Windows 2000 build 1515

Windows 2000 build 1515.1 is the earliest leaked build of Windows 2000. This build is listed on the CrazyBytes volume 15 warez CD list. Two warez groups leaked the Workstation SKU of this build, though one mislabeled it as build 1516.1.

New features

 * Internet Explorer has been updated from 2.0 to 4.71.0603.0. It includes an early version of the Windows Desktop Update which is very similar to the version found in Memphis build 1415.
 * This build has a show desktop button at the end of the taskbar, which is similar to the one found in the early 14xx Memphis builds. This feature was removed by build 1575, then briefly reintroduced with an additional menu in build 1773 only to be removed again. This feature remained absent for nearly eleven years, until Windows 7 build 6568 reintroduced it for the second time, with the same functions as build 1515's button along with a new feature called Aero Peek. The Windows 7 reincarnation is still present today (although Aero Peek is disabled by default on later versions of Windows).
 * Most NT 4.0 references have been replaced with NT 5.0. However, many parts of the interface are still very similar to NT 4.0. One example that stands out, in particular, is the 'Windows NT Setup' program, which remains unchanged from Windows NT 4.0 RTM (and by proxy, build 1327).
 * This build introduces a new progress bar during Disk verification in text mode setup:


 * The Add New Hardware Wizard has been added to Control Panel in this build.

Differences
The following files have been introduced compared to build 1381.1 Workstation:


 * We can note the addition of the Windows NT Distributed File System into this build, a feature that made its debut in Microsoft Cairo and came back only two years after.
 * This build is the last known build of Windows to feature code to load Microsoft Cairo configuration files during setup (namely CAIRO.INF, a file defining all Microsoft Cairo changes compared to the base Windows NT build) as well as checking the presence of the CairoSystem registry value in the registry.
 * Some server components are present on this build installation media, along with the build binary output logging files (SYNTHGM.SBK, SYNTHGS.SBK and SYNTHMT.SBK). The later tells us this build was leaked directly from the build machine output folder at Microsoft and explains the presence of left over server files.

Bugs

 * The ACPI implementation in this build is very early and buggy, and is likely to crash most hypervisors. Therefore, it is not advisable to use ACPI with this build, since setup can crash during or after the text mode stage of setup.
 * Setup crashes during the text mode stage if no switch is used to make the setup program copy files to hard drive.
 * At least one 'Windows NT' string is replaced with 'Internet Explorer' in this build, due to the inclusion of the early Windows Desktop Update. This was fixed by build 1585.
 * Windows Messaging cannot be installed in this build, installing it during setup will fail with an access denied error on accessing msmail.inf.

Installation notes
As this build is still very similar to NT 4.0, you can install it on any hypervisor/emulator that can run this build, with the following precautions:


 * While the CD is bootable, the ACPI HALs don't function properly, so it is advised to press F5 at the SCSI/RAID driver prompt to use the Standard PC HAL if you cannot disable ACPI.
 * As mentioned above, it is not advisable to use ACPI with this build as you can encounter a BSOD at text mode stage of setup. Therefore, disable ACPI in any hypervisor/emulator that supports it.
 * In Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, it is advisable to set Virtual PC's processor affinity to a single core in Task Manager whenever you want to run this build (or most pre-XP builds, really). This build is rather picky (although one of the least troublesome offenders) in that aspect, and it may BSOD on you during the boot process before the 2nd stage of text setup or GUI setup.
 * The build as a whole doesn't play too nicely with multi core or multi processor configurations, so it's best to set any hypervisor running this build to have one core and one processor.