Way back before there was The Cloud, there was Windows 2000. I used Win2K extensively in computer labs at ITT Tech. Say what you will about that school, I did at least get practical, hands-on experience with computer environments while going there. Maybe I didn’t end up getting a job in traditional IT, but the experience still helped me adapt to other technologies I’ve encountered since.

Installing Windows 2000 Server

For this lab experiment, I’ll be setting up servers in VirtualBox. I’ll give each VM access to 1 CPU, 512MB of RAM, and 4GB of storage: truly staggering specs for a server in the year 2000!

To begin, you need the 4 setup floppies to get to a point where the rest of the OS can be installed from CD. We’ll create a single NTFS partition using the installer.

Setup continues in a graphical wizard once the VM restarts. It will try to detect the system hardware and install the correct drivers. VirtualBox picks pretty safe virtualized hardware, so there shouldn’t be any problems getting through the setup.

DC Promo

Run the Active Directory Installation Wizard (type dcpromo at the Run prompt). We’re going to create a new domain:

I use all the default installation directories for the database, log, and system volume. We should get an error that our domain name doesn’t resolve and be prompted to install DNS:

Create a Domain User

I really don’t want to login as Administrator everywhere, so let’s create a new domain user. Open the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in and add a New User:

Make sure you can login as the new user and access the Active Directory management tools.

Installing Windows 2000 Professional

Client computers don’t run Server, they run Professional. The Windows 2000 Professional setup boots straight from the CD:

At this point I was going to add an Exchange 2000 server to the domain, but it’s really difficult to find installation media to play around with.