windows 2000 RE: Windows 2000 motherboards

[Formido]

Microsoft site used to have list of motherboards/chipsets known to run Windows 2000 workstation, but Google can't find it anymore...only their Windows 98 list! Anyone know where it is, or know of similar board/chipset list for Windows 2000?

[Laslow]

Your best bet is to check to see if there are Windows 2000 drivers available for any motherboard you're looking to purchase on the manufacturer's website. That may take some time, but it's foolproof.

[+Mirumir Subscriber¹]

I guess the list is removed because MS discontinued Win2K support.

But I still have to ask: what is the purpose?

It would be easier to list mobos that won't work. And as a rule of thumb, if a motherboard is WinXP compliant, it will most likely support Win2K.

[ZeroFearX]

You can always run it from a Virtual Machine if possible.

[MS Bob 11]

Microsoft site used to have list of motherboards/chipsets known to run Windows 2000 workstation, but Google can't find it anymore...only their Windows 98 list! Anyone know where it is, or know of similar board/chipset list for Windows 2000?

Can you point me what was its URL? Where is the Windows 98 list too as you say? :)

Anyways, Windows 2000 was pretty much well supported with drivers before the release of Windows 7 in 2009 and Win2k's end of life in July 2010 so you would still be able to find hardware released in 2008-2009-ish that has Windows 2000 drivers. The motherboard per se doesn't matter, the motherboard's chipset does. The three hardware driver categories that absolutely matter are graphics, chipset and disk controller (if you want to run in AHCI mode). I know for sure that Intel's very modern chipsets with ICH10 family (even the high performance X58 released in Q4 2008) have Windows 2000 chipset drivers. ATI discrete graphics support for Windows 2000 ended with X800 series (Catalyst 6.2) around 2004-2005 and NVIDIA support for Windows 2000 ended with GeForce 7 series around 2006-2007. Intel's graphics should have relatively more modern graphics drivers. You should be able to run Windows 2000 natively on modern hardware with AHCI off (IDE mode). AHCI has also been known to work up to ICH8 family, not sure about ICH9/ICH10. NIC and audio should have drivers available if the chipset is supported. If not, you can always buy PCI/PCI Express addin cards.