Comments on: Windows 2000 release date

By: Luyd Freitas

Luyd Freitas — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 17:52:41 +0000

One of Microsoft’s best systems
It was incredibly similar to Windows XP in functionality, but lighter and more compatible with older PCs.

On my Pentium 2, which I inherited in 2005 after my father bought a new computer, we used Windows 98SE, which was very good but showed its age. I remember that the biggest “flaw” of W98SE was its lack of broad USB support, which was becoming very popular. So I did a test; since XP couldn’t run it (because of the drivers), I tested Windows 2000. To my surprise, it worked very well, in addition to having full USB support, including the brand-new flash drives, the sensation of 2006, and it ran practically all the apps compatible with XP.

It became the definitive system for this PC until 2013, when the PC finally died peacefully.

By: Mik

Mik — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 14:43:37 +0000

I remember my high school friends and I, all nerds of course, being super into the Windows 2000 betas.

I think one of the guys knew a guy who had a ‘warez’ hookup of some sort, so we had access to I think 3 or 4 Windows 2000 beta installer CDs heading up to the real release.

What fun we had! Mysterious crashes, strange new UIs.. I’m pretty sure at some point I had the Half-Life demo installed on my AMD PC running Windows 2000 beta. Elite!

It’s strange and nostalgic to think back to when Microsoft was cool. There was an energy, or a vibe I guess.. We knew the new Windows was going to be kick ass. And it was!

By: doomfan1

doomfan1 — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 23:51:45 +0000

I didn’t use it growing up, but after finally buying a copy recently, I have grown to love W2K. It’s too bad it was meant as a business operating system. What a gem.

By: James

James — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 04:19:41 +0000

I was a contract worker at Microsoft at the time. I had NT4 on my main work PC and once Win2k shipped I upgraded to that. Still remember that smooth blue wallpaper on the 17” Trinitron monitor I had. It was a solid OS that quickly grew on and I had a colleague grab me a copy from the company store that I ran at home for several years beyond the release of XP. Still have that retail box in a drawer of old software. That was back in the era when I loved a lot of Microsoft products. Not so much anymore.

By: doomfan1

doomfan1 — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 02:26:04 +0000

I bought a copy of Windows 2000 last year, and wow, I love it! It is actually a solid operating system. Like the commenter said above, it is a great operating system if you do not play computer games.

By: Dave Farquhar

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 02:04:49 +0000

In reply to Shirley Marquez. I ran it at home myself, and I was slow to adopt XP because 2000 did what I needed. You're right, it was much better than Windows Me.

By: Shirley Marquez

Shirley Marquez — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 15:35:38 +0000

Windows 2000 may not have officially been a consumer OS, but some of us ran it anyway. If you didn’t need 100% compatibility with all games or old peripherals it was a good choice, especially compared to the abomination that was Windows Me.