Folding Forum

My opinion is that win2k should be kepted in the fold. I will not "lease" winxp or newer windows, but will continue to upgrade my hardware and use win2k on it (I own a copy, unlike winxp and other where you only rent it for a fixed amount of time). the thing is, when win2k isn't developed for anymore, I will instead migrate to linux... but two boxes will remain win2k and both are relatively powerful, so that is two boxes that will not be participating soon. I do understand the reasoning but I also see if from the point of view of a participant with win2k legacy. *shrugs*

7im wrote:... I wouldn't expect there to be very many people with systems fast enough to run the SMP client that are also running Win 2K.

Thread merged.

As a system builder, we have several C2D machines that are running W2K and were used specifically for F@H. None of them will currently work with 5.91 anymore. We paid for these W2K licenses and might as well use them. We definitely won't be paying for XP nor Vista licenses just to run F@H on them. And for the record, these machines perform slightly faster than Vista or XP systems with the same hardware. Thus, Stanford gets slightly faster and more results.

Microsoft has extended W2K support to 2010 and claims to be stopping support for XP not long after that.

We've built quite a few new computers for people who already owned a valid W2K license and preffered to stay with it rather than pay more for XP or Vista. I think you'd be surprised just how many people are running C2D's and C2Q's with W2k.

I really don't understand why anything would change on W2K with new versions of F@H anyway. XP is a bloated version of W2k. The file system and OS configuration are identical.

So I sure hope the F@H developers rethink their support for W2K. It'll be your loss if you don't.

I'm interested in this too. I have several spare w2k client licenses that I can run legally but I don't have enough XP to run the machines I've got, much less the folders I want to crank up.

Does anybody on here have the Windows expertise to say why a program that runs under XP won't run under w2k? Seems like these programs are the exception rather than the rule.

Is it something the programmers deliberately do, put in a version checker? Are there real system calls in XP that are better than the ones in w2k? Any chance of running some kind of utility sort of like WGAFooler?

Supporting Win2K comes from adding more DLLs and code to the client. Those DLLs and/or code are not in the current client. This simplifies the client development, beta testing, troubleshooting etc.

No, they didn't put in a version check to exclude people, don't be rediculous. If they keep the v4 client for Win9x around for 10 years, why would they suddenly decide to start excluding a newer OS like Win2K?

And as far as I know, they didn't change the v5.91 client either. It worked before, and it should work now. All they did was extend the beta expiration date.

Maybe those with problems running v5.91 in Win2K could post more information so we can begin to troubleshoot the problem?

If anything, I'd think there would be much less .dll files on W2K than on XP. I still have customers running Windows 95, so many people will continue to use W2K long after MS support stops. It's in Stanford's and the cause's best interest to keep supporting it.

My problems with 5.91 were simple enough. We moved a couple weeks ago. Prior to the move all machines were folding with no problems. After moving, with the same network, same ISP, and nothing changed on the machines, upon double clicking the shortcut to start F@H the command prompt flashes and then goes off. That's on all W2K and XP machines. I've uninstalled, deleted the folder, reinstalled... still the same problem.

I was informed on another forum that 5.91 had expired during my move. That makes sense considering the problem.

That's the only reason I even considered the new SMP 6.22 version. And frankly the new 6.22MPICH is too buggy. I'm getting "serious system error" and "FILE_IO_ERROR" on all machines. Some are overclocked and some are not, but all run stress tests forever without problems. Kind of a shame as I had 5.91 working fine with the affinity changer and loopback adapter on over a dozen various machines.

dark41,

you can probably get the SMP client running again. uninstall/delete everything you currently have, install the 6.22 latest client. bring it up, run though the install and config. let it DL and try to run a WU. when it fails close it out, rename the 6.22 client .exe, drop in the 5.91 client .exe. run it with the -configonly option. if troubles persist delete the current work folder, F@H core, and queue.dat. start it up, it will figure out it has nothing to work on and will DL another. I know this seems convoluted, but it's what finally worked for me. Attempts to do it without blowing the intermediate WU didn't work.

just dropping in the 5.91 .exe and running won't work that I know of. you have to re-run the config steps.

Thanx Tmoble. If I get some time to play with it I'll give that a shot.

I too have a couple of W2K servers I use to fold which are very unhappy about the recent updates. AFA W2K, there is a method missing from WS2_32.dll in Win2K, and the only way to work around it requires compiling with an additional library for Win2K according to the link I found on MSDN. Of course this does not mean this simple thing will fix all the issues, it may just permit getting past this first error, only to find additional missing methods. I am not considering "upgrading" these machines from W2K anytime soon. It would be unfortunate to lose folding ability on a pair of Q6600 based machines which have been consistently producing for over a year to a compatibility issue.

Will be Windows 2000 supported?

I'm getting error message that getaddrinfo() was not found in WS2_32.dll while trying to start any of new 6.xx client (SMP, GPU2, regular client).

According to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... S.85).aspx

The getaddrinfo function was added to the Ws2_32.dll on Windows XP and later. If you want to execute an application using this function on earlier versions of Windows (Windows 2000, Windows NT, and Windows Me/98/95), then you need to include the Ws2tcpip.h file and also include the Wspiapi.h file. When the Wspiapi.h include file is added, the getaddrinfo function is defined to the WspiapiGetAddrInfo inline function in the Wspiapi.h file. At runtime, the WspiapiGetAddrInfo function is implemented in such a way that if the Ws2_32.dll or the Wship6.dll (the file containing getaddrinfo in the IPv6 Technology Preview for Windows 2000) does not include getaddrinfo, then a version of getaddrinfo is implemented inline based on code in the Wspiapi.h header file. This inline code will be used on older Windows platforms that do not natively support the getaddrinfo function.

But, as win2k is past end of life, there seems no incentive to continue to support it.

Win2k isn't supported anymore since clients v6.10

Don't take it as a personal attack, but I really don't understand why you would use Win2k on hardware that can run GPU client (old OS on new hardware) ...

We already have several threads running on this topic. So I merged them all...

It is no big deal, and I can understand not wanting to support an ancient os that the latest stats I can find show represents less than 3% of all browsers, half of what it represented a year ago. But, I do have several machines that still run it, and they can take compatible GPU's, but the pain of upgrading the OS means I won't upgrade the graphics in them.

Linux anyone? I hear the SMP client actually performs slightly better.

No surprise that Linux would run F@H better since a basic OS like W2K runs it slightly better than XP and Vista with identical hardware. All the more reason for not stopping support for W2K I'd think. However I still like having the option to run other programs and games on our extra machines, so Linux will never be found on any of our personal systems.