should I swap operating systems or not?

[Xylob the Destroyer]

the PC under my "Computer Details" is the one I have in the home theatre.
here in the office I have an MSI KT6V mobo with an AMD XP 2400+ and 768MB of RAM, running Win2K.

the Win2K macnine is the one that I use the most and use a wider range of applications on.
I really don't know that the "htpc" is utilizing XP and taking full advantage of XP's "features".

I don't run Office on it, or anything really other than DVDShrink, MPC, IMGBurn, and the occasional video game (nothing major -- not Half Life 2 or Doom3, mostly emulators and some Reflexive shooters). I don't even do capture anymore and I'm going to be replacing the AIW9000Pro with a Radeon 9600XT.
I watch movies on it, sometimes use it to play music, back-up my DVD's, and I play NES & SNES emus.
That's really it.

I figured I could do all that with no problems under Win2K, and if I found myself with the need to capture, it's no big deal swapping the AIW back in.

Are there any reasons that XP would be better on the 'htpc' than Win2K?
Also, in the past, just adding a hard drive, a sound card, or other hardware has caused XP to tell me that my copy was no longer legit and I had to go though all kinds of hassle with tech support to get my XP installation re-activated and 'authenticated'.
How much of a pain in the ass is this going to be to put XP on my office machine after I've got 2K installed on the media machine?

TIA!!!

[LOWTECH]

......?

[JohnnyMalaria]

Are there any reasons that XP would be better on the 'htpc' than Win2K?

You need XP to get the benefits of Media Center Edition etc. Also, if you have USB 2.0 peripherals, you may need XP to take advantage of the higher speed (though Win2K SP4 provides USB 2.0 support).

Given your descriptions of your office and XP boxes, I'd just leave them as-is.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

I don't have Media Center edition, nor does it interest me...
I've got all 4 SPs for Win2K burned to disc, so the USB 2.0 support is ready to go (already using it in fact).

[Dubber]

I also used W2K for the longest time and then when upgraded hardware decided on XP due to drivers' support for my new and anticipated hardware and to be current with OS updates as W2K was to be dropped.
Otherwise, W2K was and still is one of the best OSes I've used and my favorite.

[DereX888]

I run all Windows from 98SE and up, and few various Linux systems.
But I consider it my main and always use Windows 2000 machine (the one in my specs) if I don't have to use Slackware Linux box.

Except for very very very few DRM-related issues, the childish/colourful GUI, and the performance (or lack of I should say), there is no difference between XP and 2K (to be clear: Win2K runs faster and is more stable than XP on any given machine).
Although I must say I like Windows 2003 "Professional" too (Server turned to Desktop), almost as much as Windows 2000.

Forget XP (leave to kids ).
For what you want to do I would suggest either Windows 2000 or Windows 2003 if all your hardware/software will run on it (2003 is XP without its stupidified GUI and other inconveniences, therefore its like Win2K hehe) for its rock-solid stability*, ease of use, and performance.


*edit:
rock-solid = as much as it is possible on Windows platform that is

[mh2360]

The only reasons to run XP that I can find is that you may want to run Windows Media player 11, Internet Explorer 7 or Windows Defender. I have never had any problems finding drivers for 2K and Microsoft is going to issue security updates until 2010. If it isn't broke' don't fix it...

[Xylob the Destroyer]

not very convincing reasons!
I still run MP9 because when I "upgraded" to 10 I hated it so much that I eventually did a complete OS re-install because there was no way to get rid of MP10.
IE is not used on my PC's -- Firefox only, thanks.
I had Windows Defender on my Win2K machine for a while, but eventually uninstalled it because it never did a damn thing for me but run extra processes...

[RabidDog]

Truly.. if it aint broke dont fix it. Present problems ? none or worked around . Future problems from swapping OS ? unknowable, ranging from none(unlikely) to complete disaster. Possible loss of all data on both machines, complete re-installation of all os and data and settings. You decide.
Loss of a good working system will be a "WHY ? WHY ? moment"