will then get a Windows XP Professional Setup screen. You have the option to do a new Windows install, Repair previous install or quit. Since we are doing a new install we just press Enter to continue.

Step 5 - You will see a list of Raid drivers for your HDD. Select the correct driver for your device and press enter.

Step 4 - You will be asked to insert the floppy disk with the Raid or SCSI drivers. Press enter after you have inserted the disk.

Step 3 - Press S to Specify that you want to install additional device.

Step 2 - At this stage it will ask you to press F6 if you want to install a third party Raid or SCSI driver. If you are using a an IDE Hard Drive then you do not need to press F6. If you are using a SCSI or SATA Hard drive then you must press F6 otherwise Windows will not detect your Hard Drive during the installation. Please make sure you have the Raid drivers on a floppy disk. Normally the drivers are supplied on a CD which you can copy to a floppy disk ready to be installed. If you are not sure how to do this then please read your motherboard manuals for more information.

1.1 Screenshots of Windows XP

Step 1 - Start your PC and place your Windows XP CD in your CD/DVD-ROM drive. Your PC should automatically detect the CD and you will get a message saying "Press any key to boot from CD". Soon as computer starts booting from the CD your will get the following screen:

1.4 Latest Expansion Slots
BLADECENTER HS20 FC EXPANSION CARD
Manufacturer: IBM
Part Number: 48P7061
Specifications: Data transfer rate: 2.12 Gbps ; Connectivity technology: Wired See full specs

1.3 Notebooks/Laptops
Intel® Centrino® 2 Processor Technology for Laptop ComputersThe best notebooks have Intel® Centrino® 2 processor technology insideΔ1Intel’s NEWEST and BEST performing notebook technology includes: • Up to 50% faster performance when multitasking‡1 • Optimized for wireless - up to 2X greater range and up to 5X better Wi-Fi performance, with optional built-in WiMAX to equip your notebook for the future of metro-wide broadband wirelessΔ2 Δ3 • Designed for the longest possible battery life • Up to 90% faster performance on intensive multimedia applications like HD video encodingΔ

1.2 Servers


Intel® Xeon® processor 7400 series
Extending today's lead in virtualization performance with built-in hardware assisted features and breakthrough gains in performance and energy efficiency.
Built for data-demanding enterprise applications with up to 6 cores and a large shared 16MB L3 cache per processor, enabling more transactions per server
More headroom, improved reliability, and the highest scalability available for large scale server consolidation and business-critical virtualization.

Latest Notebook/Laptop:

HP Pavilion X16-1040US 16.0 in. 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 Laptop Windows Vista Premium - 4 GB RAM / 320 GB Hard Drive - DVD Drive

Latest Server:


Hawking Technologies 1-Port USB 2.0 Print Server for ...The HMPS1U connects your USB 1.1 multifunction printer to your existing home or office network,

Latest Desktop:


Apple iMac 24 in. 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Desktop Mac OS X - 320 GB Hard Drive - 2 GB RAM - 24 in Glossy Widescreen Display - Dual-Layer DVD±RW Drive - ATI Radeon 2600 Pro Graphics - Airport Extreme - Bluetooth - iSight

Latest Processor

Latest Processor:

There are two main competitors in the processor market. AMD and Intel. AMD makes the Athlon and Duron processors, while Intel makes the Celeron and Pentium series of processors. Both these chips can run the same operating systems same software, same peripherals although they will require different motherboards and possibly different memory. It is not very easy to compare the performance of the two either. A 2 GHz Athlon processor from AMD will not run at the same speed as a 2 GHz processor from Intel. In fact the latest AMD models run at 2.2GHz and the latest Intel P4s run at 3.2GHz and give a similar performance. One thing that may help guide you though is AMDs model naming convention. For example the Athlon XP 2000+ will be roughly equivalent to the 2000MHz (2 GHz) Pentium 4. The AMD Athlon XP 1700+ is roughly equivalent to the 1.7Ghz Pentium 4. In both these cases the AMD is we believe slightly faster. It also tends to be slightly cheaper.

Latest Processor

1.1 Desktop Computers

Extreme Gaming with the Intel® Core™ i7 Processor Extreme EditionFor DesktopsThe ultimate immersive gaming experience Conquer the world of extreme gaming with the highest performing desktop processor on the planet: the Intel® Core™ i7 processor Extreme Edition.‡1 With intelligent multi-core technology that kicks into overdrive as your activity becomes more intense, it delivers breakthrough performance in gaming. Plus, multitask demanding applications up to 25% faster‡2 and unleash amazing power for digital media creation.