Legacy Update: Get back online, activate, and install updates on your legacy Windows PC

Microsoft recommends that you upgrade from Windows 2000 to current operating systems such as Windows Vista or Windows 7 because they have been designed to protect against the kinds of threats common in today’s computing environments. However, Microsoft recognizes that this is not always feasible because of hardware platform limitations or business application compatibility. Organizations with numerous custom applications are especially challenged because such applications might need to be updated or replaced, which is not always easy or even possible in some cases.

This guide is designed to help organizations that are not able to immediately upgrade their older client computers. It provides prescriptive information for strengthening the security of client computers that run Windows 2000. This guidance is designed to help protect these systems to the greatest degree possible while migration plans are put into place.

By following the recommendations in this guide, you will be able to reduce risks to deployed computers. It is important to keep in mind that many significant security features and improvements in later versions of Windows will still not be available. This strategy provides improved protection now, giving owners of older computers the time to consider the best migration strategy for future deployments. However, this guidance is no substitute for a properly designed migration to more secure versions of Windows. If you are a consultant, designer, or systems engineer who works in a Windows 2000 Professional SP4 environment, this guide was designed with you in mind. This guide will help you to accomplish the following:

• Use the solution guidance to efficiently create and apply tested security baseline configurations using Group Policy.
• Understand the reasoning for the security setting recommendations in the baseline configuration that is included in the guide, and their implications.
• Identify and consider common security scenarios and how to use specific security features in Windows 2000 Professional SP4 to help you manage them in your environment.

The guide is designed to enable you to use only the relevant parts of it to address the security requirements of your organization. However, readers will gain the most benefit by reading the entire guide.

Files

Status: Deleted This download is no longer available on microsoft.com. The downloads below are archives provided by the Internet Archive Wayback Machine from the Microsoft Download Center prior to January 2015.

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File sizes and hashes are retrieved from the Wayback Machine’s indexes. They may not match the latest versions of files hosted on Microsoft servers.

• Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats (available as a free download) can be used to open, edit, and save documents, workbooks, and presentations in the file formats new to Microsoft Office 2007.
• Microsoft Word or Microsoft Word Viewer (available as a free download) can be used to view Word documents.

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