So turns out Windows 2000 is modular in a sense, and I am not surprised that it is somewhat modular.
Context
So, as the title suggested (no I do not apologize for the "shit" in it as "Breaking the living crap out of Windows 2000 due to modding it" would just not work, and there are more swears in this so click off now if you don't wanna see 'em), I was modding Windows 2000 for a project of mine... so of course I was treating it as if it was Linux or something similar.
And turns out, yes, you can fuck with Windows 2000 quite a bit and it'll still work, in fact I decided to tear it down to the bare minimal to run.
How W2K is Modular... sort of.
I know you're probably yelling into your screens, "Vincent or Violette or whatever your fucking name is! HOW IS WINDOWS 2000 MODULAR!?!?!??!" and to answer that is quite simple.
NTOSKRNL along with a few other files are the only ones needed for Windows 2000 to boot, no, seriously. So I started tearing it to the bare minimal requirements, then turns out some guys presumably from Russia already made Windows 2000 50MB in size.
So I quickly installed that and I can tell you right now, you only need 1,061 (probably closer to 1,040) or so files to boot Windows 2000 and get to a login screen.
Proving this via trying to change the login screen
So, besides changing the boot screen as I had already done that in my spare time, I changed the msgina.dll file to be Whistler Build 2419's annddd
So turns out *no* you can't drag and drop random DLLs without their dependencies and expect them to work.
Thank Virtual Box and Snapshots, because we can boot again!
So, lets add in Windows Whistler Build 2419's Login Screen properly, so, not discouraged I went ahead, copied the files I could and pulled out THIS bastard
The Windows 2000 recovery console, a command line OS thing that was designed for IT specialists to fix broken Windows 2000 copies, but here, we're gonna use it to break Windows 2000!
So with a quick "copy winlogon.exe C:\WINNT\System32\" and we arrive at... the VM randomly shutting down... weird, well nothing a quick snapshot restore can't fix. Then did the same and copied over shell32.dll and... same.. thing?... so I did it again, making sure to include msgina.dll and logonui.exe.
huh
This weird ass glitch happened with no reason after I typed "exit" to reboot, unrelated but weird.
Then the VM closes again once it's at the desktop, so I guess we can't change the logon UI.
So I took a break and lost my shit when Muse announced that they're doing their 10th album but that's a story for another time, Matt, if for some reason you're reading this, please don't let it be shit.
Anyways I then came back the following day and went "okay, let's try modifying MSGINA.DLL to contain Whistler graphics."
So, I opened the VM, copied MSGINA to the desktop, opened resource hacker, extracted the assets out of Windows Whistler's MSGINA replaced the 2000 branding with Whistler, fought it a bit, used the recovery console before low and behold...
MSGINA.DLL with whistler assets in
Turns out copying it to dllcache did not work, however if you deleted it, yes that folder would work
Perfection
Windows 2000 with the Whistler branding, Windows modding perfection at it's finest if you ask me even though half of modifying Windows is changing branding to something else.
End Notes
All in all, breaking Windows 2000 to see if it was modular was fun, because generally speaking:
Old technology + fucking around with it = FUN
Now, if you don't mind me, I'll be playing bass and modding Windows 2000 while lurking on betaarchive.com as W2KBreaker, so I'll see ye lot there probably
