Microsoft Ships Final Windows 2000 Update

It happened a bit later than originally planned, but yesterday Microsoft made available the final major update to Windows 2000. Dubbed Update Rollup 1 for Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 (SP4), the upgrade contains all the security-related updates Microsoft has shipped for Win2K since it first released SP4.

Microsoft originally planned to ship a Win2K SP5 release last year, but the company canceled those plans and announced that it was working on the Win2K Update Rollup. "Microsoft believes the Update Rollup will meet customer needs more appropriately than a new service pack," a company press release notes. "The Update Rollup should require less predeployment testing because the number of updates included in the Update Rollup is significantly lower than a service pack, and Microsoft will have already released most of the contents of the Update Rollup as individual updates and hotfixes." SP4 is the final Win2K service pack, Microsoft says.

Now virtually abandoned by the software giant, Win2K was the first mainstream Windows release to use the Windows NT kernel. Microsoft shipped client and server versions of this product in February 2000, then moved the NT kernel to the home market with the release of Windows XP in October 2001. Since then, Windows development has slowed dramatically. Despite major XP updates aimed at Media Center PCs and Tablet PCs, Microsoft is still struggling to ship its next major Windows release, code-named Longhorn. For more information about Update Rollup 1 for Win2K SP4, visit 
the Microsoft Web site.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/891861?