Windows 2000 has now been superseded by newer Microsoft operating systems: Windows 2000 Server products by Windows Server 2003, and Windows 2000 Professional by Windows XP Professional.

The Windows 2000 family of operating systems moved from mainstream support to the extended support phase on 30 June 2005. Microsoft says that this marks the progression of Windows 2000 through the Windows lifecycle policy. Under mainstream support, Microsoft freely provides design changes if any, service packs and non-security related updates in addition to security updates, whereas in extended support, service packs are not provided and non-security updates require contacting the support personnel by e-mail or phone. Under the extended support phase, Microsoft continued to provide critical security updates every month for all components of Windows 2000 (including Internet Explorer 5.0 SP4) and paid per-incident support for technical issues. Because of Windows 2000′s age, updated versions of components such as Windows Media Player 11 and Internet Explorer 7 have not been released for it. In the case of Internet Explorer, Microsoft said in 2005 that, “some of the security work in IE 7 relies on operating system functionality in XP SP2 that is non-trivial to port back to Windows 2000.”

While users of Windows 2000 Professional and Server are eligible to receive the upgrade license for Windows Vista Business or Windows Server 2008, neither of these operating systems can directly perform an upgrade installation from Windows 2000; a clean installation must be performed instead. Microsoft has dropped the upgrade path from Windows 2000 (and earlier) to Windows 7. Users of Windows 2000 must buy a full Windows 7 license.

Although Windows 2000 is the last NT-based version of Microsoft Windows which does not include Windows Product Activation, Microsoft has introduced Windows Genuine Advantage for certain downloads and non-critical updates from the Download Center for Windows 2000.

Windows 2000 reached the end of its lifecycle on 13 July 2010. It will not receive new security updates and new security-related hotfixes after this date. In Japan over 130,000 servers and 500,000 PCs in local governments are affected; many local governments said that they will not update as they do not have funds to cover a replacement.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Windows 2000, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Many vendors provide implementations of CIM in various forms:

* Some operating systems provide a CIM implementation. For example, the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) API available in Microsoft Windows 2000 and higher implements CIM, so do some GNU/Linux distributions with the [http://sourceforge.net/projects/sblim SBLIM project] on sourceforge.

* The storage area network industry has heavily bought into using CIM and WBEM: their usage of CIM is called Storage Management Initiative – Specification (SMI-S) which is a standard defined by the SNIA.

* Some server manufacturers collaborate in the DMTF under the SMASH initiative to define CIM based management of servers.

* The DASH initiative in the DMTF attempts to define CIM based management of desktop computers.

There is also a growing tools market around CIM.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Common Information Model (computing), under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Home directory is a file system directory on a multi-user operating system containing files for a given user of the system. The specifics of the home directory (such as its name and location) is defined by the operating system involved; for example, Windows systems between 2000 and 2003 keep home directories in a folder called ”Documents and Settings”.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Home directory, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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IExpress is a tool provided by Microsoft in Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. It was also bundled with installations of Internet Explorer 6 on Windows 2000. It can be useful for distributing multiple files to Windows end-users. It makes a self-extracting DPInst installation package or a compressed CAB file. All self-extracting files creating by IExpress use CAB compression algorithms and are compressed using Makecab.exe.

The application is located in the SYSTEM32 folder of Windows installations. It can be started by manually navigating to the directory and opening the executable (IExpress.exe), or by typing IExpress into the Run window in the Start Menu.

IExpress self-extracting packages created on Windows Vista or later Windows releases do not work on Windows 2000 or earlier Windows operating systems.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article IExpress, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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The majority of applications can run on almost any computer with Windows 2000 or later Some applications will also run on Windows 95/98/Me and under Wine on Linux-based operating systems. However, it was announced on April 27, 2010 that Windows 95/98/Me support is ending as of version 1.6.1, in both the menu and any apps that still natively supported these systems.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article PortableApps.com, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Computer criminals placed Download.ject on financial and corporate websites running IIS 5.0 on Windows 2000, breaking in using a known vulnerability. (A patch existed for the vulnerability, but many administrators had not applied it.) The attack was first noticed June 23, although some researchers think it may have been in place as early as June 20.

Download.ject appended a fragment of JavaScript to all web pages from the compromised servers. When any page on such a server was viewed with Internet Explorer (IE) for Windows, the JavaScript would run, retrieve a copy of one of various backdoor and key logging programs from a server located in Russia and install it on the user’s machine, using two holes in IE — one with a patch available, but the other without. These vulnerabilities were present in all versions of IE for Windows except the version included in Windows XP Service Pack 2 , which was only in beta testing at the time.

Both the server and browser flaws had been exploited before this. This attack was notable, however, for combining the two, for having been placed upon popular mainstream websites (although a list of affected sites was not released) and for the network of compromised sites used in the attack reportedly numbering in the thousands, far more than any previous such compromised network.

Microsoft advised users on how to remove an infection and to browse with security settings at maximum. Security experts also advised switching off JavaScript, using a web browser other than Internet Explorer, using an operating system other than Windows, or staying off the Internet altogether.

