Preparing to install Win2000

All of my current Windows experience is in just 3.x and 9x, but I plan to install 2000 from scratch (a totally blank hard drive) on a system I will build once I have all the parts. And while I'm used to Win3/9x and Linux/FreeBSD installs, much of Win2000 will be new to me.

Should I follow the Unix principle of using the Administrator (root) account only when really needed, and use a regular account for everything else?

How much space should I allocate for the C: partition?

In which order should these be installed:
Win 2000 itself (of course that comes first)
SP4
IE6SP1 (I have the official CD from MS - yay!)
motherboard chipset and AGP drivers
DirectX 8 or 9
ATI Catalyst drivers

Anything else I should plan in advance?

 

If you have plenty of drive space, 10Gb isn't a bad idea for the OS partition but if you are cramped, 5Gb should more than do it.

I like the idea of not using the admin account except when needed. You might want your normal daily account to be a super-user though. Otherwise you'll need to use the admin account to make even very small changes and that's a pain. Good idea to put a strong password on the admin account as well and to change it's name to something else. Makes it harder for the random critter that wants to use that account to hose your system to be able to do so.

Load order -
Yup. 2K and then SP4 should be first.

After that I'd do the motherboard chipset and AGP drivers assuming that 2K does not have native support for them and given the age of the OS, it's likely the ones you have are newer so will be a better idea.

I think I'd do the ATI Catalyst drivers next although I'm not sure it makes any difference.

Active X followed by the IE update.

I think that will pretty well do it for you.

 

Win2K is pretty much the same install procedures as Windows 98. If you can do 9X, 2K oughta be a snap for you. good luck. also, dont connect to the internet until you have firewall/antivrus installed.