Okay, well fwiw you made me curious enough to look this up:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/microsoft-outlines-w...

> When it debuts in February, Windows 2000 Professional will sell for an estimated retail price of $319, the same as its predecessor, Windows NT 4 Workstation.

Note that there was no "home" edition of Windows 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2000

So it's one of 2, 3, or 4.

Thank you for the info! As I said, I definitely remember Win2k, but not how I got it. My guess is OEM CD to be most likely, then bootleg, then full retail.

Another option was student bookstore. Microsoft sold its wares at universities at steep discounts.

Edit: a sister comment jogged my memory. I bet it was either a giveaway by an EECS dept or a heavily discounted disc from the university bookstore. Which is why I do not remember paying a noticeable sum for it.

There was no such thing as Windows 2000 Home. That would have been 98 or ME at the time. XP is were they consolidated the two.

They had actually planned one but withdrew this at the last moment, replacing it by ME which was a hastily scrambled version of 98 with a 2000 look on it. And extremely unstable, at least at launch.

I still wonder how they would have thought this was better in any kind of way. A windows 2000 home release could not possibly have had as many problems as ME.

I was in a computer science program and the department literally just gave Windows 2000 keys away. They had a booklet with sheets of stickers and just said take whatever you want. It was easy to give to your friends.

When Windows XP came out, Microsoft unfortunately made them report every key given out, and the free ride was over.

I bet that was it! I either got a sticker like this or got it at the university store as a free add-on to a 90% discounted VC++.