This particular attack was neutralised on June 25 when the server from which Download.ject installed a backdoor was shut down. Microsoft issued a patch for Windows 2000, 2003 and XP on July 2.

Although not a sizable attack compared to email worms of the time, the fact that almost all existing installations of IE — 95% of web browsers in use at the time — were vulnerable, and that this was the latest in a series of IE holes leaving the underlying operating system vulnerable, caused a notable wave of concern in the press. Even some business press started advising users to switch to other browsers, despite that the then-prerelease Windows XP SP2 being invulnerable to the attack.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Download.ject, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Windows 2000 has received four full service packs and one rollup update package following SP4, which is the last service pack. These were: SP1 on 15 August 2000, SP2 on 16 May 2001, SP3 on 29 August 2002 and SP4 on 26 June 2003. Microsoft phased out all development of its Java Virtual Machine (JVM) from Windows 2000 in SP3. Internet Explorer 5.01 has also been upgraded to the corresponding service pack level.

Microsoft had originally intended to release a fifth service pack for Windows 2000, but Microsoft cancelled this project early in its development, and instead released Update Rollup 1 for SP4, a collection of all the security-related hotfixes and some other significant issues. The Update Rollup does not include all non-security related hotfixes and is not subjected to the same extensive regression testing as a full service pack. Microsoft states that this update will meet customers’ needs better than a whole new service pack, and will still help Windows 2000 customers secure their PCs, reduce support costs, and support existing computer hardware.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Windows 2000, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Intel x86 supports 4MB pages (called Page Size Extension) (2MB pages if using PAE) in addition to its standard 4kB pages, and other architectures may often have similar features. IA-64 supports as many as eight different page sizes, from 4kB up to 256MB. This support for ”huge pages” (known as ”superpages” in FreeBSD, and ”large pages” in Microsoft Windows terminology) allows for “the best of both worlds”, reducing the pressure on the TLB cache (sometimes increasing speed by as much as 15%, depending on the application and the allocation size) for large allocations while still keeping memory usage at a reasonable level for small allocations.

Huge pages, despite being implemented in most contemporary personal computers, are not in common use except in large servers and computational clusters. Commonly, their use requires elevated privileges, cooperation from the application making the large allocation (usually setting a flag to ask the operating system for huge pages), or manual administrator configuration; operating systems commonly, sometimes by design, cannot page them out to disk.

Linux has supported huge pages on several architectures since the 2.6 series via the hugetlbfs filesystem. Windows Server 2003 (SP1 and newer), Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 support huge pages under the name of ”large” pages. Windows 2000 and Windows XP support large pages internally, but are not exposed to applications. Solaris beginning with version 9 supports large pages on SPARC and x86.

FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE features superpages. Note that in Linux, applications need to be modified in order to use huge pages. On FreeBSD and Solaris, applications take advantage of huge pages automatically, without the need for modification.

Newer AMD64 processors can use 1GB pages in long mode, as well as Intel’s Westmere processors.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Page (computer memory), under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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OpenVPN allows peers to authenticate each other using a pre-shared secret key, certificates, or username/password. When used in a multiclient-server configuration, it allows the server to release an authentication certificate for every client, using signature and Certificate authority. It uses the OpenSSL encryption library extensively, as well as the SSLv3/TLSv1 protocol, and contains many security and control features.

It is available on Solaris, Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, QNX, Mac OS X, and Windows 2000/XP/Vista. Although Windows, Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone, etc. include built-in support for VPNs, they do not include OpenVPN. It must be installed as a separate program and configured by editing text files manually, rather than through the normal GUI. It is not a “web-based” VPN, meaning that it is not shown as a web page such as Citrix or TS Web access. OpenVPN is not compatible with IPsec or any other VPN package. The entire package consists of one binary for both client and server connections, an optional configuration file, and one or more key files depending on the authentication method used. It is sometimes used by computer gamers as a way of accessing LAN games over the internet.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article OpenVPN, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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NTBackup is the built-in backup application introduced in Windows NT around 1997 and part of all subsequent versions up to and including Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. It uses a proprietary backup format (BKF) (also known as “Microsoft Tape Format” or MTF) to back up files. Files can be backed up to tape, ZIP drives, floppy disks, and hard drives. It also features integration with Task Scheduler and has several command line switches for scheduled automated backups.

In Windows Vista and later operating systems, NTBackup was replaced by Windows Backup and Restore Center, which uses the Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) file format, supports backup to modern media such as DVDs and image-based full system backups.

Beginning with Windows Server 2008, Microsoft has replaced NTBackup with Windows Server Backup, which includes the new wbadmin command.. This new backup application, wbadmin, no longer supports tape drives, which means that users have to install third-party applications to backup to tape on these new operating systems (See for example ).

For reading/restoring older backups, Microsoft has made available the NTBackup Restore utility which can only read BKF files. This utility can only be used on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. It cannot be used on Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 as it depends on ”Removable Storage Manager”, a component removed in these operating systems.

When used with tape drives, NTBackup uses the Microsoft Tape Format (MTF) , which is also used by BackupAssist and Backup Exec and is compatible with BKF .

Adapted from the Wikipedia article NTBackup, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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