Won -
Glad to hear you have a partial answer to your problem. Not sure how W2K became slow and unstable; I use it and have found it rock-solid, but I manually control add-ons and updates.
HardDrive -
I like windoze - really do. What I DON'T like is microsoft's treating everyone like a pirate. It's guilty until proven guilty with them. WinXP offers nothing, imo, over W2K except a further restriction of usage rights and further insinuation of DRM and policeware into a computer.
WinXP is tied to hardware configuration to get a reg code. My attitude is that it's none of microsoft's fukcing business what kind of hardware is in my computer. Also, I should not have to suffer downtime or beg for a new reg code to recover from a hardware crash, and I should not have to answer to Redmond every time I change computer configuration.
There is absolutely nothing I have found that XP does better than 2K -- at least nothing I care about. Why, then, should I downgrade to XP for no other purpose than stylistic points???
True story: Bought a ThinkPad (love 'em, btw) and it arrived without an O/S disk. For me, that's a major problem as it's only a question of *when* the drive will die. Call IBM tech support and ask for the O/S disk. Answer? "Microsoft won't let us provide O/S disks with a computer." WTF???!!! So I inquired about what I was supposed to do when the drive crashes - the answer was that I had to get a new drive with the O/S pre-installed from IBM so they can control the O/S for microsoft. Now I'm pi$$ed off. I can't back up the O/S and can't keep my business running if the drive dies -- all because microsoft wants to treat me as a pirate and force me into XP. That was the last straw for me.
I could go on for way too long about this; suffice to say that we are the frogs and the water has slowly been getting hotter. I choose to jump out.
Linux. Yes, it can be a bit user-hostile. This is where the Mac and windoze have an edge, but there is a wealth of apps available. One way I use linux a lot is for safe internet use using knoppix (
http://www.knoppix.net/). My systems are pretty well locked down, and many web functions are not available on my workstations. Enter knoppix - it's a downloadable, bootable cd or dvd which makes your computer full linux and makes all resources on your computer available, but safely. Great stuff! For those wanting to go fully into linux, look into Ubuntu (
http://www.ubuntu.com/) which makes the process rather pleasant. Incredible what's out there.
Oh, remote computing. Terminal Server works fine with W2K.
KAR 120C