Can't install G400 on Win 2000 RC2

[Fede]

Hi all! I hope I'm not going to waste your time...
Two days ago I've installed Windows 2000 Professional RC2, which an italian magazine published in January 2000. I KNOW it's like a limited time demo, but I was curios and tried it, and...it worked, and it works in this moment.
The main problem is that I'm not able to make my Matrox G400 MAX DH works on it. I've tried 5.31, 5.52 and 5.72 win2k drivers but none of them works. First two sets seem to install correctly, but when I restart Windows 2000 device manager says that device could not be initialised (or something like this, mine is an italian version) so it still uses vga driver (I CAN'T look at a 60 Hz screen!). The last (and latest WHQL) stops its istallation with a blue screen error (funny, it says that I have to contact administrator, maybe I'll phone to...myself :-).
Is there a way to make my "illegal" copy of Windows 2000 work with my video card? What do you suggest, before I delete my new \winnt directory?
These are my specs: PIII500 with 128M of ram, Asus P3B-F motherboard, Matrox G400 MAX DH, SB PCI 128 OEM. My OS is Windows 98 SE: I've installed Windows 2000 in the same partition, obviously left fat32, in a different directory.

Thanks, and bye.

[Rags]

RC2 had different drivers, and they were never publicly available.

Rags

[Fede]

After your reply, I' ve dowloaded 5.00 beta drivers (made for RC3) for g400 (they're avaiable) and...they works! Yes, even if I've not taken beta drivers into consideration, they're the only one that work with w2k RC2. They not perfect, of course, and their automatic tests (that I've disabled) tell that DirectX 7 are not correctly installed (you know, of course it's wrong, DX7 are preinstalled with Win 2000).
What do I miss with this release? I've not installed any game yet, and I don't use OpenGL apps, but could I?

Bye, Fede.

[Rags]

OpenGL wasn't supported in that version.

You will have to purchase the final version of win2k to get drivers for your Matrox card that support OpenGL and good direct3d.

Rags

[Fede]

Thanks. I can't buy Win 2000 final so I think I'll use Win 2000 RC2 for everything but games. It's a lot better than Win 98SE, it's the most stable OS that I've tried on my PC and I can use all my favourite programs with it. I still leave on my PC Win98 so when I'll need full driver support I'll go to it.

Bye, Fede.

[dZeus]

keep in mind that it will expire in some time (111 days?). After that it won't function any more. To keep full functionality (and a load less bugs with the latest service packs), you need to get the full final version of Win2k.

[SteveC]

Yeah - you might as well get the time limited demo of Windows XP - it'll be much more stable and better performing.